A percentage of my research into Human performance, in fact increasingly so, is centred on the emerging area of Neuroscience. It doesn’t matter what part of performance we are trying to enhance, the human brain plays a pivotal role. However I’m not going to get into details here about current advances in our knowledge or how to implement them into our daily routine so that we can benefit. What I want to share is a quick anecdote to what is going on in the minds of the people who set the scene for the ‘education’ of our children.
I was having dinner with a few friends who are in senior positions in their fields, one in Education, the other, if you see the connection, in a (very) related field, although not through a cursory glance. I had that week been researching various areas of neuroscience to update the HPC-UK Brain Program. During the course of the evening I ‘shared’ what I had been doing that week, and tried to suggest that education in its current methodology is not best serving the children. Again I won’t go into details about what I shared, I will do that in separate articles, I just want you to see the response.
I talked about how the current teaching and learning, not only activates very limited pathways and processes in the brain, and how using simple strategies we could vastly change this scene so that increased neural plasticity and brain power would be the rule not the exception. I also spoke about how children aren’t taught to develop ‘working memory’ which would at a minimum decrease supposed behavioural problems, but more importantly allow children to utilise higher level thinking skills and creativity.
The response? I was told that what I said was ‘great, but, ‘we’re’ not interested in that. We want children to grow so that they are able to perform an operation as efficiently as possible, regardless of the process involved.’ I questioned this saying that surely we want to assist in developing children so that they can make connections and see beyond what we see as possible, and then find ways to make that an actuality, which only a creative mind can achieve. I was then told that ‘No, as long as they can perform a function and produce the result we want, we don’t care’.
This is not about teachers, most of whom are great people, this is about the people that dictate to the teachers and other direct people of influence, what they can, and just as importantly can’t do. The teachers are merely puppets in this game.
So this is the bottom line, they want, for lack of a better term, your children (and you, the children are the investment) to be robots. Essentially a body to perform a function efficiently and no more. They don’t want humans to realise their potential, and that potential is far, far in excess of what you may believe is possible. However to begin that journey you must ‘unlearn’ a few, albeit pervasive, things that hold you down and limit your infinite potential. I’ll attempt to show you how to do that, and don’t get me wrong, I’m far from being anywhere near any kind of self actualised ‘Nirvana’, far from it. But the Beauty of being Human is that we can recognise that we’re going wrong, or that something doesn’t feel right, and then use our brain to correct this. However, unless you first empty your mind, you’ll never be able to change it. To re-program your mind, you have to wipe the slate clean and start afresh. I’ll finish with a quick passage from a fairly ancient text which summarises the first step.
The Book of the Five Rings tells the story of a self important professor who went to visit a famous Zen master. While the master quietly served tea, the professor talked about Zen. The master poured the visitor’s cup to the brim, and then kept pouring. The professor watched the overflowing cup until he could no longer restrain himself. “It’s overfull! No more will go in!” the professor blurted. “You are like this cup,” the master replied, “How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup.”
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