On Looks and the Personal Code

Well, as I said in a previous post, I had the opportunity to be in two different campuses. The “Business” and the “Design” ones.
Back in the time when I was studying at college, we were more or less conventional and conservative in our attire. Freshmen, or to be more exact, Freshwomen wore too much make up (especially for the 6:00 am class) and jewelry. As the semesters went on, that appearance changed to the white-t-shirts; jeans; sneakers style and there was no need to wake up at two in the morning to blow dry your hair.
One day, in one of the cafeterias where there were around two hundred students, a new one came who had dyed his hair green. People whistled, said rude comments, and even suggested that the nativity characters could go up on top of his head.
He was one in a hundred or probably in a thousand.
Later on, in the Faculty of Design, I was amazed at how different students' looks were from each other. Piercings, and tattoos and student fashion so unique that it called for creativity. These students were more comfortable with diversity than the other ones and in the rare case someone said something, it would probably have been in regards to the one wearing jeans and white-t-shirts and sneakers.
At that time, I took a course on “New Pedagogical Ideas for the Development of Creativity” and “Design Teaching”. One of the professors had a very cool appearance, and being younger than thirty he had dyed his hair with polar white. His appearance was so different that it was hard to like or dislike it in a short period of time. One should have to take a second look.
Then he explained about the importance of creating “your personal code” in the way you talked, dressed, or even walked. Not uniforming yourself would make a call to others not to get any assumptions about who you were but instead, they had to understand that code first if they wanted to know you; and at the same time, he invited people not to judge people based on their looks but rather try to understand the other person's personal code.

Summa Ius Summa Iniuria

Taking notes has been one of my favorite hobbies as a writer. My grandmother and I used to sit down in the living room in her house and while she was telling me about her family experiences, I was jotting down the stories, the names, and the places; interrupting to ask for clarification and, sometimes, to ask for the proper spelling of a word.

Still today, I call her by phone to precise the details of those stories she has been telling us throughout the years (and for which, regretfully, I don't have any written notes now). She has never been an avid reader except for reading nearly the whole newspaper and she prefers listening to the radio, watching TV, and conversing with people. She has always been a wonderful storyteller and I have analyzed how it is she does it to be so captivating.

My maternal great grandparents had eight children and my grandma was the oldest one. One of them, a little girl, died at the age of four in a small swimming pool where she drowned and it was a tragedy in the family difficult to overcome. My grandma always says that time heals most pains and when I think about my grandma's father, two words come to my mind: Peace and wisdom, and it is interesting that I don't recall my grandma mentioning those precise two words.

My great grandfather used to tell a lot of aphorisms and adages whenever the occasion required it and those were shared among our family through my grandmother. My grandma’s youngest brother did not do well at school, he disliked it very much, he constantly slacked work, stayed at home, missed class, and it seemed to be a lost cause. However, tired of trying different approaches, my great grandmother decided to find a job for him a job for which she contacted one of her friends who was the owner of a pharmacy. Shortly after my grand uncle was running errands and delivering prescriptions in a bike around the neighborhood.
Less than six months in the job when he had a fatal accident: A drunk taxi driver hit him and his head bumped against the pavement. The police arrived immediately asking my great grandfather to press charges but my grandfather said he was not going to press any.

Days later, when my grand uncle was in the hospital in a very delicate condition, the police called again to inquire about my grand uncle's health. When the police were notified my grand uncle had died, they called my grandfather again to see if he had changed his mind and wanted to press charges. And this is what he said: “We are deeply sorry for the loss of our son. Nothing will bring him back. Sending this man to jail will also take away the son of another mother. We won’t press any charges”.

ON TEACHING: Final Question

Some years ago, when Consuelo Goodfellow was a Middle School Foreign Language teacher, she decided to just prompt a single open-ended question in the final test:

“What did you learn throughout the year?”

As a teacher, she didn’t want to focus on what students hadn’t learned but instead on what they had. Naively, she expected her students to give their answers in the subject taught. She thought students would write at least something about the verb “to be”, “to do” or “to have”; or any new words or grammar rules.

What a surprise she got when she was reading her students’ tests. She realized that besides the subject matter answers, the foreign language classes had gone beyond expectations in her students’ learning. Some students had learned to make friends and respect each other's points of views and styles of learning. Others discovered they were good at the subject despite years of failures, what previous teachers had said about their language abilities, and that foreign language was not as scariest as they thought at the beginning of the year. There were other students who also learned how to draw and make cartoons, how to study and develop their own strategies and learning. And most of them had fell in love with the subject.

She also observed that during the two-hour time allotted for the test, all students were absorbed in writing on their test and some of them were smiling as they recalled their experiences throughout the year.

Some years ago, when Consuelo Goodfellow was a Middle School Foreign Language teacher, she decided to just prompt a single open-ended question in the final test:

“What did you learn throughout the year?”

As a teacher, she didn’t want to focus on what students hadn’t learned but instead on what they had. Naively, she expected her students to give their answers in the subject that was being taught. She thought students would write at least something about the verb “to be”, “to do” or “to have”; or any new words or grammar rules.

What a surprise she got when she was reading her students’ tests. She realized that besides the subject matter answers, the foreign language classes had gone beyond the expectations in her students’ learning. Some students had learned to make friends and respect each others’ points of view and styles of learning. Others discovered they were good at the subject despite years of failures, what previous teachers had said about their language abilities, and that foreign language was not as scariest as they thought at the beginning of the year. There were other students who also learned how to draw and make cartoons, how to study and develop their own learning strategies. But the most important thing is that most of them had fell in love with the subject.

Isn’t that our main duty as teachers? To develop the passion, interest and love for a certain subject or discipline?

She also observed that during the two-hour time allotted for the test, all students were absorbed in writing on their tests and some of them were smiling as they recalled their experiences throughout the year.

One answer made the teacher jump to the top of the roof when one of her students had written, “I learned to be organized”.

What? She thought. How was this possible? Guilt came over her as she remembered the jungle-doodle-state contents on the blackboard: That wild territory full of chalk traces and varying sizes of handwriting where she wrote as she walked around the classroom. Oops! She felt sorry for her pupils and the little care she had placed in keeping the board neat and organized.

How did this student learn to be organized?

Not because we teach something, students are going to learn it. Not because we don’t teach something, students are not going to learn it. Students have minds of their own since a very young age. If we think for example of parents who are addicted to drugs or alcohol or who get in nasty fights and violence; it would be wrong to assume that their children will end up doing the very same thing. They might also have the capacity to learn by opposition, good opposition, and not behave in the ways they were modeled to learn.

Let’s trust in the ability our students have to think critically and make sense of the world they live in and learn on their own accord. Who knows? Maybe the new generation can be much better than ours and our ancestors’.

ON WRITING: Reading "Bad" and "Badly" Written Books

I’ve frequently heard or read as a writing advice to read the “good” books, the “good” writers. I’ve read great books from comics to philosophy and all of them have had something to offer me as reader, as a writer, as a learner, as a teacher, as a woman and as a human being. Books have changed my life.
With time, I’ve come more appreciative of the “bad” stuff. It teaches me about what not to do, that in spite of the level of development of some writers, they do write. They take risks independently from how “good” or “bad” their writing is, from how “good” or “bad” their writing is perceived, understood or misunderstood. They have guts!
The good books set standards and examples of what good writing is. However, once you read a piece that has been perfectly written (after many rewritings); it shows little evidence on how that was achieved. And if we want to learn, improve and keep writing and writing, the help it provides is limited.
We need to learn about the process, snapshots of precise moments during it.

And as for the bad books, well, they have taught me also what not to do; they have displayed snapshots of the ever changing process of other writers’ works.
We have a lot to learn from good and bad books, from the good and bad experiences of our lives. What I think is most important is to be a good reader despite the material we read.

ON TEACHING: The Nature of Treasures

When I was a little girl, one of my favorite games was “little school”. My aunt, three years my older, and I had such a wonderful time.
Her mother, my grandma, provided us with plenty of opportunities to enjoy life, learn, and to enhance the principles of hard work and passion for whatever we do in life.
Despite the fact that her house was located in one of the low-middle class neighborhoods in our city, it was a place where richness and abundance existed.
The house of my parents was located in some of the best neighborhoods in the city (we moved more than 20 times) but this house was more like a non-interactive museum where most of the things couldn’t be touched.

So, I grew up among these two neighborhoods, between the “rich” and the “poor”.
It was very difficult for my mother to understand why I enjoyed so much being at my grandma’s house where I didn’t have the latest toys and luxuries we had at home.
She usually asked me, “What is it that you find over there?”, when I wanted to stay the two month summer vacation at my grandmother’s house.

Many things!

My grandmother has been a very loving and non-conventional woman who has never taken herself very seriously. She is the first one to laugh at her flaws, mistakes, and physical disabilities. She has undergone more than ten surgeries throughout her life. She is sort of a “Bionic Woman”. So, physically she doesn’t have many justifications for vanity or to rely on external beauty.
Because her priorities in life were always very clear, she allowed us to write on her house’s walls (of course, when my grandfather wasn’t around).

“Can we write on the walls with the colored chalks?” we asked her.
“Yes, the only condition is that when you both finish, you have to clean everything up”.

And we did. She trusted us.
The teacher I am now was born there, in my grandmother’s house where we were allowed to build our own toys out of soda bottled caps, a wire and a hammer and turn them into a musical instrument.
My grandmother convinced me that through Freedom, learning and passion occurs.

FICTIONAL LETTER: Letter to a Friend

Dear Barbara,


I just finished Reading “The True Story of Pablo” by Astrid Legarda * in the confession of A.K.A. “POPEYE,” John Jairo Velásquez Vásquez, who was Pablo Escobar´s right hand and biggest lieutenant.

It took me around a month –a hard reading month—to finish the book. Although written in my native language, it was a tough reading, it went painfully slow. The evocation of so many images in my mind opened wounds I once thought were healed and even forgotten. How naïve I was and at the same time how unconsciously aware.

The book is a compilation of the words of a criminal, a serial-killer, a hunt-man, a bandit; who once more confirm the theories, ideas, and conceptions about human beings that I have held for quite some time.

I do not believe in the existence of bad or good people. No, bad people do not exist in the common usage of the word, not as excluding categories. Instead, I think we see deeply hurt people who did not have a good education, who ignored the possibilities of taking a good path or the right one—a difficult one—and, who mostly never learned about the Arts, any Art; the training and development of a human being’s sensibility. The paradox of the well educated criminal does not seduce me at all. A man able to kill another man was never educated. Education did not reach his/her heart or the core of his/her true being. What is Education if it does not motivate the harmonious coexistence among men?

A Professor in the Contemporary Pedagogy program I attended in my native country, used to insist on the importance of Education in the Sciences. He spent many classes talking about Science and Research. According to his point of view, our country lacked development because of scientific ignorance, and his point was shared by many others. The sole thought of a more “scientific” country just scrambled my guts. Scientific violence.

When you have a violent nation, you cannot give it more Science than the one it currently has, especially when Science goes to the wrong hands.
It surprised me while reading the book that I shared some of the views of the man giving testimony. The thoughts of a criminal matched, to some extent, mine. But I do not have the mind or the heart (or lack of it) of a criminal. This man expressed at the beginning how much he wanted to be someone, someone important, someone able to make a difference; and how after seeing his dreams frustrated, he partnered his destiny as to be one of the worst criminals our country has ever had.

When I see what he has done, I see the reduced opportunities he was given while growing up and his limited education.
The biggest difference between the best man on Earth and the worst of criminal is in how much hurt their hearts are, how much pain has been accumulated inside without giving it a proper channel such as Arts to release it. Both, the best and the worst, should be given the same opportunities in their childhoods, and make of Arts, a mandatory subject from the first grade to the last.

We know that the worst criminals or violent people do not lack talent, intelligence, intuition, strategic thinking, leadership, courage, or even scientific methods’ but that they grow, out of resentment, in a society of extreme injustice and oppression.
I agree with the man. Legalizing the business will not lead it to an end. Alcoholic drinks, cigarettes, and legal drugs can be as lethal as the illegal ones. And for sure, secondary effects are much beyond the scope of immediate effects. Once they are legalized, the door will be open to promotion, advertisement, and more consumption.

Education should be as balanced as a healthy diet: Humanities, Arts, Science, Business, Physical Education, Civics, Ethics, and Religion.

The world spread practice of removing Religion from the curriculum has made students as ignorant of their own Religion as other students were from other Religions in the past. Students today seem not to have a G’d, a Country, nor a Government. This practice created bigger problems than the ones it intended to solve.

At the same time, I do not think that Religion Teachers should be tyrants, kings, experts, or gods. Bringing teachers from different religious backgrounds and itinerating them into the classes might give the kids tools to come up with their own beliefs and conclusions.
I do not think that atheism and agnosticism are born from the deepest of the soul, but instead as a negative reaction to what has produced so much nausea, misunderstanding, and despair. If some agnostics are truly agnostics, why do some of them seem to give too much importance to the title?

Those criminals from our country were religious too. They used to go praying before each “job”. They made the worst of caricatures of what a religion is or does.
Human beings who educate themselves in the Path of Truth never stop searching, and that might include where we come from, why we are here and where we are going.

Gifted and talented people should be spotted as soon as possible. Standard tests do not do the job for them, because they are, precisely, not standard people. Not standard criminals as the ones our country had. And please do not allow the unprepared, naïve, ignorant and unwise lead their paths in the wrong way. Sometimes these can earn as many credentials as the talented ones if they learn how to play the game. Seduced by power and the promise of dominating others make their visions blurred. Credentials are not necessarily equated to good educators.
The bad teacher “Popeye” mentioned in the book, made a great and negative impact in his life. Bad, too bad!
There are many gifted people who earn the same credentials making justice to their talents while the ones that do not get them, such as achieving a bachelor’s degree, are at risk of going the wrong way and producing a lot of destruction instead of creating better things and contributing to the development of a better world.

The confessant says that the worst damage his boss, Pablo Escobar, did was the killing of one of the leaders of our country. That was certainly terrible but it was not the worst thing he ever did. Killing so many people –even the ones who were not leaders, the life of a leader is not worthier than the lives of their followers, they are equal—. The worst damage was to grow the seed of fear, the seed that being a citizen in our country was an abominable thing, worthless, and making other people believe that other options were not simply available.
So far, I keep the spark of life that keeps me writing of the daily obstacles. We are all in the same boat. We cannot sink.
Pedro, a friend of mine, who also grew up in a Spanish speaking country told me he thinks the book is exaggerated. The book is not exaggerated and it becomes short in narrating the atrocities and the reality we lived.

The worst thing that can happen to the Truth is to be in the hands of criminals.

Well, you asked me. This is my answer. Let me know if you read the book.

M.

* “El Verdadero Pablo: Sangre, Traición y Muerte”. Astrid Legarda. Ediciones Gato Azul. August 2005. (The True Story of Pablo: Blood, Betrayal, and Death).

SHORT STORY: A Cup of Coffee

While he was giving the back to the world, she was giving him her back. Drinking coffee alone had held back its taste. It was not much a matter of appliances. The coffee beans imported from a nation –that regardless the profits of cocaine, heroine, and pot—still believed in the flavor produced with humble pride. The flavor of a good Colombian coffee.
If one wanted to drink the best Colombian coffee, it should be drank in America or Europe. Importers were in charge of bringing the best beans reserved to export and which were scarcely found in Colombian stores. But how about the other stuff? The good stuff? No, no. Not the cocaine, heroine, and pot. The tradition.

Did they forget about it or did they not know that there was one? The tradition of drinking coffee among the best: The best beans and the best friends. A luxurious pleasure.

The nation did not produce the vast majority of the consumed coffee around the world. Brazil was the top producer in quantity but the coffee from Colombia was top number one in taste. A matter of quality.

The woman recently diagnosed with cancer was hooked by the health benefits conferred to her by working part time at a local bank. Working part time was just a way of saying. She was the mother of two little daughters, yeah, the 24-7 unpaid, unrecognized job while her husband worked in a casino making night shifts. They kept their jobs to maintain their family, that’s what they always said. That’s what they wanted.
Even though there was not much time to see each other or build a strong relationship, they both knew about sacrifice. It was not an isolated word in an Oxford dictionary and she knew that word better than him; and because she knew it so well, she was the perfect fit for a customer service position.
During the weekly meetings, she and her coworkers were constantly reminded of how they were winners, the importance of achieving results and the sales goals of the month. A constant pat on the back.

On a Saturday morning, she sneaked out of the building to smoke a cigarette and that’s when she observed the disappointment of a customer outside who was unaware of the bank employee standing next to him. The man sipped the hot coffee, frowned, and immediately spat it out. It was his first and last sip. He yelled and cried out loud, “This coffee sucks!” dumping the Styrofoam cup in the trash can.

She realized that the coffee was prepared like in the kitchen by the staff: They poured too much water on it. Just a half pouch of coffee per eight cups of water.

With the boss out of sight but convinced of the right thing to do, she, a heavy coffee drinker, rushed into the kitchen to add an extra coffee pouch. It was not her intention to displease the boss or go against what was customary. The angered face of the customer was an urgent call to action.

That expression on a customer's face could not be repeated again. It was mandatory to bring back the flavor of a good coffee knowing that the perfect ground beans had already been selected.

Then, once in the kitchen, she carefully added the extra pouch. What an extra pouch can do!

Customers smelled the aroma and with each sip, showed their satisfaction with a wide smile. “What kind of coffee is this? It tastes so good!” another customer asked, “Do you mind if I take another cup?”.

 

Now the coffee tasted as it should. It tasted like care, love, and friendship.

Ingredients you can always taste, even, in a cup of coffee.

POEM: Clean Prose

A surviving prose has taken a shower

From all the mud, the rejection, the insult

A refreshing shower that leaves everything at its core

POEM: Ecuadorian Blanket

How beautiful, how tender, how soft!

The Ecuadorian blanket Grandma gave me to keep me strong

To keep me warm


Painted animals with dyes, needles, and threads

Woven by the Indians, a full story can be read

Fantastic stories cuddle my rest


Grandma loves to knit

However, an Ecuadorian blanket she could not string

With all her love, for my birthday, it was her gift


When I opened the wrapping paper, nothing I could see

Taking it out, WOW! There was a whole jungle on it!


This blanket tells the most beautiful stories I could ever hear

This is the Ecuadorian blanket, always a need

Every night when going to sleep

This is far better than counting a hundred sheep!

POEM: ABC

A father taken away

Bulleted in his entrails

Crashed the window that put the young man in an Armor

POEM: FALLEN

Fit to fulfill others’ dreams

Away from the essence of its true being

Layers everywhere

Lying on the sky

Emancipation from the guard

Never to let it tear apart

POEM: Changing Words

Speaking words of the unknown

Ignoring what we tell others, to ourselves

Just in case we did not see the bridges our words crossed

Meanings that need to be read once more, reshape our work

Mysterious words, read by others are no longer our own

What do we say anyway?

When we speak, when we write?

When we re-read a word that has taken a life of its own?

ON TEACHING: The Power of Active Words

Mother Dolores which literally translates “pains”, was one of the best teachers I’ve ever had. She was a Spanish nun that taught us Calculus and Physics. She was a pure physicist, a scientist and philosopher.
Despite being a nun, the education she gave us wasn’t particularly religious but the impact she made in my life is not something to be forgotten. Her mind was made of an exquisite clarity; her commitment to G’d and Physics was non-negotiable; and her life was dedicated to the Church, the classroom and the physics lab. How she approached Physics was a religious endeavor full of rituals and commitment.
More than twenty years ago during a Calculus class she quoted, “Don’t give the sacred to the dogs,” after one of my classmates had dumped a Hail Mary stamp in the recycling paper bin, as if it had been a failed test. Mother Dolores picked up the stamp and delicately ripped it off in little pieces. She put the pieces in one of her habit’s pockets letting us know that she will burn them later.

Whomever or whatever you love, your dearest and non material possessions cannot be given to those who not only won’t value them but who would consider it scum or even make fun of them. “Honey is not for the donkey’s mouth,” another saying goes.
Mother Dolores was a pain to some of our classmates who could not understand her style and who were frequently challenged by the genius component of her classes. She taught us Physics and Calculus without having any textbooks except for those notes she prepared with drawings, explanations and exercises out of her own invention.
Colombia’s education system doesn’t have AP Honor classes (and not today as far as I know). Every student rows in the same boat. However, there are certain classes that can be labeled as Honors according to the teachers’ skills, knowledge, and experience. In a technical sense of the word, Mother Dolores’ Physics and Calculus classes were all AP Honors.
What happened to those students who inadvertently step up in an “Honor” class? They failed and had to take the subject once or twice more until they got a passing grade or repeated the whole academic year which wasn't fair considering that all of us have different learning styles and intelligence types.

Mother Dolores was a woman, a nun, a physicist, a teacher, a scientist and probably one of the most ethical persons I’ve ever known. I am truly grateful for all her teachings, lessons and mostly the example she gave us which transcended the subject matters.
Except for the nun part, she was a role model for me, someone I would like to become when I grew older, when I would turn into a woman; I would imitate her behavior in a professional sense –except for the nun part—.

I didn’t know the word epistemology at that time; however it was she who provided it with full meaning in advance. She also taught us about the scientific method, the importance of research and the mandatory character of scientific rigor. The most compelling of her attitudes was that whatever she said, she did it. She lived by her principles and always fulfilled her promises.

It was in the small details that I learned from her, so unique, so true to herself, so authentic.
She had a scarce and broad laughter when a really funny situation arose. Silly jokes didn’t impress her. Her sense of humor was witty and she preferred the intellectual elaborate type. It was hard to make her laugh but when she did, we enjoyed that laughter immensely.

During a Physics class she gave us a second remarkable quote which was almost riddle-like,

“The people who don’t know and know they don’t know are ignorant. Teach them.

“The people who know and don’t know they know are blind. Open their eyes.
“The people who know and know they know are wise. Learn from them.
“The people who don’t know and don’t know they don’t know are fools. Run away from them as far as you can.”

Of course, the biggest issue at the end is how to tell apart the one who knows from the one that doesn’t.

ON TEACHING: Some Conclusions

We all learn in a different way. Yes, I know. This is a redundant sentence which most of us know and which might have been said by the Captain of Obviousness. However, there are very few who apply this concept or at least try to apply it in our education systems in a coherent way. Is it lack of knowledge? Where is it that we fail as teachers? Is it lack of accountability? Why is it that at the end we tend to uniform our classes and expecting each student to produce the same results?
Howard Gardner has been really helpful in explaining the multiple intelligences and the varying styles of learning. Much more than that, we can find plenty of resources that provide lessons plans, curriculum designs and activities to implement in our educational institutions.
On the other hand, some of us are afraid of trying different things at school; scare of being ‘memoed’, ‘pink slipped’, or even ‘fired’. We are terrified by the standards and the standardized tests, the lawsuits, the security in our classrooms, and all sort of details we, teachers, must accomplish. And the saddest part is that these details take away much of the responsible freedom that both, students and teachers, can have in our endeavors. There is probably too much fear and little passion.

Being a teacher and being a writer are not easy career paths. They demand a lot of effort and commitment. Usually results don’t show in the short term and sometimes not even in the long term.
Along this path I’ve face all types of doubts and difficulties. Am I a teacher? Am I a writer? What can I teach to others? Do I have something to write about for others to read? Am I a good teacher? Am I a good writer? How can I become a better teacher and writer every day?
I have no special predilection for a single subject, type of learner, or age. I’ve taught students from third grade to last semester in College and also as a tutor; and also have had the opportunity of teaching different subjects to students with learning differences to the very gifted.

Besides the Golden Rules and the Core Values, here there are some conclusions I have been coming up which I would like to share with you:

 All individuals like learning and discovering independently from their ages or levels of education.

 Many individuals are capable of learning all sorts of things by themselves; so being a teacher, some who “shows” a subject also means being a facilitator. We give hints, provide opportunities to discover, or explain with clear detail. We are teachers to make things “easier” for the individual learner.

 Among the many responsibilities of being a teacher there are:
 Helping students know themselves better
 Instilling a passion for learning in general and about a specific subject as well

 Just because we are teachers, it doesn’t mean we are not also learners and willing to learn.

 Although we teach in the present, our efforts should be focused mostly in the future. That requires vision and Imagination. This is student, how is she going to be in the future? What are his/her strengths or aspects to work on and improve?

 Learning occurs individually and also as a result of paired and team work. We need consistency between the activities we promote and the type of learning required: Some activities require silence and individual thought while others are better by pairs or teams.

 Every day our kids are more technologically oriented. They have cell phones, blackberries, i-phones, i-pods, laptops; they have Facebook accounts and play online games; they are software savvy and up-to-date with the new developments. Should we fight that? Should we be against it because it seems to distract our students from our educational endeavors? Is technology a problem in Education? I don’t think so. It just could be the opposite. We need to connect with our students and their interests. How can we incorporate technology in our learning-teaching processes? It doesn’t have to occur in the classroom necessarily.

 Responsible freedom is a key ingredient in Education. Kids and teenagers today have more freedom than many of us and our ancestors had in the past. That has, of course, advantages and disadvantages.

 We need to reconsider the concept of “cheating” and make real life simulations in our classrooms more frequently where people help each other.
When we are sick, we call our Doctor. If we need legal assistance, we call our Attorney. If we need to file our taxes, unless we are registered CPAs, we submit our files to our Accountant, and so on. Not everyone is good for everything. Students also learn from their peers. There are students who are more academically successful, who understand the subject and abstract matters easier than others while there are students who are more artistic or more sociable or more scientific.

 Evaluation in education should be closer to the evaluation in business environments (Open system, round cycled, marketing research, surveys, data analysis, etc.) than to beheading practices of the Middle Ages. If a student fails a test, doesn’t that “failure” belong to the teachers, administrative personnel, system, and parents too?

What next new thing are you willing to do to improve our Education systems?