Empowering The Children Of Tomorrow

15 February 2018

 - The purpose of modern schooling has never been to empower children. I would argue that school has quite the opposite effect and is geared more towards keeping children obedient to authority. I mean think about it. In most schools children have to wear uniforms that stifle their self-expression. They have to call their teachers by ‘Mr’ and ‘Mrs’ as if to say that adults are somehow superior to children. They learn to memorise information, which is largely inapplicable in daily life, in order to regurgitate it later, without ever learning how to think for themselves or become self-sustainable human beings. Creativity and artisanship aren’t valued in the same way that academic intelligence is, and right-brain learners are tragically left high and dry.

But what if we flipped the system on its head? What if, instead of disempowering children and treating them as somewhat inferior to the rest of us, we empowered them in every way imaginable?

To start with, schools should focus less on theoretical studies, and more on learning real life skills. Children should learn how to grow their own food and cultivate a garden. They should learn how to build their own home using sustainable materials. They should learn how to collect their own rainwater, how to produce their own energy, and how to pull things apart, repair them and make them new again. When we teach children practical life skills, we show them that they are capable of thriving without the need for any system – we empower their independence and their right to be self-governing and self-sustainable.