We only seek the truth and the best ways of learning
INTRODUCTION
In the preamble to The People Council below, we talk about independent bodies and forums being established to address the major issues faced by society. Those issues not only include the assessment of all the major topics affecting our society, but also the processes necessary to both shape and organise our society. In that respect - the initial role of such a body coming into being, is to lead a complete reassessment and subsequent realignment of all the major cornerstones of society. One of the most important of those cornerstones being EDUCATION.
Currently, the people leave it to the politicians to decide what kind of an Education system we should adopt and how we should run it. This is surely one excellent definition of Applied Narrow Thinking – and it’s not just limited to Education as many will know. Yes of course politicians take soundings from others when it comes to shaping policy – it is not down to a country’s Education Department alone to decide these things.
But we must ask ourselves this:
How well has the current approach to defining that policy worked?
And when we ask ourselves that question, we should also ask this:
What is it that Education - as we know it - and the system which currently provides it - clearly lacks?
AND - more challenging again - what MIGHT it actually be lacking - IF we were all sufficiently intune enough to realise it?
In our view, the approach hasn’t worked, or - perhaps more kindly put - hasn’t worked well enough. Neither has Education itself at the delivery end. The truth is, that these two things have not worked well enough for some decades and now serious changes in both are overdue.
As Sugata Mitra described it
in his enlightening and amusing look at the subject:
The education system adopted throughout the world is not so much broken – exactly – it’s just outdated.
The People Council’s look at Education – among the other cornerstone topics such as Health and the Justice System – is a topic which deserves all of society to be involved - in its design of type and shaping of purpose. And there are ways in which this can be achieved simply and effectively.
In time we will write more on this subject. For now though we wish to open a door – a door to allow a new method of thinking to emerge and to come forward. As we said, the time for change is overdue.
“Every education system in the world is being reformed – and reform is no use any more – because that is simply improving
an outdated model.
What we need is not evolution but Revolution in Education.
It has to be transformed into something else.”
Sir Ken Robinson
Part of that new method of thinking then has to be this:
Rather than teach our children those things we ourselves were taught at their age, we must drop this approach and teach them something different.
We must teach our children how to think – how to analyse – how to question and how to use the array of tools available to help achieve all these things. With those tools – and adding to their tool chest as new tools become available – we can release our children into a truly exciting world - equipped not just to survive and live within it but to help change it for the better - for the benefit of our whole world.
As Sir Ken would say – we must create an environment for children where they can discover their true and latent talents. In part, this can only be achieved through a balanced curriculum which includes art and other mediums to encourage creativity. It is an approach which taps into every person’s abilities – to one extent or another – to facilitate that person’s search for their individual talents – whatever they maybe.
But the new thinking doesn’t start and end there. Society has been following an approach to teaching which is similar to grooming young boys to become buddhist monks – all thinking the same, all dressing the same.
That approach is literaly hundreds of years old with barely any modification in that time whatsoever. Outside of religious training, our children are not meant to follow such a regime – since they are all unique and need to follow their own paths.
So rather than treat our children all the same – seeking to produce exam passes in exactly the same way – we instead need to treat every child as the totally unique individual that they are – each possessing their own latent talent. And those latent talents are discovered by individuals when they are allowed opportunity to find them - along their own paths.
Furthermore, we need not only to regard them as the unique humans they are but to do so from a very early time in their lives. By doing so we become – as teachers and collectively as a society - their facilitators, facilitating their own enlightened path into their own future. Every child will find their own path into that future when they have the tools they need and the space in time in which to use them – guided where necessary by dedicated tutors and mentors at one with a new, modern and appropriately designed philosophy for Education.
We suggest, that in any grown-up intelligent society, the children – and their nurturing into adult phase - will be regarded as its most precious asset. Here, children are not just regarded as the new adults for the future. Such a society understands that children naturally bring with them new powers of thinking - new ideas and creativity unsullied by the past failures, dogma and the established principles which adults are often overly enthralled by. Such a society looks in wonder at its children’s nursery – excited to see what is brought forward by each child as their personal gift to the world.
This is the time for us all to start creating a grown-up intelligent society that regards its children as its most precious asset and treats them as exactly that. To reach the eventual goal, it is now the time to begin the process of creating that Revolution in Education.
THE PEOPLE COUNCIL - PREMBLE
This site has been created by persons completely free of any agenda, other than to seek the TRUTH in all things AND the improvement in the ways we organise our societies for the betterment of us all.
Some themes addressed by The People Council present a number of very difficult challenges for people. None more so than the first theme we addressed - being the No1 global health emergency of 2020. The main reason for those challenges being the volume of conflicting information which has been spread through the media by one route or another. The effect of this - as we all seen since the beginning of 2020 – is the polarisation of opinion based on that conflicting information.
The problem at the root of this polarisation is the absence of a process whereby the conflicting information can be properly and fairly assessed. Such a process would be conducted by an independent body whose sole aim is to do exactly that – assess the information for the underlying and unmistakeable TRUTH.
That body doesn’t actually exist currently – set up specifically to hear and to test conflicting information on behalf of the people. It neither exists as a Pop-Up – as in an emergency type of forum – or as a permanent forum, whose remit would be – under a written constitution - to examine all major factors affecting our societies - For and on Behalf of the People.
That is quite an extraordinary thought isn’t it – that such an independent body – a body working solely for the people at every possible level - doesn’t currently exist? Perhaps before the events of 2020, people felt that such a body was not needed. Perhaps now we see clearly that one is.
None of the major political systems around the world has such a body. And yet – if one were to set a task for a class of undergraduate Demoncracy students to design a new society for our world – based on Freedom, Democracy and the lessons history has provided for us all – we are sure that each one would include such a body in their response.
Surely, every grown-up intelligent society – wherever it might be – founded on the principles of Freedom and Democracy, would include such a body - indelibly printed into their society – just like the word Brighton is printed through the entire length of Brighton Rock.
The primary aim of The People Council is to see such a body come into existence. A forum if you like or a People Council by another name - established as a permanent foundation stone – under a rewritten constitution – as part of a complete reassessment and subsequent realignment of all the major cornerstones of society.
One of those major cornerstones being the subject of this site –
EDUCATION
