On the second last day of school, both my school-going kids were given an award, for exemplifying empathy.
I am personally not a fan of signaling out children, and putting them on stage, saying that they are better than others at anything. In addition to only inviting in parents if their child is being awarded, and asking parents to keep it a secret, that their child is going to receive an award. Last year I emailed the school with my disgust of how things were done. All kids do their best, awarding puts a target on kids' back for bullying, and kids feel like crap when their parents never get to come, not to mention I don't like what surprise does to people's physiology: making them feel forgotten, and then shocked when they least expect it, so they can't even do what they would normally do to prepare for an social encounter. No, sorry, I study stress and trauma, this is the pathway to illness.
On the last day of school, I finally started reading this book (3yrs after I acquired it):
I am half way through, but the general idea is: they pushed everyone to go to school, because they felt like kids were vulnerable, exposed to the world their parents would exposed them to, instead of being exposed them to what "whomever thought of themselves as entitled enough to mold society" thought mattered (mind and good morals over the physical needs and desires that they saw in mainstream society).
Unfortunately, it was a hard sell for some (especially the entrepreneurs), who saw value in having their kids contribute to the family or learn they way they learned, through connections and apprenticeships. So the school promoters tied education to class, saying if you want to rise (or didn't want to fall) in class, you need to go to school. Fear-based learning, never a good idea, if you actually want to support health, community, love, acceptance, and growth!
I can not imagine thinking that I know better than all of nature and life, that I had the right to mold society, simply based on my opinion.
Many people believe school exists because parents need to work. Half way through this book, parents needing to work has yet to be mentioned. The opposite in fact, kids at home were helping parents work. If history had been taught like this when I was in school, I may have gathered something useful from it. But instead, we got what the government wanted us to believe, which had very little resemblance to truth, and it's easy for someone like me to tell the difference. Truth has an uncomfortable feel to it, you don't hear what you want to hear or what's easy, you hear many things pointing to what is. The stuckness of people, the places where they just can't grow.
Here's what I have to offer. This is my gene keys' life's work, that of my 3 children (oldest to youngest), my husband, and a friend, in that order:
I include my friend, because she was able to see right away, what our middle child is doing, that makes her so good at putting together patterns in outfits, crafts, and her room. This was our exchange of words, when I asked my friend (a trained visual artist, and teacher) what artistic talent our middle is portraying:
Friend: Interesting. Need for control? Order? I would assume she likes things done a certain way through many different areas of her life.
Me: So you see it more as a disorder than a talent?
Friend: No… I see it as an expression of a need to figure out her environment. Categorically. Not a disorder but a curiosity to understand things at a deeper level. Which comes through as order.
Me: Interesting you share that, as her life’s work, according to the gene keys (see above), is to move from the shadow of chaos to the gift of innovation and the siddhi of innocence, via the line of the fixer (see below for more on that, as both my middle and my friend have the 5th line - fixer).
Friend: Makes sense to me!
Me: I’ve just always found her to be so talented, and I don’t know how to nurture her talent further, because it’s a talent I don’t have, do I even need to do anything to nurture it?
Friend: Her talent is curiosity about how things work. So imagine what she’s doing there like a form of Biological Genera for her stuffed animals. Her talent is curiosity. About how things work. So imagine what she’s doing there like a form of Biological Genera for her stuffed animals.
Interesting, as I'm the one with the channel of curiosity (through storytelling), from my mind to my throat, in human design:
...which is why I think it's a crime to make kids hate learning, one of the most enjoyable things there is to do. Making and strengthening synaptic connections in our brains, is literally associated with the release of endogenous feel-good hormones, which is why praise and reward actually hurt children, because the drive needs to be internal. And, because we are social beings who rely on one another, we also need to be recognized and seen, which is what the modalities I work with do.
So back to the line numbers mentioned above, I'm a creator, my youngest and husband are servers, my middle and friend are fixers, and my eldest is a teacher:
It's interesting because the desire to make others smile (husband and youngest, line 4) is something my eldest possesses at this time, but he is not a server (line 4), he's a teacher (line 6).
In human design, the 6th line is not a 6th line until age 54yrs. For the first 30yrs they are a 3rd line (learning through trial and error) but they don't have the same resiliency as natural 3rd line for the mistakes. From age 30 to 54yrs, they rest and heal, and at age 54, all that came before comes back, to see if they can navigate it like a role model. You can see in the description of the 6th line above, that the 3rd line is "the most exciting", while the 6th line will "eventually be able to see further than the others".
I will touch on this briefly, before moving on. Each person has a way in which they would like to experience their first 7yrs of life. This is the line number for their SQ (image not shown, so as not to add unnecessary confusion).
My friend was looking for "Line 3 - Pleasure (adventure and understanding)" which is why she didn't show up at school (and will one day open a worldschool). My husband sought "Line 4 - Belonging (kinship and community)" which is why he wants our kids to go to public school (that's where the majority of the kids are). Me, my middle, and my youngest all sought/seek "Line 1 - Certainty (rhythm and routine)", we always want to know what the plan is.
My middle and I are the only projectors in the group, the only ones who do well in school. Projectors are here for success, figuring out how things works, protected by our disability, of always being stressed by some sort of social issue, blocking us from truly absorbing all the garbage that is being taught. And my eldest was looking for "Line 5 - Mentoring (role models with integrity)".
You can see from the shadow, gift, and siddhi of my youngest (above), this is why she can't attend school yet. A 4yr old who starts in the shadow of "dominance", who will eventually (it takes a lifetime) learn synergy and communion. Yes, that is who they are referring to when they create a "pipeline from preschool to prison".
As much as the book above wanted to say "kids left on their own will become criminals, so we must mold them to be respectable", it is actually the inability of the schools to work with these kids, that lands these kids in jail. Their premise that school would empty the jails was wrong! Some kids' life lessons require more time, love, understanding, and support than school can give. The journey continues, until I can get my youngest over the misuse of her power, into seeing the beauty of working with others.
Part 2: observing a good teacher in action.
Our youngest was unable to participate in swim lessons, so we hired a teacher to come to our home. In a season, though she refused to put her face in the water, the week after our sessions were complete, she dove to the bottom of the lake and could "swim".
The following year, we hired the same teacher for my youngest and my middle. After this block of classes our youngest earned swimmer 2 (advanced beginner, skipping swimmer 1, because she was ineligible for a badge the year before, due to her young age). Our middle sought classes because she could swim, but she was getting tired after very little swimming. Like an occupational therapist, this teacher quickly identified where our middle was losing energy, and gave her some tips, so that swimming would be more sustainable.
Our eldest finally agreed to participate in swim classes with this teacher in our 3rd set of classes. After his first class, hearing from this teacher than he is the most capable student he has ever taught (I did inquire if this was because my son was the oldest student he has ever taught, as many kids learn to swim at a younger age, but the teacher shared that he had a few other kids his age, who were looking to be faster, but none had my son's level of technique), our eldest said "I really like this teacher!".
As you can see above, my eldest is seeking a mentor, a role model, with integrity. Not easy to find in a system of fear and force.
When this teacher asked my eldest to swim with weights in his hands, my eldest discovered quickly that it is easy to do this with the weights in the water, but hard when his arms are above water (in front crawl). So he asked if he could do the dolphin technique. A technique I personally thought was ludacrous to even learn, but there you go, if you want to be able to carry weight, maybe you need a technique like this. My eldest then discovered he can swim with the weights, using the dolphin technique, but the pool has to be deep enough, to accommodate his gradual sinking as he goes.
Remember his life theme? From complexity to simplicity. Give him a whole bunch of options and he will find what works and why, and be able to explain it to you.
I am currently trying to get him to spend more time with my friend and this teacher, because they are of the caliber to recognize my son's gifts and give him the next step to grow, if he will take it.
This teacher said he also did badly in school until grade 12, when he discovered grade 11 physics, got 100% and then again in grade 12 physics. So he tried a little harder, in his other classes, and got the grades to be accepted into a prestigious university for engineering, chosing physics and software development as his majors.
He still, sadly, hates the assignments he is given, too rigid, but is constantly surveying his surroundings, looking for what he can create or do to make things better.
Whether this is as simple as getting out of the pool, to come through the front door again, the way my youngest needs it to happen, so she can let it go and get in the pool for her lesson, or whether it's solving problems others may or may not have, through what he can build.
I just want my eldest to remember he has value, even if the school can't see or nurture it. Maybe, like my middle, it requires no nurturing at all. Maybe the right thing will come, when the right thing comes, and until then, my eldest will continue to conserve energy. I don't know.
My empathy for the school is reflected in the absence of the principal and VP as they gave out these awards. The old principal was always present. Now we have the grade 8 math teacher and kindergarten support running the show, the only teacher, who every day, wears a school shirt with her name on the back. She cares. The others are stuck somewhere in between. Not realizing what they got themselves into, and not able to find an authentic way to be in the system of forcing children to be the ideal, as defined by our government (people who are incredibly shortsighted, unwilling to see the negative impact, of their idealistic plans, on the children they claim to be saving).
Nature takes so many twists and turns, in a every single life, that it is impossible for anyone to control the final outcome, by trying to funnel everyone through a one way system.
The book above shows how they realized, as much as they looked down upon manual labour, that those who engaged in manual labour had healthier bodies. Putting kids at desks to focus on the minds and morals and not the physical wants and needs, was having a detrimental effect, which is why they introduced gym class. Turning people away from what they deemed to be lower class work was foolish, as we all need to eat, showing them they could be and do anything was foolish, as not all can, it is not the path for everyone.
So many problems, in this system, that many do not understand the origins of (or their ultimate goals). Utopia, we must let that go. Each person gets one life, to do the best they can, on their life lessons. We continue to struggle with the notion of title, entitled, to own land, something only a respectable person can do and does. Owning a part of the earth, is insane!
If they wanted to teach the mind and morals, then the gene keys (based on the iching) and many of the other modalities that I work with have it. But we also need the physical aspects. This is the main thing that distinguishes this side of the veil from the other. And why I couldn't just offer mind and moral based solutions, but physical, emotional, relational, and developmental ones as well. See this for more: https://www.yourlifeplan.ca/post/the-trauma-of-not-being-seen-and-the-layers-of-my-services-mapped-onto-the-levels-of-the-brain
Empathy for the school system, which knows no better, where people are trapped, putting out fires, not caring about, or hiding, my three possible reasons for the absence of upper management, when they were handing out awards.
My youngest asked to leave the assembly right away, to go to the office, to ask them if she can ride the bike in the hall, to which they said no.
She then went and sat on the bikes and asked me to hide her as she rode them in the halls. I said I would not, I went over and over how she asked and they said no. In the end she got so agitated, that I said, as I usually do: "do what you need to do" (to get out of this loop), we work on lessons that are hard, but not too hard. She rode each bike across the width of the hall, and then walked down to peer into the kindergarten classes, then we caught the end of the assembly, went to the school park, and back home.
The people were in the office, no fire, no sign of the principal, the VP was there. She's gone at the end of this year too. Will things get worse when they bring in a new VP to join the new principal, who knows.
My dad thought my kids were getting an empathy award because the school "felt sorry for them". We explained the difference between empathy (super painful, feeling how others might feel) and sympathy (seeing oneself as above the other). While yes, school is all about rewards and punishments, it's no surprise that my kids have empathy, it pains us, but it's how we learn, how what we do impacts others. And I wonder if the school is capable of learning, how what they do impacts families and kids, and if I can have empathy for them, if they can't.
Tying back the physical and the mental. I truly feel, that through swimming, my son, and maybe his teacher, found their love of physics. The two go hand in hand. We walk through our thought patterns, by engaging with nature. Of course this book has roots in which religion and culture is better, and should be propogated. Something I hope we can all move beyond now, to acknowledge that we are different. Though that might be scary for some, it's also beautiful to see what each soul is capable of creating, to work through, in their lifetime. There is no wrong, because every choice offers beauty, an opportunity to see something new.
I hope this helps?