Watch the video by Ellie Rubenstein here.
I urge you to listen to the following video. It is done by veteran teacher Ellie Rubenstein on the state of Education in the USA. The scene Ellie is describing is one I’ve been mentioning in my blogs and vlogs. We’ve developed and accepted an education system that functions based on market forces and in Ellie’s video we are seeing the consequences of leaving the education system in the hands of corporate capitalism and consumer democracy. A teacher that loved teaching, a teacher that was loved by her students for her ability to stand as an example of what it means to love learning – has handed in her resignation. The education community will lose the teachers that love teaching for people who are representative of the interests of market forces – teachers that see students as nothing but spare parts in the clock work of the corporate system.
If the teachers that actually love teaching are forced out of the education system, where does that leave our children? Are we willing to sacrifice the future of our children for a little extra bucks on the bank account? Is THAT what it really means to pursue happiness? Are we willing to settle for the kind of happiness that comes in a plastic bag? Are we willing to compromise the integrity and self-expression of our children just so that we can have an apparent ‘thriving’ consumerist system? In a corporate capitalistic system the fundamental principle is supposed to be that the wealth experienced by the lucky (and ‘hard working’) will ‘trickle down’ to the masses eventually…. but what is it in fact that is trickling down?
The scene Ellie is describing from her 15 years in teaching is one where the education environment has become a factory producing children for the sole purpose of maintaining the corporate capitalistic system. Only the richest among us get to attend schools where values such as leadership, independence and creativity are still valued. It isn’t hard to imagine then who among us becomes the leaders in society, when the vast majority receive an education that intends on conforming them and breaking their self-will and expression. We’re seeing more and more crime, more and more drug abuse, more and more unemployment, more and more suicides and cases of depression, ADHD and learning disabilities in education.
It is time we realize there isn’t a benevolent authority coming to save us – whether that authority in one’s imagination is called ‘government’ or ‘god’.
If we don’t step up and step in, the situation will only continue to escalate. And the required intervention is not one where we turn antagonistic against the system, because after all: we’ve created it. So it will be like attacking our own creation and blaming it for what we have accepted and allowed.
It is of vital importance that we honor our democratic power and authority as citizens and elect a new political and economic system – a system that has its fundamental principled roots in real values: equality, community, sustainability and the dignity of all life. Because the current system of rule – the corporate capitalist and consumer democratic systems does NOT have our best interests at heart. Because that’s not how we’ve created it. Let’s face it: the values we’ve honored are the apparent ‘freedom’ to what we want whenever we want it, no matter the cost to other people or the environment. The ‘freedom’ we’ve honored is one of being able to chose between products that we’re impulsed to buy through advertisement images. The ‘abundance’ we’ve honored is one where we buy innumerable products that we will never use, that are of poor quality and that someone, somewhere has paid with their life to produce for us. And at what price?
So I urge you – if you can hear this, the message I am sharing here and Ellie’s message – to make a decision to dedicate yourself and your life to values that matter: to create a living environment where our children can grow and develop into the human beings that we should have been: caring, considerate, confident human beings with integrity and empathy for what is going on in the world. So that we can create a world on this earth that we would want to be born into and where the value of life is honored in humbleness and understanding of all things interconnectedness.
Investigate the Equal Life Foundation and participate in bringing about Real ACTUAL Human Rights. Join the Equal Money Movement and partake in researching ways to implement a system of equality where all supports each other in living the best possible life. At Desteni and with the Desteni I Process we have dedicated our lives to learn to take individual responsibility to face and change ourselves and educate ourselves so that we can stand in and with the world-systems in equality and direct them to become living systems that supports what is best for all life. Whatever else happens – we decide.
For more information about Equal Money and Education, I recommend reading the following blogs