If I had my own school

If I had my own school, every child will be free to bloom in their own time without interference, without the agenda of any adult, authority, getting in the way. We simply need to prepare optimum soil conditions and allow them to bring to bear the DNA that's in their seed, for them to bring to bear their purpose in coming to this world, in designing the world.

I would not press upon children traditions and regulations and adult beliefs, which, I believe, is the cause of the brokeness in our world today. It is because of our faulty reasoning and beliefs and our insistance of passing them down generation upon generation, and disallowing examination, that is the root of our degeneration. I will allow each child the time and space to access the voice of God in them to ascertain for themselves and separete between incomplete thought, false ideas or Truth. If God made children, who are we to interfere with God's work?

I, as well as all the teachers, will let learning happen the way Nature intended it to be : Organic. Organic learning means to provide optimum conditions based on how each organism is supposed to grow and develop. We will not mechanise things by setting 'curriculum'. We will not try to speed growth up or employ artificial means as short-cuts to yield 'results'. In other words, we will not assume to tamper with Nature's Hand.

As a farmer, I must learn how each type of plant grows and observe how it interacts with nature to pollinate, grow or thrive. My job is not to force it to grow but to listen to the needs of the Land they are planted in (the environment or society a child is in) and to be sensitive enough to tend to the plant in ways that is helpful to its growth. The things I would need to cultivate in myself is simply a sensitivity to Life and an ability to examine and observe intelligently. From intelligent examination and reflections, I will develop more experience which I can then share with other farmers, about the organic process of Nature's Work.

I will not try and cram children in small spaces like dairy-cows in their pens. I will not drill and exhaust them the way machines milk cows to their deaths. I will not push them to produce more eggs or milk the way schools push children to produce results. I will not burn their beaks with a solder in order to reduce the aggression and violence I have bred in them by conditioning them to the inhumane conditions which is a transit for the slaugterhouse. I will not treat children like 'meat' and 'milk' to serve the needs of Mass Economy Corporations.

Not that I'm equating children to vegetables and animals but biologically, Humans bear more resemblance to organic forms than the mineral/mechanical existence Industrialists and Feudal Lords tend to equate us to.

I'd let what the Earth can Grow to decide what the Market can demand as a need, instead of allowing Consumption to demand from Mother Earth, Her resources to produce for our greed. I will not subject children to experiments and be modified or turned into fighting beasts and working zombies. I will not let children become pawns to a world controlled by 1% of people who see everyone else in no other role except of Consumers and Human Resources.

So intead of forcing children to adapt to a marketplace, I'd let these Children grow up to design and create a world market that is just, fair and able to solve all human needs.

Investing in our Children's Education - Part 2

I wonder if anyone reading the previous blog would have taken it out of context. Well, the fault lies in me because I assumed readers would know I was talking from the premise of the average parent that sends their child to public schools.

If I had a choice to invest time, money and effort in a speculative way or a productive way....guess which choice I'd make? A sound investment is one that takes in good info, sound fundamentals and smart models of calculation to arrive at a logical investment strategy.

All of us are investors, one way or another. By the choices we make in our lives, we've investing in a creation or destruction of a worldview or way of living. There is no escaping the fact that we invest in every aspect of life and since we are organic and not mineral forms of life, we either evolve or devolve.

People always say that investing in the sharemarket is risky. I believe it's only risky if you don't know (1) the market (2) understand the fundamentals that are driving the market (3)investing more than you can afford to lose. But then again, don't listen to me, I'm not an investing guru. I'm just applying common sense here. But how about investing in a schooling belief where no one truly understands the origin and purpose of schooling, the hidden curriculums, the obvious but unspoken collaboration between schooling and mass economy? How can we invest in our children's education when we cannot identify and watch the shift in the tide, or the undercurrents behind fundamentals? How can we expect a downfall or to succeed in investing when we don't even know the first thing about the implications or ramifications of our actions/decisions?

Subscribing to the idea of schooling lock, stock and barrel is like putting your nest egg into a company you can't even understand/verify the reports or know nothing about their philosophies, management, operations, culture and direction.

I'm not asking parents to pull their kids out of school. If you know what you're doing, you're not likely to get burned. But in the event you do get burned, make sure what you had at stake is something you can afford to lose. Otherwise, educate yourselves.

There is hardly any excuse for people nowadays to say they didn't know that. There's an information freefall out there and blogs, youtube, websites, books are all pointing the direction for us on where to go, to educate and empower ourselves. Today, a student told me, "Teacher, there are people whose mindset do not allow them to gravitate towards useful information. There are people who, even if you tell them and explain to them, they will refuse to believe the writing on the wall." I asked her, "Why is that, then?"

She goes on to say, "It's because people don't know whether to trust the information or not. Maybe they're afraid to change."

So what lies at the heart of our atrophy? Whenever I come across new information that challenges a previously held belief, I ask myself whether what I'm believing is helpful to my life? Is it helping me achieve my fullest potential and live a fulfilled, loving, abundant and joyous life?

Dragging my only child out of bed and have her screaming and cursing me at the crack of dawn, scaring all my malaikat and blessings away is not a helpful situation in life. Is schooling worth this? And so I base my examination on one simple rule : If something is broken and to keep on doing the same thing that got it broken is pure stupidity.

Sometimes we cannot make the decision in an instant; unless you're a highly spiritual, transparent vessel of life that you can immediately see the cause of the danger/problem in one instant. If you have a gut feeling that something you're doing in your life is broken or damaged, you have to stop and listen to the voice of Reason instead of using our Ego to make up excuses and justify life.

Right now it looks like only highly educated and fairly affluent parents can homeschool their children. But the investment in education I'm talking about is not about homeschooling per se as a choice. It's about needing people to stop fooling themselves about what they're investing in. The first fundamental to learn and understand is the parent. It is the intelligence of the investor him/herself that affects the outcome of the entire investment.

Fortunately, children have a way to repair themselves once they are adults. Schooling won't destroy the entire human race, it simply slows us down tremendously from unleashing our potential and purpose as a collective. Suffering increases when the distance between our perceptions of what reality is, and Truth, increases. The opposite is true for Joy and Happiness.

Schooling by itself cannot cause as much damage as the collective, the parents and teachers, add to the entire machinery. It is the type of people still inside schools and the type of parents still looking to school as a benchmark of their own self-worth that's causing all the problems.

Once, I had a student that liked nothing better than to complain about schooling and what they were made to do in school. In short, I told her it's because her expectations of school differs greatly from the reality of schooling. She then said, if she had her way, she'd not want to go to school anymore. I asked her why isn't she doing that then?

To which she answered,"Well, if everyone thought like me and stopped going to school, then the schools will close lah! Who will go?"

I smiled at her until she realized what she had just said. "Exactly. Schools will have to change when people stop going."

"But the government says we have to go to school."

"And if the government asks you to go to war and kill another human being? Kill the child of another person? Kill the mother or father of someone else? You would?"

Ironically or not, the answer was 'No'. But that's exactly what nationality that is being taught in school is for - that we engage in a type of identity which would justify killing other people for 'country'. "Untuk bangsa dan negara." So in Malaysia, it's a bit unique : you can choose to kill each other for different reasons, bangsa or negara. You can kill each other because each of us is defending or bangsa. Or we can sepakat and kill people from other negara.

My point is, people have a default excuse when it comes to "The government said we must do so." They mouth that off without realizing two things : (1) Governments are elected representatives. We can de-select them. The government and the generals only have power because people are willing to be killing machines for a faceless, temporary, figure of authority. Whether it's Najib, Abhisit or Hitler, they have power only because people give it to them.

(2)People are very arbitrary when it comes to what they are willing to do or not to do based on what the government tells them. By not empowering themselves about the meaning and purpose of life, human beings surrender their autonomy to a government that can create the perfect storm to 'motivate' people to obey and behave in a predictable way. Read : Hitler. Read : Nationalism and Religiousity in schools.

The fact that school became this way or the dream that schools will be a place of empowerment has little to do with the schooling itself or the teachers/government. It might not seem that way, but it is the INVESTORS, the parents who are buying into the very illussions that are supporting the system the way it is right now. It is tax-dollars supporting the government and the way governments are using schools. And it is parents and taxpayers who are really at fault for not having a proper understanding of the history and projections based on those fundamentals.

Investing in our Children's Education

There are several things parents need to be aware of when thinking along the lines of 'investing in education'. 'SAVING' money in some kind of fund is not a form of investment, it is a form of saving, and when today's socialnomics rules have changed, savers are losers.



An investment in something means that the amount we will reap will be many times the principle amount we invested. For instance, if we spend an average of $300 a month on books, uniform, transportation, school fees, tuition fees, school activities, etc over the course of 11 years, that would total (give and take) $50,000 once you factor in inflation and a devaluation of currency.......



It's going to take more and more money to equal the value of something, so it's not necessarily true that the prices of things are going up except that it now requires more and more devalued currency to purchase items that provide the same value. So, remember, you have to factor that in too when you're 'investing' in your children.


I know the actual amount for most people goes higher than $300 a month. We haven't yet calculated the real costs of lost opportunities into it.



Once you add tertiary education in - well, we know the Math. Assuming a school dropout eventually earns $5,000 nett a month as a, say, foreman or entrepreneur or some other form of skilled craftsman, how much more would a 'schooled' child need to make in order to say an investment paid off at X% after all factors considered, etc.?

Many people take for granted that a university undergrad, grad or post-grad is a form of INVESTMENT into the future. That is only true if the institutions are adding a chain of value to the 'commodity' i.e. the child's innate nature/abilities. How many of us can say that school helped us identify our innate gifts and nurture them to fruition? My own schooling experience taught me that my "writing should not exceed 350 words and arguments must be more down to earth". My sense of justice and my ability to illuminate what others are feeling and express them in words got me labelled, "If you think you're so smart and want to change school, then go be a teacher or politician". My schooling experience invalidated my observations and intuitions into what I sensed was a dumbing-down curriculum. But as we know by now, it's absolutely untrue that teachers, as "civilized" servants can create any real change in the bureaucratic setup of school, what more the policy-making educrats.



Undergraduate studies, while an opportunity for social freedom and growth for man is just an annex of schooling, not an addition to an investment. What most people undergo when they get to college is to struggle through undergrad, scraping through grad and tightening their belts to do a postgrad. Then one of two things happens : The undergrad or postgrad drops out of school - therefore, defaulting on the previous 11 years' worth of investment which staked everything on a future whereby the ROI would beat what the average non-schooled person is making.

The widening divide between the business world and schooling created a reality today's graduates are ill-prepared for : to find that the market doesn't REWARD mere time spent in an academic setting.


It hardly matters to universities and colleges if students drop out - until the dropout rate is too high that it affects the university's ability to pull in more paid students. So what are parents REALLY investing in since both schooling and tertiary education is NOT accountable for producing the ROI parents are investing in?


Would any investor pump 11-15 years of money into a company that has a track-record of not being accountable for employability and a certain % of return that would make it worth it? Would you keep money in, say...a fixed deposit if inflation is going to rise faster, or the rate at which your currency is being devalued is faster than the interest you could accumulate? The $50,000 you put in 10 years ago will no longer buy the same things. To be RICH and to have a RETURN is to have double digit returns.


We'd like to believe that what was true 50 years ago will continue to be true 50 years from NOW. We'd like to believe that we live in a "stable" and "constant world". It doesn't even matter that tectonic plates tell us otherwise, we are beyond the elements of Earth.



We'd like to believe that in general, people who are more educated earn more money. But they only earn more money not as a result of the education, but as a result of the market still being willing to bear the cost to juice them for their abilities. But markets change. I don't have a to be an investor to tell you that MARKETS CHANGE and if you cannot detect the currents you'd most likely drown.



When people frame their future based on their past, in this case, assuming that the more time and money one 'invests' in their child's education, the same thing that held 50 years ago (in the 50s) will hold true for the next 50 years (80s to 2030s). Now, ask an investor who does the same thing : Can we make money from shares BASED on their performance in the past or do we make money based on our knowledge of the current, undergoing, fundamentals of a company?



But most people do that, with investing in shares and investing in education. The first people that got in bought low and will make money regardless of when they sell because they were in the know about the developments and undergoings of the fundamentals of the company/market. So other people tail that and buy higher...and some are lucky enough to STILL sell even higher. While previously, investors were buying based on REAL KNOWLEDGE of fundamental market behaviour, now, speculators are buying whatever that the price is going UP UP UP and GAMBLING to be able to SELL HIGHER and get out rich!



If you know what happens in the stock market when stock prices go up because of increased demand rather than strong fundamentals, you will realize that is exactly what will happen to your investments in 'education'. People today are investing in 'tuition' and 'workbooks' and doing well in school which is so 60s! Their reason is because 'they didn't get to buy in back then.' Even during the time I was in school, the market no longer rewarded academic prowess. It was beginning to reward emotional and social intelligence, being able to think out of the box, being able to use technology and being able to be a self-directed learner. The bubble was due to burst two decades ago but new wealth has been sustaining the inflated perceptions. We know what happens when a really big bubble bursts.


I profess that I know absolutely nothing about finance, economics nor investment so you don't have to take anything you read here seriously. I just knew enough of what I know to get out of advertising when I saw the end of the road for mass media (in 1995) just like I knew enough not to try and be a "good student" to earn brownie points playing by the rules of a dumbed down learning experience. I'm wrong with a lot of things but I'm generally right about sensing "shifts".



It's extremely difficult sometimes in my capacity as a teacher and a parent to talk about things which cannot be 'touched', 'seen' and 'proven'. But I do know that the more invisible something is, the more powerful its force tends to be. I'd like parents to listen and invest in the strength of the fundamentals of the next big market. I'm already investing in that. If you don't know what those fundamentals are, then it's time to worry. If your money's already in and you cannot time the market except gamble on it, ....well, I'm just saying. Don't listen to me.

How can I protect my child from other teachers?

I wrote a blog yesterday (http://sloane-schoolandteaching.blogspot.com/)which deserved a follow-up, better sooner than later. You can read that too to obtain some premise of an overdue narration about 'teacher-training'.

But before we can really get into how you can become an effective teacher to your child, we need to do a little exercise to examine your current views about teachers and teaching.

Teachers are not
- authority figures
- surrogates for parents
- a special breed with superior intellect
- a power over you
- domineering
- stereotypical
- experts in what they teach
- people who have all the right answers


The list is a lot longer than that but I simply want to start off challenging the most common notions of what being a teacher is about. There is a big difference between what we perceive to be true and what IS. We have conformed to the idea of all the things listed above without actually having ever examined whether it really IS or isn't. And because we conform to it, it becomes true for us.

In spite of my perspective, I'm not a teacher-basher. If I appear that way, it is only because I am being measured against a very, very narrow definition of what a teacher ought to be. I prefer the premise of expansive thought to narrow thinking.

Even if a majority hold to be true what is not true, it doesn't make it true. It makes it real to the people who hold on to the notion, but it doesn't make it true, does it? A majority of people hold on to the things listed above as the definition of what a Teacher is. But I know you are one of the few who have started examining preconceived ideas.

A long, long time ago, a Teacher was someone who had the wisdom to see the inter-relatedness of ideas, information and thoughts and to weave a cohesive pattern that allows them to transcend, to some degree, a future. Teachers were philosophers, writers and vanguards of morality. They were not necessarily chaste and celibate because it was demanded of them or a code they had to abide to; they are moral because there is order in their hearts. That Order comes from a sense of Knowing that made Teachers appear more mystical, more mysterious - special. They hold a higher moral standard than others not because they get paid to do it or because it's a "should", they have a higher moral standard because they are closer to Truth, to Love, to Light. Being closer to Truth melts away the Ignorance that causes Conflict and Desire and pulls away the web of Deceit and Delusion shrouding our consciousness. Higher morality is something you Are because of an inner-change that comes within you. It is not a standard dependent on others' views or judgment upon you. It is simply a cessation or lessening of violence because Truth neutralizes a great many Conflict that arises in Man's heart.

At the root of all their Wisdom and Morality is simply Unconditional Love. They have developed and nurtured a sensitivity to Nature, which brought upon a blossoming and heightening of their Awareness. Some of this transformation comes after considerable movements of Time, but sometimes Awareness happens instantaneously. The point is, their Awakening is not dependent on Time, Skill, Knowledge, IQ, wealth, etc. It depended only upon Sensitivity and Love.

This Sensitivity and Love is necessary for Observation and Examination to take place, to have meaning, to have purpose, to navigate their direction. The process inside that includes Reflections. Eventhough I use 'navigate direction' as a metaphor, the process towards Knowing is a Pathless one.

A lot of people accustomed to the idea of gradual learning and development find it extremely difficult to internalize the idea that the movement towards becoming a Teacher is an inward, not an outward movement. Thus, the movement cannot be neasured in increments expanding outwardly, confirmed and awarded, like a certificate or graduation. If we can see and understand that the process of Knowing (as opposed to a state of Collective Information we loosely call "I know"....) is a reversion into ourselves, not a conversion towards a different label, name, form or status - then it is easier to understand why each and every person is essentially 'qualified' to be a teacher.

The problem we have with the world right now is that we had adopted a thought that we did not examine. This is the thought that the label 'teacher' is some kind of commodity. How many times have we heard children being made to come up with a sentence like, "When I grow up, I want to become a teacher/doctor/writer/monk/" etc.? It is as if, if all conditions and rewards are fine by me, then I "become" a teacher/doctor. But there is an ocean of difference between the 'name' teacher/doctor/monk and the actual practise of it, and any good teacher/doctor/monk can attest to that.

Based on the information so far and the beliefs you are asked to examine, how far are you with this? Since being a Teacher to your child or to other children is not a matter of incremental steps, it is absolutely imperative (for effect!)for you to understand that learning to go inwardly into yourself is not an external movement towards a destination. It is a return to yourself.

Accepting the role of a teacher is as much a spiritual quest as it is an actualization process for yourself and the children you nurture. Children need Teachers a lot less than we have bought into. Children are very capable of learning by themselves. We didn't walk around with a big white button badge that says, "Mummy" in big black words or out-loud when we're near Baby, yet, they learned language pretty effortlessly. There are so many things children learn through modelling, not through direct instruction.

For more evidence you would have to read the works of Maria Montessor, Jean Piaget, Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and a host of others who are more intellectually qualified to relay this information to you.

When I first naively shared with people in my life that I wanted to be a teacher, I received nothing but outright criticisms. "Your face can be a teacher!" and "Why the heck would you want to go do a drop-out's job?". Not one single person understood that it was as much a spiritual journey as it was going to be a professional one. But along the way, I've met so many role-models who didn't start out (or continue to be) on the straight-and-narrow path of what we'd expect of a 'typical' teacher. Truly, we are doing harm to ourselves to believe that there is anything typical about spirituality and awakenings.

At this point, there is bound to be some conflict arising about how Parents can't make good teachers, or the notion that some people are better at teaching than others. Just because someone out there can be better than you at a chosen task doesn't automatically make it impossible for you to also be able to perform it. It would be like a man saying, "There are other men who can be better husbands and father better children with this woman here, so I might as well let another man do it." How ridiculous does that sound now? Or an IT businessman/investor saying, "Warren Buffet/Bill Gates can do (and has done) a better job than me so I shouldn't even delude myself into thinking that I'm going to be able to make even a measly $10million dollars a year." - Well, so what if other people make $100 million a year? Even $5million a year is not so bad. I'd take it any-who.

There is this widely-practised (yes, practised) belief that we cannot teach our own children - because...................Because we are so attached to them! All our judgments, perceptions, attachments, prejudices, preconceived ideas,unexamined beliefs are unleashed unto them! It is not that we cannot teach them, it is that it's too much work to work on ourselves, so we'd rather pay someone else to do the teaching! However, this doesn't absolve the fact that parents are their children's first teachers. A majority of the things they will use to define and value life comes from us, the parents. Their mannerisms, generosity, perspectives, influences, drive, motivation, direction, comes from modelling after us. I even believe that parents who complain about their children having a hard time waking up are themselves parents who are not morning-people! But it's a different story if the child is undergoing severe depression and not being able to get up is not just a case of genetics, but a sign of having lost perspective and being unable to face the day ahead.

It is our nature to want to get definitive, simple, clear-cut solutions to the most complex, personal problems we have. But to start off telling you 'Steps', 'Methods', 'Practical Approaches' or 'Theoretical Aspects' has a danger of making you put more pressure on yourself and your child to solve the question of whether or not you can be a Teacher. The only purpose a Parent should have in wanting to know if they can be a Teacher to their Child or other children is the acceptance of embarking on a spiritual awakenig of themself.