An invitation from Neil Crofts

Was self knowledge a key component of your education?

Did you leave school knowing your purpose in life?

Did you leave school knowing your passions?

Did you leave school knowing your innate talents?

And how to use them and your passions to achieve your life's purpose?

Me neither.

I left full time education at 18 and it took me a further 20 years before I really started to learn these things. Today I find this utterly incredible and when I meet people who have just graduated from university and I ask them what their passions, purpose or innate talents are and when they tell me they don't know I am shocked and saddened.

Surely self knowledge is the most vital gift a society can offer it's children? Without self knowledge how can you know how to value yourself?

How can you know what you are worth and therefore how much you should be paid for your energy and time? Without self knowledge how can you know how to contribute and where you can make the biggest difference? Without self knowledge how can you know what to do with your life and where your energies will receive their greatest reward?

There are some wonderful alternative models for education around, Montessori and Steiner are probably the best known and most established.  These models offer children a far more relevant experience than our conventional education does and yet I feel there are three areas where there is significant opportunity. 

1 - Parenting - this is not just a question of schooling, this is a question of how we prepare our children for adulthood and parenting is also a key factor in this.  As a recent parent myself I like to think of myself as reasonably aware and intelligent and yet I am painfully aware of the way in which we are more or less permanently playing catch up in our parenting.  We are behind our daughter and son both in a practical and a philosophical sense when it comes to knowing what the best things to do are.

Would it not be amazing if there was a relatively accessible and mainstream way in which we could learn both the practice and philosophy of parenting?  I would love to have learned how to cope with weaning, teething and toddler tantrums before we found ourselves in the middle of them.  Perhaps there could be some kind of 'buddying' scheme for prospective parents with other local parents whose child is 6 months older than theirs?  Traditionally of course this was the default situation when we lived far more in communities, today we need to find some substitute for that community.

Philosophically parenting seems to me to centre around the challenge of learning how to let go as gracefully as possible on an on going basis starting with birth and ending (perhaps) with marriage.  Equally whatever role model we are able to provide for a loving relationship will stay with our children and will influence their experience of relationships.  It would be wonderful if this philosophical aspect of parenting was more obvious and accessible to prospective parents.

2- Mainstream - how we prepare our children for adulthood determines the future of our society.  If we want a safe, just, tolerant, peaceful and sustainable society in the future we need our a large majority of our children to absorb and integrate those values as they are growing up.  I have recently experienced a situation in a very enlightened community of which I am a member where one member has been disruptive and damaging - our enlightened community is struggling to find positive ways of dealing with this situation.  Our conditioned default response seems to be exclusion and yet exclusion does not solve the problem, it merely displaces it.  How amazing would it be for our children to learn how to live in community and how to deal with disruptive influences.

Good as they are Montessori and Steiner have not broken through significantly to influence mainstream education.  The system that we have today is still based on the one that was designed during the industrial revolution when what was required was a workforce who would do what they were told, a workforce who would conform, a workforce who would fight in trenches and work in factories.  The world has moved on since then, business and politics and even the forces are crying out for people with emotional courage and initiative and yet our education system is still churning out 'yes' men and women.

3 - Purpose - for me the central answer to all of the challenges we face as a society is authenticity.  Authenticity means knowing who you are and being it without fear or compromise.  It means knowing your life's purpose, your reason for being, and pursuing it.  It means knowing your gifts, your innate talents and using them with courage and humility to pursue you're purpose.

Everyone has a purpose, no one's life is pointless and yet our education is focussed on a systematic erosion of our identity so that we can be relied upon to conform.  I was expelled from a school for being a 'ring-leader" - how can a school system that regards leadership as an offence be appropriate?  I believe that everyones purpose is positive, everyones purpose is of benefit to life on earth and that when people behave negatively it is because of damaging experiences that they have suffered.  

If everyone (or at least the majority) came to adulthood knowing their authentic purpose and how to pursue it we would automatically have a safe, just, tolerant, peaceful and sustainable society.

So how are we going to make this happen?

In the UK we are going to start with a conference.  We are going to hold the conference at a holiday park and we are going to invite everyone - kids, parents, educators, government, academics and more.  The conference will open with children ranging in age from 5 to 15 explaining their perspective on how they would like to be prepared for adulthood, we will find the children and their views through a national competition asking children to tell us what they think.

The conference will be filmed for television.  The conference will be held in "Open Space" so that all participants have the opportunity to contribute and co-create the output.  Using the facilities of the holiday park there will be sessions of all descriptions - out doors, in the pool, on bikes, up trees as well as in the conference hall and break out spaces.  The conference will address the question "how do we prepare children for adulthood" and will include parenting, discipline, wellness, rites of passage and everything else that the participants can conceive.  The output of the conference will be a television program, a book and a framework for authentic education that will be given away to as many people as possible.

How are we going to make this conference happen?  

The response I have had since I have started speaking to people about Authentic Education has been astonishing, there is clearly tremendous energy for this to happen and so we are going to create a shopping list of things that we need and we are going to put it out there and we are going to co-create this conference.  I don't know where or when it will take place and if you want to just let me know.  This conference will be in the UK and if you are unable to make it I strongly recommend that you organise your own one where you are.

Right now our shopping list includes:

A venue at a reasonable price - possibly Centre Parks

A TV production company to film it (at no cost to the conference)

Sponsors to subsidise participation of those who cannot pay for themselves

Media space to promote the conference

Design services - for brochures, web sites etc

Web hosting services

PR services to promote the event and the output in the media

Contacts to invite relevant government ministers and education officials

If you can help with any of these or know someone who can please e-mail neil@authenticbusiness.co.uk

Individually we can make a difference, through collaboration we can change the world.

Neil Crofts, November 2005