“Education is a conversation between generations about matters of significance.” Dr. Neil Hawkes
Choice can be paralyzing. As I sat down to write Good News Monday, I had so much to say that my consciousness split and I didn’t know how to begin. Perhaps this is part of our current paralysis – so many choices. How do we know what’s right? Or how do we prioritize worthy pursuits?
I promise I have good news, but I can’t ignore its opposite. Bear with me for a moment.
Never in my life has the world looked so hopeless. We are bombarded daily with bad news which we can’t assimilate. What do we do with the news that the USA is putting immigrant children in concentration camps? Or that our president is buddies with Kim Jong Un and Rasputin? Or that we might be on the verge of another war? Or that we have only a decade to save our planet?
Yesterday I saw the announcement that over 1 million species are about to go extinct; because our environment can no longer sustain them; because our climate is changing; because our planet is heating up due to increased levels of CO2 in our environment; because we are emitting so much carbon dioxide from our industrial byproducts and our dependence upon petroleum products. So how can we deal with the fact that we are killing our planet and murdering millions of other species!?
This isn’t who we are. We are not baby snatchers. We are not monsters plotting to take over the world. We are not murderers. And yet all these things are going on before our eyes and we watch, paralyzed, feeling helpless and victimized, completely overwhelmed by what seem to be insurmountable problems. What difference could we possibly make? One of 7 billion people? In the minority? Taking responsibility when the other 6.999 billion don’t give a hoot.
This is the paradox of our evolution. Up until now species evolved slowly over eons through mutations in individuals that helped them adapt and survive and reproduce. That level of evolution will continue in the plant and animal kingdoms, but it is different now for humans. Evolution for us is no longer only about genetic change. It’s about consciousness. It’s about waking up to a broader perspective, about seeing an alternative reality, one that has always been here, while we were asleep dreaming a different world.
Evolution for humans has become a choice – do I want to stay asleep or am I willing to wake up? We have evolved the capacity to perceive a greater reality, but we must be willing to see it. How do we do that? It all begins with self-reflection.
And that brings me to the work of Dr. Neil Hawkes. An Oxford PhD, Dr. Hawkes was the Headteacher in Oxfordshire. England. Inspired by a Holocaust Memorial on a trip to Israel, he returned with a dream of a world in which all children would flourish. He met with the community and developed a new system called Values Based Education in which children learn about their inner world along with their ABC’s.
It all began with the adults. They agreed upon a set of positive, universal values they wanted their children to learn and live by, but since children learn more from what we do than what we say, it was up to the adults to model the values and behavior they hoped to instill. Parents and teachers alike agreed to undertake serious self-reflection and discover these values within themselves, values like respect, empathy, tolerance, justice and altruism. They developed a new vocabulary capable of evolving an ethical intelligence.
In his first experiment, Neil set about changing the school environment. A values-based system demands that all are equal in value, so the first thing he did was to rearrange all the pictures of school employees. They were hanging in a pyramid in the front hall with the principal on top. Teachers were displayed in rows below according to tenure, followed by the maintenance staff. Neil rearranged the photos in random order with the Principal between a teacher and the janitor somewhere in a lower row.
From this humble beginning, a new movement in education has evolved. Neil and his wife Jane have cowritten The Inner Curriculum and travel throughout the world, from Australia to Russia to Nigeria, teaching other communities how to adopt this revolutionary approach. Under this system, children learn self-responsibility and emotion-management, through self-reflection in a peaceful environment. With adult modeling they are sensitized to values, developing an ethic that guides not only their behavior but all of their relationships. They are empowered to become deep thinkers with open hearts and positive relationships.
Neil Hawkes’ dream is becoming a reality, one community at a time. In a 2018 TEDx Talk, he declared, and I paraphrase a bit, “The future is in the hands of the students. Zoom these children into the future and they will create a society in which this world could truly flourish!”
Imagine politicians speaking to one another with an ethical vocabulary, basing decisions on a universal human values paradigm! Yes, our children and their children are the ones that will transform human society. In the meantime we can do our own bit of self-reflection and begin to model positive values. This act alone will pave the way. We’ve all heard “Be the change you want to see.” This is one way we can do our part.
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