school system evolution: here comes the inner authority revolution
school does not work. even for children who are not considered “different” and for whom school seems to be alright, it is not great. school as we know it now is the descendent of training grounds for factories to make children into little rule following humans. what is actually being taught? control.
when we look at what works for children and especially for those who are neurodiverse, for example, on the autism spectrum, success increasingly becomes about supporting autonomy, or “following the child”, as Dr. Maria Montessori said. It seems that the spirit of nature herself is becoming more autonomous and demanding to be.
it seems we are going in the direction of less oversight, less instructional education, and more experience. we know from the grand cycles of time that the Cross of the Sleeping Phoenix is coming, when the Procession of the Equinoxes moves into the final gate of Pisces before entering Aquarius. at the conclusion of this Pisces time we are seeing the end of organized religion and we are going to see the end of organized education as well.
we have been sending humans to school like everyone is an oak tree, and they are learning how to produce acorns and nurture an environment for squirrels to collect the acorns and plant them. and we learn how to grow like an oak and be like an oak. but what if we are a ginkgo tree? a living fossil with no others to show us what to do.
certainly we do not grow like an oak. in fact, if we went to school and were expected to be like an oak tree, we may have been told that our nuts were too gooey, our fruit too stinky. and we replied, “my seed is not contained in a fruit or a nut. it is made to be sticky and stinky, keeping away those who are not a match. I am a living fossil. there is no branch of the tree between the naked seeds and the covered seeds… there is no other tree like me. I spread my roots to out far and wide and make a network of remembering.
we are all different. and we all benefit when there is space for the trees and the children to explore what is best for their individual self. what soil works for their roots, what amount of sun do they need, what amount of water and wind is ideal for their growth? nature teaches us, if we can listen. it will show the way to grow for a particular tree; free to be as it was designed. the other trees, they do not know how you are meant to be. new education is experiential because diversity is increasing and only nature can teach us the nature inside of us ~ the human nature, the tree nature, the oak nature, the gingko nature.”
the squirrel behaves very differently from the cardinal. they are meant to do different jobs. but we have been teaching all glorious, diversified humans to do the same job: to listen and shut up and follow external authority. that is going to be completely dangerous to the individual very soon, as is already apparent. one who does not serve nature will be unprotected. to follow outer authority and to follow the crowd, the way humans have done and gotten away with up until now to some degree, will be unsupported by nature because of the frequency that we are in now: the expansion of the individual.
nature came into all these forms to experience itself, and the experience is expanding exponentially, diversifying, speeding up, and so it is for us to keep up with the speed of this evolution, which is calling us to expand the experience. we are expanding away from one way of doing things into the many and the more and the multitude, which means that each individual, human, tree, being, consciousness, drop of the ocean, will increasingly diversify and expand, and that will require the individual to follow their own nature. when all follow the same homogenized monoculture we know what happens; everything dies if there is no diversity in a field. we see it again and again. in a field of potatoes, in a field of thought, in a field of soy or corn. nature does not behave like monoculture. nature is reveling in its diversity. and soil will no longer support closemindedness.
the way school education will work in the future will be to allow individuals the space to explore the expansiveness within themselves, to explore nature from the edges of their particular design, to spread their roots, their wings, their seeds, the way that they are made to, and to experiment, to learn, as they receive feedback from the environment. this is the classroom. the entire world, the nature all around us and within us is the realm, the room of the class, the classical learning of consciousness expansion. there is very little expansion of knowledge and consciousness when we are being told what to think and what to do. but when we have a field, a space that is ripe with nature for feedback, for exploration, for consciousness expansion, now we are really getting somewhere.
I envision spaces where people can get together or be alone and engage in nature, with nature, alongside all of nature, in the way they choose. perhaps it looks like a child sitting under a tree doing “nothing,” listening, being, where everything is happening. perhaps a child is identifying and collecting plants for food or medicine. perhaps a child has climbed up into the tree with an electronic device. perhaps a child is digging and transporting soil from one side to another. perhaps the child is taking field notes, observing for evidence, after proposing a hypothesis. perhaps a child is doing math for the building of a garden bed. perhaps a child is writing a book, creating a song, or choreographing a dance.
perhaps the children are not working together but alone. perhaps it looks like they are just playing. and perhaps we can remember that people learn something through play in just 20 explorations, while the same knowledge takes 400 times of repetition, as is practiced in conventional education models. then in the form, the repetition itself, what is being taught? often that education is drudgery. is that what we are meant to learn? that life is sad, bad, boring, tedious? was education meant to make us feel like we were expanding just enough to fulfill that curiosity while actually teaching us to keep the lid on the expansion? do we really need to be told to wonder? or does it happen naturally and we simply need the space and the encouragement to do so on propose.
perhaps the schools of the future and the schools that I wish to be a part of building will be of the spontaneous, pop-up, everlasting, vibrational space variety. there will be spaces where people gather outside, inside, some scheduled, some in the moment, some spontaneous in-between. there will be regular classes and there will be seasonal classes, and primarily there will be choice. abundant choice. participants can do what they choose within a gathering. people can join in the group work or work individually. you can ask for external suggestions and guidance or you can follow your own inner authority completely. you can choose the nature of your environment. you can work silently, with music, or amidst lots of talking. you can follow your nature.
that is the future of education. it will require many generations to heal. will require the older generations to grieve the freedom that they did not receive and to understand that we get to do it now. the grown-ups are sad. they are sad that they did not get to play. we do not understand what this world is. we were told it is one way and now clearly all bets are off and just open-ended questions remain.
I am excited for the evolution of education. children need to come out of the classrooms. so the obvious next question is: who is going be with the children if they are not in classrooms during the day? well, the grown-ups are going to be coming out of the offices, cubicles, and boardrooms. everyone is returning to nature. human nature. the field of play, of consciousness, of expansion. we are leaving a realm of illusion. we have been here for a long time but we are now shifting and remembering our true nature as creators and explorers, and our systems of learning must reflect that education is not an implanting of knowledge but an uncovering of knowing.
