Public School are the Biggest Obstacles in your Child’s Success-Here’s Why
Talent is like a flower, you have to fully tend to it if you want something beautiful
Every child is unique. Every child has his own unique capabilities but instead of taking 10–12 years to design a course to find that unique gift and using rest of the years to mold it,the schools we send our children to teach the same course to all students.A doctor,a singer,an artist,a sportsman studies the same thing for 10–12 years that is studied by a politician,a writer,a choreographer and a guitarist.
Math,history or language are necessary, of course, but not so much that the unique talent possessed by every child go undiscovered.
There are no courses designed to identify that unique talent of the child.Some schools have an hour or two set aside for arts,music or sports to give you an illusion that your child is being involved in extracurricular activities but it eventually becomes an evidence that your child does not have any talent.This is because parents think that their child has his sports class at school,if he was any good at any sports,he would have shone brightly out by now. Consider this-
Could Roger Federer become ‘Roger Federer’ if he had played tennis for an hour a week? Could Tom Cruise become Tom Cruise if he had practiced acting just for an hour a week?
Probably not.
It takes time to find out what skill you have.It takes much more time and hard work to shape that skill into an extraordinary talent.
Very few Schools do their bit to dig out the unique capabilities a child possesses. Nevertheless there are some children who identify their talent on their own and make effort to sharpen it on their own.But there is an another obstacle.
Even if a child has itself identified his talent, the school system has recurring procedure called ‘ exams’ to suppress the child from molding that talent for 10–12 years.
As he takes out some time to sharpen his skill,the quarterly ,half-yearly or annual exam drops from nowhere forcing him to shift focus and energy towards this process (which has been made necessary) if he wants to keep up with the peers or else a tag of a ‘failure’ will accompany him forever.
The big question:
The question arises why we all knowingly or unknowingly make our children part of this system where they are fed in a machine called school as a raw material and they come out as finished product ready to work for someone else ? Why isn’t there any system yet to identify the unique talent of a child?
To understand this,you have to go around 200 years back in history.
This all started when factory system first came out in Britain in 1800s and in 1821 first public school was opened. Factory owners not only needed trained educated workers (according to the requirement specific to their factories) for the factories,but also needed to place a system at work so that they won’t have to ask somebody to join their factory each year.
Since showing that they have need for trained workforce to work for them was not a financially sound strategy to lure workers (because seeing that they were in demand, workers could ask for higher payment and better working conditions ),the factory owners placed an automated system (a 12 year process that takes an immature child and turns him into a qualified worker by the time he grows into an adult)at work that created workforce for them every year- a workforce that was not capable of earning daily bread anywhere else. Slowly as time passed public school started creating workforce in such a large number that outnumbered the number of workers needed at the factory thus creating an opportunity for the owners to employ cheap workforce which could be made to work as they wanted them to work( or in other words exploited as they wanted). Soon the profits of factories went up and exploitation got more intense.
This system worked flawlessly for decades.Working at a factory was considered a thing of pride for a person who left his village to be employed at ‘the factory’ in big town.
But slowly,Worker started to feel bad because they had to work for others, listen to others and practically depend for money on others even after a month of hard work.They didn’t have quality life or proper working environment.Thus,they formed workers union to question the authority and demand better wages and appropriate working condition.
Again factory system devised a method to cover that pain.
They realized that there is a simple thing that every person strive for.From ages Homo sapiens fought with homo erectus for superiority.So this need to become superior is ingrained within us.
Therefore factory system started giving job titles to men with higher capability in their factory.
It might be possible that the person on low rank might perform and do better in his area of expertise,but these titles said only one thing . — “ if you’re not working hard for our factory in the role given to you, you are not capable to become superior and thus earn higher”. This system still works flawlessly everywhere.
It’s like animals, birds,fishes in today’s world are judged by their Ability to fly in one factory and their ability to swim in other since then.
Everybody is a Genius. But If You Judge a Fish by Its Ability to Climb a Tree, It Will Live Its Whole Life Believing that It is Stupid.
This ranking system broke the unity and made workers compete with one another for different job titles.Rather than identifying his talent and working to shape it, a person spends his whole life working for somebody else in pursuit of the higher job titles and mere increase in pay.
How social media made life worse:
Adding to this trend, social media made it worse.
It gave people virtual friends and a medium to seek virtual approval and acceptance of peers on things that don’t even matter just because that acceptance gives them immense short term pleasure.
Had a small promotion,post about it on Facebook and a notification pops up showing that a friend likes that post ,thus giving the small rush of dopamine and fulfilling the purpose of the post.
People seek approval of random people on every photo posted.If there is no notification even after an hour of posting something, people go all crazy,they check whether WiFi is working fine or not repeatedly,check whether phone is on ring or silent.
That’s why almost every person using social media is suffering from one or other kind of depression and loneliness.
They don’t even realize that PEOPLE ON SOCIAL MEDIA SHARES THEIR SUCCESSES ONLY. NOBODY SHARES THEIR FAILURES.
And at the end of the day, you feel depressed because somewhere in your mind you have the impression that she is looking better,he has better job,they are on holiday and thus enjoying life and so, despite all that success and that recent promotion…..your Life sucks.
This goes other way around also for some people.
Some people on social media are actually happy but not living up to their full potential. These are those people who are somewhere on top on “title” hierarchy.
They are in a way better slaves than others. The friends they have on their Facebook have slightly worse life than they.So they feel they are living to their full potential.
For example- if we replace their friends with film stars and politicians or even any simple government officers or a successful YouTuber, it will take only a month or so before they slip into depression.
They are mule among donkeys and they feel like their life is great because they don’t have any horse in their friend list,Lion is a bit far fetched thing.They are not doing what they were supposed to do with their lives,some don’t even know their dream or what talent they posses.
Those on lower rung may change their life,they may leave this system but these constant increase of title and money prevent them from leaving.
Time to Question yourself:
We cannot replace age old schooling system just like that, we cannot get off from social media just like that,but one effort is in our hand that can change our lives or at least lives of our children for better i.e to first question ourselves.
If you seriously think that you need to question your life,the first thing you can do is ask these two question to yourself-
Ques 1- If your organization asks you to work for 1 year without any money, would you ?
Ques 2- If you were given 1 million dollars today, would you go to same work tomorrow?
For example-Bill Gates goes to work even after having so much money because he doesn’t work for money. You on the other hand do.Therefore the difference between you and Bill Gates is that you may leave your daily job for a billion dollars whereas bill gate won’t.
If your answer to above question is a big NO,then you need to change your life.
There are ways in which you could bring that change slowly without immediately leaving your organization. This article is not about how to change your life so I won’t go into that but I would definitely give a hint where you can start — BOOKS.
If you think you can be a cook,buy a book on cooking today.
If you think you can be a writer,buy a book on ‘how to start writing’ today.
If you think you can be singer or dancer or any thing in the world, believe me there are books on every topic.
Take that first step TODAY AND NOW.
Moreover what you can do is at least think twice before sending your children to that system which manufactures human robots to work and not live the life as it must be lived and enjoyed.
The schools obviously don’t care whether the talent of your child gets discovered or not,but why depend on anybody else or any institution to do that for your child?
Remember,
Talent can’t be taught but it can be awakened.
-The Himalayan Philosopher
Follow on Instagram @thehimalayanphilosopher
