SCHOOL AND LIFE

It's been a while -- I've been broadcasting. Same stuff, different medium. Now it's time to return to the written word....

The world around me and within me is evolving at, what seems to be, an ever-increasing pace. Yet watching my grandchildren now negotiating "school", I'm struck by one thing -- apart from a few frills and window-dressing, school still defines "educating" as "instructing", and they're generally still drilling in pretty much the same things as they were 250 years ago.

There's nothing wrong with this -- my kids still need the maths, the science, the how-to-study-and-observe techniques, and the the basic skills of communication and language. But they need more now, and so do we. I look around me and see a vacuum of people who are actually engaging, interesting to anyone but themselves, and possible leaders. We need our kids to acquire the skills to lead a more interesting life, and the skills for influencing and leading their peers. This "higher education" was traditionally the province of culture, home and family. But that, in general, is not happening any more. Parents cannot pay forward either what they don't have, or what they don't make the time to model for their young'uns.

The ancient and time-honoured practices of Eldership, Stewardship and Mentoring have been devalued and left to rot in the rubble. With the prime example right in our face of this country's indigenous cultures to learn from. we have ignored the fact that their system has worked brilliantly for 60,000+ years, and produced one of the most technologically, intellectually, emotionally and spiritually sophisticated societies ever recorded on the planet. But no, our forefathers dis-missed all of that off to one side in a "that's primitive: we know better" arrogance that beggars comprehension.

But all is not lost. Life still offers its very own Free and Open University of Eternal Wisdom. You may, and should still go to day-school, but the University of Conscious Living is what you're already in - 24/7. think of school as a "school within a school".

I see nineteen distinct and consider-worthy differences in the kind of learning context and educating methods that each provides. Try these on for fit ----

1) Schools prepare you for jobs. Life prepares you for growing through living. Life offers to show you who you are not, and lead you to discover what you are. Schools make no attempt to explore that gap; that's not their job. You're supposed to turn up to school with that kind of learning already under way. if it's not, you maybe should find some alternative to make up for deficient parenting. And don't blame your parents for their deficiencies; blaming gets you nowhere. Assume instead that they were chosen to give you the start you needed to Do It Yourself.

Life is a human given -- it's what we have. What "I" does with the life it's given, and how "I' does it is up to your "I" and your "Me" in partnership.

2) Schools cram into you what they think you don't yet know. Life reveals and draws out of you what you haven't yet realised you already know. (You may need to read that again.

3) Schools ask you what you think you want to be when you grow up (butcher, baker, candlestick maker) Life invites you to choose how best to express your true self by deciding what kind of problems you'd like to be the solution to and, in so doing, what talents and strengths you'd like to cultivate and use.

4) School introduces you to the bullies, and gives you opportunities to work out  what makes them tick, and how best to deal with them. Life teaches you how to cope with politics, whether it be in the office, the sporting field or the family kitchen.

5) Schools teach you hard science and soft theories. Life teaches you soft skills and the hard rules of reality.

6) Schools invite you to read stories. Life demands that you create stories, author-ise your own life, and make your creations, your "readings" and your communications one and the same act.

7) School teaches you "languages". Life teaches you the codes to de-cipher language, body-language, the gaps between what is said and what is done,  the signs that deceit is going on behind the false curtains of nicety, polite propriety, correctness and outright crookedness. Life teaches you how to pick up the signals of dis-honesty, recognise the nature of the core corruptness, how to read what is said and what is not said, how to tell falsity from truth, and how to "read" thought and feeling.

8) Schools may instruct you about honesty and righteousness, but only Life can teach you Integrity.

9) School may teach you how to write reports, theses and business letters, and externalise. Life will teach you how to observe, meditate, internalise, learn, assimilate, apply and communicate what you've uncovered.

10) Schools preach, but rarely practice, change. Life knows that change is both real and illusory -- everything is changing, AND the more things change, the more they stay the same. Life urges you instead to evolve and transform.

11) Schools prescribe textbooks to read; Life urges you to go to the source, to read and experience the inner and outer Nature of the thing -- the Context.

12) Schools teach you to market yourself and your stuff; Life compels you to Be your Self and gets you to fully own and openly occupy your reserved, personal space in this world.

13) School says, "Separate, isolate and compete"; Life says "Create, integrate and balance."

14) Schools organise sporting events and competitions and tell you to get off your arse. Life gives you challenges to discourage you from mooching around and letting your mind stew in its own sullage. The idea is to keep your spine healthy, your waistline intact, and your mind sharp so that you can dance at age 45 without pulling a muscle, and speak to a group without pulling your dick.

15) School is usually so badly organised that you get loaded down with enough homework to ensure that you have no time for Anything Else. Life, on the other hand, offers you options to self-manage, so that you have ample time for Everything Else. Everything and Everywhere Else is important, because that's what's hiding whatever you think you're missing.

16) School gives you an environment to network within and around the school community. The more blue-chip the school, the more limited  and inbred the available network. Life initiates you into the interconnection of everything in the universal bio-organism. There is no separation -- it's a bad dream that was never true in the first place. You are an inviolable part of a limit-less field of mutuality.

17) School gives you assignments; Life IS the assignment. Firstly find out where you are - really - then work your way through it, starting from here and now.

18) School sets you examinations which you either "pass" or "fail". Life offers you an infinitely resourced laboratory within which to experiment, just to see how your creations turn out. "Pass" or "Fail" do not exists as facts. they are not possible. They are merely labels you may use to either inflate or deflate your self-esteem, if you're into that kind of self-flagellation.

19) School may promulgate theories and ideas about work-life balance, but Life is the factory floor. This where it happens, or doesn't happen.

Life IS the continuing-now process of work and life, flesh and spirit, mind and heart balancing and re-balancing in a universal dance.

School is fine, but only as a passageway. I'm sure you and I have both met people who've never left school. Pathetic, aren't they?