The need for education

Education is the foundation of any society. What you teach your children will become their moral compass as well as the various patterns of acceptable behaviour for that society. It will determine what the adults of that society believe in, what their values are. It will determine ‘the truth’ they live in. Learned patterns of behaviour and reasoning are installed into children through ‘teaching’, through education. Unesco defines education as follows: ‘Education is the process of acquiring knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes through various forms of learning. It encompasses formal instruction in schools and universities, as well as non-formal and informal such as community engagement and self-directed study.’

Education can be thought of as the transmission of the values and accumulated knowledge within a society from one generation to the next. In this sense, it is equivalent to what social scientists term socialisation or enculturation. Children are born without culture. They do hold the seed of the culture of the group they sprung from, but how this seed will develop depends on influences from the outside environment. Education is designed to guide them in learning ‘their’ culture, moulding their behaviour in the ways of adulthood as it is expressed within the group the child came from, and directing them towards their eventual role in that society. The larger the range of values and knowledge a child gets exposed to, the more comprehensive its education will be, and the more information the child can personally choose from to integrate into its own life.

As the skills and knowledge a child is required to master relate directly to the survival of the species, to the continued existence of the group the child belongs to, of that particular society, the most efficient education would then be transmitting the values and accumulated knowledge of the group itself. Various groups will have different values, different needs and different knowledge about life. These are very likely not to coincide with the national borders that have been drawn on a map. The education system is designed to drive economic growth, support social justice, and build an informed society. It prioritises ‘holistic’ student development, blending rigorous academic achievement with personal growth to prepare individuals for higher education, successful careers, and active citizenship. The goals of the government education system for children is to make them the most efficient tools for the economy possible. Even the ‘personal’ growth of the individual refers to getting them into ‘higher education’ and giving them ‘successful careers’. Hence, the formal education system directs the knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes it transmits to the children in the interest of the economic system, of industry and trade. This is not stimulating the development of the intrinsic skills the individual harbours to further the survival and the learning process of the group the individual belongs to.

Personal growth is, in truth, an active and intentional journey of self-improvement and self-actualisation. This already implies that it can’t be done by an outside authority. You have to do it yourself. You are the only one who ‘knows’ what your intrinsic values are and what is required to develop them. However, it is the government that will tell you that it knows best how to achieve your personal growth, but you have to realise that this view, this claim, is very new in human history. It used to be your parents, your family and your community (the village or tribe), who knew what was truly required in the environment they lived in. Here are some characteristics that are closely linked to what personal growth entails.

• Personal growth means doing something out of your comfort zone.
• Personal growth means looking through the eyes of faith and not fear.
• Personal growth means choosing to learn from whatever comes our way.
• Personal growth is taking care of your own life. It is I who must choose to make changes. If I don’t like how I feel, I can choose to change. If I don’t like how I’m behaving, I can choose to change.

So, personal means personal. And it is in your own hands. Do what feels right for and to you. The journey to your best self is an individual one. So, let go of the comparison factor. While many people may share many of the same elements, circumstances, and experiences, their lives are never the same. Two people that experience the same situation will always view it from different perspectives. Why? Because your thoughts, generated from your beliefs, dictate where you are heading in this life and how you experience life.

Taking over the education of our children at a very early age allows the authorities to provide the children with a thinking concept that suits their purpose. One of the key benefits of formal education is the acquisition of academic knowledge across various subjects such as mathematics, science, languages, humanities, and social sciences. This knowledge forms the foundation for further specialisation and career development, which is necessary to turn children into adults that willingly fit into what society wants from them. Students learn not only academic subjects but also important life lessons that shape their world view. The world view from the authorities, not from the group of people the children came from. Formal education is based on a curriculum and instructural systems, determined by the authority. There is no education formatted around the young person’s individual skills, comprehension powers, interests of the moment. Formal education is directed towards supporting the economy by training youngsters from a very early age to become good citizens and productive elements in society. If there was any intention of allowing the young individual to develop his/her intrinsic talents and skills, the authority would have left the responsibility of the education of a child to the parents, the family and the community the child is growing up in, without even wanting to interfere. That is how the best, the most balanced, lives for an individual are formed. Training them to accept whatever they are told is developing robotic skills, not human skills. Human skills, human opinions, human requirements, vary from person to person. No national or global training programme is going to create better balanced unique individuals than allowing each group to educate their own children.

Only the parents, family and community can provide the child with a safe and supportive home.

Only the parents, family and community can provide the child with an environment in which the child can learn how to best survive in the conditions they live in.

Only the parents, family and community can provide the child with an environment in which the child can learn the essential values in life that are held by its community.

Only the parents, family and community can provide the child with the necessary means and skills to properly communicate with other people in their community.

Only the parents, family and community can provide the child with a proper balance between academic knowledge and practical knowledge for that specific child to become a well balanced, a well-rounded individual.

Having our babies and toddlers hijacked by the authority to have their minds moulded into a predetermined set of observation, reasoning and logic smooths out the individual differences and paves the way for a one-colour society. Natural diversification and local circumstances are wiped out in favour of what is being proclaimed to be ‘equal opportunities’. However, they don’t mean that each child gets the opportunity to become a true reflection of him or herself. Our children are no longer meant to live comfortably within the community they came from and belong to. Instead, they need to become ‘world citizens’, where all people have the same requirements, the same wants and the same beliefs and thoughts. So they need to be educated in that direction. It is easier to control and to steer such a group of human beings as they have been trained, educated, to feel the same, to think the same and to act the same.