My friend who writes about parenting, bullying, and schools wrote an article called, Parenting a Life of Meaning, In it she asks: Is it really normal that children should hate school? Should we as parents and society tolerate that children spend 6-8 hours a day bored, uninterested, and uninspired?”

There’s a lot written now about the crisis in our public school system. But is it a crisis, or as one author writes, just a bit “like democracy itself, loose, shaggy, and inefficient, full of redundancies and conflicting goals?” Whether crisis or not, right now education is in need of innovation and I don’t just mean technology. Real innovation, and not just sustaining innovation is needed, starting with the goal of education.

The folks at RSA put out a video well worth the 12 minutes to watch. Changing Educational Paradigms asks some very simple yet disruptive questions about education

As some of you regular readers know, I recently did a three part series on  habits – changing, developing and letting go of habits.It got a lot of interest. And in the course of discussion, you raised some thought provoking questions about change.

In light of that, and the recent Occupy Wall Street movement sweeping North America (and parts of Europe) right now, I am struck with the question of change unaddressed in my posts:

When does change happen?

Many were caught by surprise by the Arab Spring, the fall of Mubarak and Kaddafi. And did anyone predict  the Occupy Wall Street movement would spread to (as of this writing, according to the wikipedia) 70 US cities?

What makes us decide the time is now? What makes a movement take off, and not fizzle? What makes the time ripe?

Kairos, the ancient Greek concept of the ripeness of time, speaks to the mystery of time, but doesn’t explain how it happens. Kairos, in both ancient Greek and modern Greek, means ‘weather.’ Weather, as we know is unpredictable, or perhaps, predictable, if we can track the millions of variables in the atmosphere and now exactly how and when they will interact.

Human change, whether global or personal, is as mysterious as the weather. In spite of all of our focus, energy and intention, when things ripen, is still beyond our grasp. All we can do is prime the pump, recognize the opportunity, and develop the courage to disrupt and disturb our comfortable identities. We cannot force ourselves to make change unless the time is ripe, but we can challenge ourselves by asking, am I ready to change?

Some good articles came across my desk this morning, dealing with some of the issues I’ve been writing about of late: cognitive errors or thinking fallacies, overestimating the power of government, and learning how to learn.

In the New York Times yesterday, David Brooks talks about overestimating one’s ability to solve complex, messy problems, and suggests focusing on discrete, rather than systemic good.

And another great article in the New York Times by Paul Tough whom I’ve  written about before. Tough wrote Whatever It Takes: Geoffrey Canada’s Quest to Change Harlem and America, about  Canada and his work with the Harlem Children’s Zone. This article focuses on teaching children how to learn, not how to succeed, and the fine art of  learning from failure.

Enjoy.

As I’ve written about before, solving the problems of bullying depends on the society’s tolerance for abusive interaction. My good friend and colleague, Dawn Menken, psychotherapist and conflict resolution educator, wrote this thoughtful piece for the Oregonian last week. She raises many thought-provoking questions, and asks us to look at how we define bullying. Until we look closely at our tolerance for certain behaviors, we won’t make headway into the problem of bullying.

Cultural tolerance is one part of the problem of bullying. But another is learning how to have healthy and productive conflict. There really is such a thing as a “good fight.” In fact, diversity of opinion, incompatibility of worldviews, and clashes of representational systems increase intelligence. Barbara Strauch, author of The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain said in a recent interview in the New York Times:

One of the most intriguing findings [about maintaining healthy brain functioning] is that if you talk to people who disagree with you, that helps your brain wake up and refine your arguments and shake up the cognitive egg, which is what you want to do.

Just finished a weekend training seminar on bullying in Auckland, New Zealand. It was terrific to have so many participants there involved in workplace bullying and harassment work. What’s increasingly evident as I tackle this topic around the globe is the role of cultural attitudes. To adequately fight bullying, we have to reduce our cultural tolerance for abusive interaction. Many cultures deride sensitivity and praise people’s ability to “suck it up,” to be tough and strong, and not be “so sensitive.” The tough guy is a cultural icon, the action figure we admire and emulate. But to get underneath the problem of bullying, we need to value sensitivity and respect as much as toughness.

When I started this blog, I didn’t want it to focus on current events or politics. But it’s hard, in these recent days, not to focus on the issues dominating the headlines. Is anyone else like me? I dread election years. I watch the news and debates out of sense of duty, cringing through them, and finding excuses to leave to the room. I hate the feeling of my lowest instincts being appealed to, my fears, prejudice and hatred being played like a violin. I am insulted by politicians who seek to flatter me or who expect me to admire their wit and cleverness when they mock their opponent. I hate them but I hate myself more for being susceptible to it.

As the nation was riveted this past week on the financial crisis and bailout, a tiny feeling of optimism crept in. The financial crisis requires real understanding, an intellectual grasp of an arcane, highly complex and completely opaque system. While the financial outlook may be grim, one silver lining is the opportunity for learning and a real engagement with issues beyond the usual Punch and Judy show that the media would have us focus on. (more…)