A bone to the dog is not charity. Charity is the bone shared with the dog, when you are just as hungry as the dog.

Jack London.

A thought came to me after reading Redefining Philanthropy: Introducing The Citizen Effect, gratitude goes to Amy Carol Wolff.

As a matter of fact I know pretty much nothing about modern philanthropy and non-profit organizations, yet intuition tells me that something is wrong here.

To begin, non-profits are biased towards helping poor people with their lives. I haven’t heard of any non-profit that aims to help rich people with their lives. Why? Or maybe rich people do not need help? Well, they are human beings too, they suffer just like anybody else.

In a discussion Dan Morrison argued that poor people spend most of their time satisfying basic needs. But what do other people do most of their time? Just the same: they satisfy basic needs. But basic needs are different: for ones it is water, for others it could be whiskey. Eradicating poverty just means that basic needs will change. It has nothing to do with happiness.

Nevertheless many great people are involved in philanthropic activity and they succeed. And if we imagine a timeline we will probably notice that nowadays non-profit organizations are more successful than they have even been. Considering this fact from system self-organization standpoint among conclusions to made one will be about immunity.

Poverty and richness are diseases of society. Richness parasitizes society but at the same time controls it. That’s why society needs (and produces) enthusiasts to deal with poverty. I can see a sort of analogy between immunity and charity efforts. The stronger the disease the harder the work will be for immune system. And today people work really hard.

Millennium Developmental Goals atlas published by World Bank lists achieving universal primary education as the most important goal after eradicating poverty and hunger.

In the next 30 years, according to UNESCO, the global education system is about to be under a significant pressure. More people will be educating then the whole number of educated people since the history of education had started.

What the world will look like highly depends on the quality of education.

Education system exists and it is working all over the world, so the question arises: “Do we need any changes to be made in education system?”

I think, we do need a change.

1. We need education to educate thinking leaders.
2. We need education to develop every individual to her full potential.
3. We need education to bring compassion and responsibility in our souls.
4. We need education to bring green thinking and care about the nature.
5. We need education to resist crises thoughtfully.
6. We need education to step over the money power.
7. We need education to make a human life valuable.
8. We need education to stop violence and greed.
9. We need education to stop war.
10. We need education to cure the diseases.
11. We need education to stay human.

Current educational institutes are not enough for these.

Financial crisis shows the color gamma of society’s inability to meet the big scale problems:

• Unemployment gone wild
• Deflation is knocking at the door
• All for money
• Living on bread and water
• Nobody cares about people
• Politicians blowing hot and cold
• The end justifies the means
• We need stability, but what can we do?
• We need to reduce risks, but nobody knows how
• The markets are uncontrollable
• World economics is about to collapse

These phrases are likely to show up in the news headlines. Don’t they?

The situation speaks for the bankruptcy of present education system as well. Why? Because this system had produced today’s world leaders and today’s society.

There is a striking difference between the life we are dreaming of and the actual way we live, for many of us. It is called a failure.

The education system is designed to produce people, who are foredoomed to fail, everywhere on Earth. Present society, incapable of dealing properly with environmental and economic problems; its poor leadership, terrorism, corruption are all results of education in a certain way.

The near future is already beyond our imagination, but in education we are trying to improve, to tune the old system — do the same thing, but a little better. What will the result look like? Answer is simple: a better, more precise failure. Today there is still a chance to survive in the education, a chance for curiosity and creativity not to be wiped out. With “improved education” — tests instead of thinking, summaries instead literature, theorems without proofs, classes of 40+ children and other “improvements” this chance will be minimal.

Every child is unique. Unarguable. But why then they all are educated the same way? And still many are surprised when something goes wrong after such education.

There is a principle used all over the place by governments and by parents. “Pay money for education and everything will be fine”. It doesn’t work anymore. Money is no more enough. Educational institutions can no more be treated as a perfect machine for producing successful people. Today they produce failure. And when I see young laughing children playing at snowballs near my home, I feel fear because these are just about to enter the education factory, this ultimate machine that leaves no-one untouched.

Time has come to rethink education, to transform it, as Sir Ken Robinson says.

There are two ultimate goals of the new education:

1. Help people to discover the passion inside. Every human indeed is better than he looks like. He just needs a chance. A chance to discover the passion.
2. Teach people to be prepared for unexpected changes. Sir Ken gives great illustrative examples in his remarkable speeches on why we are responsible for our children to be prepared for change.

I believe, education with these goals implemented is possible. And we are responsible for implementation. We, the lucky ones, who have access to information and communication. We have much more opportunities to think, communicate and take action than ever before. What are we waiting for?

The world won’t change in the way we want it to change without the effort, the tremendous effort. Culture won’t rise without particular persons taking responsibility for educating children well.

What are the actions required?

At first, there is one BIG action. Most simple. Most important. Most difficult for many.

Pay attention… Pay attention

What makes a remarkable teacher, a teacher who inspire, who spark the thoughts? (By the way, I bet you would wish to have met more of such unforgettable teachers in your life.) The first thing that makes a remarkable teacher and a remarkable parent is attention — they pay attention.

Now, I would like to give you a list of things necessary for the new education:

• Forget kindergartens — parents should stay with children during first years, the most important period.
• Educating healthy living.
• Educating creativity and curiosity.
• Guarding the kids from the raging media madness, at least for early years.
• Rethinking the social status of the teacher.
• Teaching different children differently.
• Educating compassion.
• Telling the stories of people who are behind books, formulas, theories and dates.

Of course there are more. I am sure you can add some valuable items to this list.

To conclude, we should devote our forces to transform education. Much work is ahead of us.

My today’s message to every parent and every teacher — pay attention to the children. Whatever it takes, pay attention. Their life worth it a thousand times.

Leading photo by BaLLYoOo.

http://thatistoothin.com/