A Vision for Education in Ireland 2030
By: Cormac Noonan
Tags: Wellbeing, Youth, Education, Love, Business

Photo by Himanshu Singh Gurjar on Unsplash

For the past 5 years I have held a deep, burning desire to help others. In 2015 what had always been a dim, flickering light suddenly erupted into a inferno of passion and love. An almost irresistible urge to share this new love I had found with the world. I had been awoken to a greater truth and now my life had taken on a completely different meaning. I underwent what some refer to as the beautiful destruction, a period in my life where old paradigms collapsed around me and I lost all sense of certainty with where my life was going. The reason this type of destruction is beautiful is because it allows you to let go of what was merely good in your life to make way for something great. Something you never saw was possible while looking through your old, limited lenses. It’s as if we are born with the ability to see all the magic and beauty in the world but we are prescribed with numerous lenses as we grow older. These lenses or ways of seeing the world are given to us by our parents and teachers. They are fed to us by our governments and media. Overtime we become so tied to these lenses that we forget how to see without them. We forget that sense of childlike curiosity, what it means to dream and envisage something other than what we can understand through the limited books and facts school has given us to peer through. We lose that sense of mysticism and wonder that we once found in an empty cardboard box or a single blade of grass. We let go of the belief that the world is ours and we are the creators of our own reality. We lose our ability to live in the eternal present where we have no reason to consider our past mistakes or worry about where we’ll be tomorrow. The spiritual journey or path of enlightenment is often referred to as returning home. Coming back to yourself. It involves getting rid of those lenses we’ve been prescribed throughout our childhood and adult years. It requires us to open our eyes wide. To fully be awake to what’s going on. To realise this reality is ours to realise.

The problem

Our current system of education was built to cater for the industrial era, a time when people needed to learn how to be factory workers. It was based around developing discipline and repetition in order to fit into roles to operate machinery.

While some of the subjects may have changed over the years, the principles have remained the same. That’s why we get our children to sit in rows, as it replicates the factory conveyor belt. It’s also the reason we grade them on scales from A to F — just like we grade machinery.

We shuttle them down a conveyor belt, photocopying the same ideas onto each. We crush freedom of expression. We repress what helps them stand out. To succeed you must conform. Uniform. One form. Fuck uniform. We should not be one form but many forms acting as one.

Soldiers wear uniforms. Prisoners too. Both groups under strict control, told to behave and act in the same way to fulfil their master’s desires. We were not born to be soldiers or prisoners. We were born to grow and express who we truly are. Each human being holds unique beauty within them. We are not robots to be programmed for tasks. We are not mindless machines brought up to obey rules and pay taxes. We are flowers to be nurtured. We crave space to grow and blossom so that we can radiate life and beauty. We were born to create not replicate.

We must stop grading our young people like we grade machinery. We should praise young people’s character, not their level of intellect. Each class has a full range of characters but we only accept certain ones. Take the joker and the teacher’s pet for example. We punish the one who brings laughter to the room and we praise the one who rats out his/her classmates for their own benefit.

We are told to sit down, shut up and do what everyone else is doing. We breed followers not leaders. We reward sheepish behaviour and punish those who stand out. We promote unquestioned conformity over standing up for your individual beliefs about what is right.

School Promotes a Fear of Failure

I often joke that succeeding in the real world involves unlearning everything you learned in school. The sad reality though, is that this is true for the most part. The most important thing you must unlearn, especially if you are pursuing an entrepreneurial or artistic route, is the fear of failure.

The fear of failure is the number one reason most people die with their dreams still inside them. It’s no wonder our fear of failure is so strong after spending roughly 14 years in schools where this fear is actively cultivated. Failing a test results in some form of punishment or ridicule whether it is from teachers, parents or classmates. Most of us can probably relate to an early time in our school lives where we received a poor grade and felt a subsequent loss in self-esteem or maybe even embarrassment. Due to the nature of tests where the majority tend to pass, failing becomes an even scarier prospect as it threatens our innate need and desire to belong to the group.

As our school years go by we begin to tie our self-esteem to our grades and we become so fearful of looking stupid or being seperate from the group that many of us will do anything to avoid failure (this may exclude the students who have already labelled themselves as F students — in their case they may keep up the appearance of not even trying in order to make it seem like they chose this group). This ingrained habit to avoid failure may prove useful in school but it severely limits us in the real world. We settle for jobs and relationships we’re not truly happy with, we don’t take risks to set up our dream business or chase our dream partner. Fear keeps us living in a box with the majority instead of exploring the limitless bounds of our potential for success and happiness outside of what is safe and known.

The Grading System Limits Our Potential

Frequently grading young people based on test results has a huge effect on their beliefs about their own capabilities. Students naturally identify their level of skill with their test results as this is the only meter we measure them with. Someone receiving poor grades will likely adopt a belief that they are not as clever as other students. This belief acts as a self-fulfilling prophecy as they continue to remain in the lower grades throughout their school years.

By not teaching our young people about the importance of adopting a growth mindset we limit them to identifying with their current level of achievement.

Instead of grading tests we should give constructive feedback on the student’s work. This way the student can learn where they went wrong and fix their mistakes until their work is of an acceptable standard. This is what happens in the real world of work. If you hand your boss a presentation, she will not grade it for you and move on. She will tell you what needs to be changed until it is acceptable. By taking an approach like this we do not limit young people to labels such as A students or D students. We recognise effort and continuous learning over natural ability.

We must teach young people that there are no limitations to their potential and that receiving low grades is not due to a lack of natural ability but rather a lack of correct understanding and application. When it comes to academic success, natural ability and talent only play a minor role compared to effort and learning strategy. The child with the least “natural ability” can always do better than the child who is perceived to have the most if the first child is taught a method of learning that works best for him or her.

School Teaches Us What to Learn and Not How to Learn

That brings us onto the importance of first teaching our youth how to learn instead of simply telling them what to learn. Learning is one of the most important skills we must develop if we wish to progress happily and successfully through life. After primary school we rarely, if ever, upgrade our learning systems. We learn to read at an early age and we continue to read at that learned pace throughout the rest of our lives.

We must teach young people how to improve their reading speed and memory retention if we want to enable them to learn more effectively. The average person reads at a rate of 250 words per minute with a retention rate of only 10 percent. I used to be a relatively slow reader. Now I have completed two speed-reading courses and I can read 600 words per minute and with a higher rate of retention than before. Reading and retention are skills to be developed and not natural talents that we are destined to be bound to.

School Ignores The Multiple Intelligences

In school we not only assume people are born with natural ability, we also only focus on two intelligences, logical/mathematical and linguistic. Howard Gardner argues there are multiple intelligences, many of which we are not born with.

Gardner defines intelligence as a

“biopsychological potential to process information that can be activated in a cultural setting to solve problems or create products that are of value in a culture”

The other six intelligences include musical, spatial, intra-personal, interpersonal, body-kinesthetic and naturalist.

Gardner also suggests that there are other “candidate” intelligences — such as spiritual intelligence, existential intelligence, and moral intelligence but these don’t meet his original inclusion criteria.

If someone doesn’t succeed in school it is likely because they are not strong in logical or linguistic intelligences. School must allow for young people with different types of intelligence to explore their potential in those areas.

We often label students as failures if they don’t do well in the traditional school system. They leave school without developing any of their natural skills which would have allowed them to live a successful life. Instead, the blame should be put on the school system for failing to recognise and nurture the student’s natural intelligence.

School Promotes Fearful Competition

We encourage competition over co-operation. We make our young people believe they must not share information with friends. Tests are to be taken alone. We tell them the real world is a harsh place and it’s you versus them. Leave your friends behind and look out for yourself. We craft egos and then we wonder why we live in such an egotistical world, where politicians are always snakes and bankers are always… (something that rhymes with bankers?). We’ve almost come to accept certain truths about those who have made it to certain positions and roles within society. Yet through our education system it has been us that have attributed these very characteristics to success.

School Encourages a Close-minded Culture

We discourage questioning the books — most of which hold outdated teachings. Teachers are told to preach a solitary point of view rather than facilitate engaged discussion and debate. It is through deeper questioning and active discussion of opposing views where true learning happens. No wonder people are so polarized today, believing their truth is absolute and others are misguided. School has trained us to take information on board without question. That leaves us with an inability to see nuances in our points of view or remain open to new information that contradicts our current understanding.

We attach so firmly to our beliefs that they become our identity. We say “I am left wing” rather than “There are a number of aspects of left-wing politics that I believe, if implemented, would have great benefits to our current situation. They are …” We need to teach our children to see the nuances in their arguments and remain open to new points of view. As soon as we tie our identity to a particular view we close ourselves off from the truth should it appear right in front of us.

Loss of Creativity

Children are born with a natural curiosity about the world and everything in it. They are sponges at an early age, watching and learning from others about how to act in this new world they’ve been thrown into. Children harness a natural creativity by connecting dots in new and fascinating ways that most adults wouldn’t.

The problem is we think we have all the answers and therefore we “educate” our children and tell them what we believe to be true. The problem with this is that we believe our truth to be the absolute truth. We crush creativity by telling young people that “this is how the world works”.

If we could only step back from our own egos and realise that maybe we don’t have all the answers. If you think our society knows what it’s doing, try explaining to your child why 3 million children die every year from hunger and undernutrition while at least another 2.8 million die as a result of being overweight or obese. This fact alone shows how skewed and illogical our world has become.

Maybe if we don’t fill our youth with our old limiting beliefs about “the way things are” they will develop new ways of working and living that actually make sense for most people. They should be able to look at the mistakes we’ve made as a society and see what can be improved for their generation.

Creating Fear of Public Speaking

Professor Thomas Harrell did a 20 year study to determine the traits of the most successful Stanford University MBA students and found that verbal fluency or a student’s capacity to communicate was the most important factor. Their grade scores have very little bearing on determining their success.

According to one study, a child speaks in class for an average total of 3 hours during their entire school life. Think about that for a minute. We know school doesn’t prepare us for most areas of life such as dealing with our emotions, building healthy relationships or setting goals for our future to name but a few (I could justify another full article on each of these). However the one thing they are supposed to prepare us for is success in our careers. Anyone who’s ever tried to get a job knows that it is often not your level of skill that determines whether or not you get the job but your ability to articulate that level of skill to an interviewer (whether what you tell them about your skills is true or not often doesn’t matter too much either — you’ll be well in the door before they find out!).

So how do you think barely speaking in class helps prepare us for these interviews? Terribly is the answer. Despite being someone who did quite well in school, I had serious struggles landing an internship during my third year of college. It wasn’t that I wasn’t capable of any of the roles, it was that I didn’t know how to talk myself up in an interview. I also got so nervous and self-conscious that a smile rarely made its way into the room. I’d like to think more speaking in front of my classmates from a young age would have helped get me through those awkward stages instead of waiting until college when actual jobs were on the line.

And once we do manage to get past the interview stage, in order to negotiate our way into better roles we must be able to articulate our desires and build relationships with co-workers and managers.

And don’t even get me started on public speaking. People fear this over dying — that’s how unnatural it is. But we are not born with this fear. We cultivate it in the classroom alongside the fear of failure.

What the CEOs Want

In 2011, IBM conducted interviews with 1,709 CEOs around the world and asked what were the most important skills they looked for in new hires. The problem is that in our world of rapid change and uncertainty, skilled labour is no longer as valuable or important as it once was.

Instead of looking for particular skills, most of the CEOs interviewed by IBM realized that they need employees who are able to thrive in change, by constantly learning and reinventing themselves. The four specific traits most desired are:

Collaboration

Communication

Creativity

Flexibility

And while this study may be a few years old, the argument is even more relevant today with technological innovation advancing at ever-increasing speeds.

As we’ve shown in the paragraphs above, our current education system hinders the development of each of these qualities. There needs to be a complete transformation in education to move towards building these traits in our young people, not only so they are capable of entering the workforce of today but also so they have the opportunity to live happy and fulfilling lives on their own terms.

Time to dream a new dream

Some people may argue with this article, saying that the education system is already under reform. That’s like putting new wheels on the first Ford Model T car. It might look nicer but it still won’t compete with a brand new Tesla for speed or efficiency. As International Advisor on Education, Ken Robinson put it:

“Reform is no use anymore because that’s simply improving a broken model. What we need is not evolution, but a revolution in education.”

Ireland’s education in 2030 will not simply require us to “teach more stuff”. It will first require us to stop teaching the wrong stuff. To stop filling our youth with old beliefs and ideas that promote fear and judgement. Our schools have hammered down on our carefree, childlike wonder with life, filling us with ideas such as “the world is a harsh place” and “you have to work hard to survive”.

We’ve suppressed our youth’s natural creativity and freedom of expression with only logic-based subjects and machine-standard testing. We’ve forced them to think solely with their heads and to neglect their inner guidance and intuition. This alone is the reason 85% of people dislike their jobs according to Gallup in 2017. If we knew how to listen to our inner guidance we would all be doing what we knew we were supposed to — not what we thought we ought to.

For us to truly educate young people we will first be required to take a step back and allow their inner joy, love and wisdom to grow naturally.

We must allow for their authentic expression, we can no longer cookie-cut them to fit in with everyone else and lose what makes them unique. The world doesn’t need more robots. We can’t compete with the AI technology of the future for facts or intelligence or their ability to mass produce products.

Now we need more dreamers and doers. More leaders and visionaries. And we need more contemplators and listeners to keep the leaders on their toes. We need more creatives and artists to make sense of the new world and bring joy to our experience of it. The technology of the future has the potential to bring us untold abundance and it will revolutionise the nature of work in the process. We must prepare our youth to be resilient, creative and adaptable in order to thrive with this fundamental shift towards the possibility of “work” becoming optional.

We must harness our youth’s natural creativity in pursuits of art and music and their ability to imagine a new world. We must not stifle it in favour of logic, but instead allow logic to compliment it and bring these new ideas to life.

We must encourage our youth to realise Steve Jobs’ words are true for each one of them “Everything you see around you has been created by people no smarter than you.”

Four Core Values

Wolf Academy’s new vision for education will be built upon four core values with which we aim to give to our youth in the faith that these values will act as a strong base for allowing them to create amazing lives for themselves regardless of what the future holds.

To show the timeless nature of this vision, it will be referenced alongside excerpts from the Irish Proclamation of 1916.

Unity

“Cherishing all the children of the nation equally”

The need for Unity is evident across the entire world. Problems such as homelessness, racism, the refugee crisis, war and famine all come from a belief that we as humans are different from each other. We have been brought up with this belief. It has been ingrained in us since a young age. We have been brought up with a tribal mentality. A natural instinct that has been manipulated in order to keep us in fear of each other. We can see this in sports teams, the schools we go to, the counties we live in, the places we work. We’ve been fuelling a base-level human instinct of competition and “us against them”.

Instead of nurturing this survival instinct we should nurture and develop our higher-level nature which is to connect with other humans, regardless of the differences between us. Because when you really look at it, there are a lot more similarities than differences. We are all thrown onto this planet without a clue to what’s going on and we’re all trying to make sense of it. Instead of engaging others who differ in appearance, opinions or culture with fear and judgement, we should approach each other with openness, respect and curiosity. And if you think this is not natural then look at children playing. They do not care about skin colour or class or country. They see another human to connect with and learn from and that’s exactly how we should still see each other.

2. Love

From John Lennon’s lyrics “Love is all you need” to the teachings of Jesus “Love thy neighbour as thyself”, it is hard for anyone to refute that love is one of the most, if not the most, important things in life.

Most of our perceived problems in life are caused by one core fundamental problem — We don’t love ourselves enough

If there was only one lesson I could teach to young people. If I was hanging from a cliff and I had one last thing to say to them it would be “Love yourself like your life depends on it. Because it does”

If we could teach our young people that they don’t need to achieve or become anything to be worthy of receiving love. If we could teach them how to love themselves fully and accept who they are we would change the world. Once they found a deep love for themselves they would no longer be afraid to pursue their passions. They would no longer fear failure because the idea of “success” is no longer tied to their sense of self-worth. They would no longer go down the road of addiction in their pursuit of connection. If they could love themselves fully they would no longer seek out relationships to fill an inner void. They would discover partners based on genuine love and connection. They would be able to truly love others unconditionally. They would no longer be bound by the shackles so many of us find ourselves in when we tie our sense of worth in another person, an accomplishment or a job title. They would be free to express themselves without fear of ridicule. All the joys of life await those who love themselves unconditionally and it is our duty to give this chance to our children.

3. Joy

“To pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts”

Joy comes when we find ourselves capable to fully live in the now. To experience the fullness of life, free from the pains of the past and the worries of the future. To live in the unfolding of the eternal present is the only way to truly find joy.

Yet we have raised young people to define themselves by their past. We have told them who they are based on where they were born and what they have done. We have encouraged them to build an identity and value themselves by it. We have feared them into the need to have clear plans for their future. We have forced them to decide their path before they have even seen the world for what it is. Most students experience this when filling out the CAO, not knowing what they really want, scribbling down a few courses that in truth are meaningless to them all because they are made feel they ‘have to’ go to college next year. Many students spend the next four years of their life doing something that in the end they have no real value or passion for.

Our Western culture evolved around the idea of The American Dream scenario. We put all of our joy off into the future, still holding onto the “I’ll be happy when” belief. I’ll be happy when I reach a certain level of success. When I get my dream job, the car, the house, the family. I’ve experienced this first hand throughout the early stages of my career. Not only was I delaying my joy but I was delaying my sense of self-worth. I believed I had to achieve things to be worthy of love.

Both love and joy become present when we let go of all the expectations we put on ourselves. Love appears when we fully accept ourselves for who we are. Joy arrives when we fully accept each moment as it is without wishing to change it. It is through the state of non-attachment to outcomes, job titles or achievements that we find joy. It is ok to have goals but so long as we don’t attach our happiness to them. Goals merely act as a stimulus for us to move in a certain direction and grow into our potential.

We must teach practices that help young people discover real, lasting joy in their lives. The joy that comes from the ability to live fully in the present moment. To not need to pursue external pleasures such as sex, drugs or alcohol to feel alive but to be able to experience the full beauty and freedom of life by being in nature or by simply focusing on their breath. We must teach practices that allow young people to willingly detach from their monkey minds and become present in the now.

4. Freedom

“The unfettered control of Irish destinies”

The final core value to uphold our new education system will be freedom. Freedom for every individual to pursue their own destiny. Once we help young people find love and joy in their lives they will begin to look beyond themselves to find a deeper sense of meaning. Once their basic needs for safety, belonging and self-esteem are met, our young people will yearn to use their skills to make a difference in the world.

“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world” — Nelson Mandela

When we become free we can finally see the beauty, wonder and opportunities that are all around us. We stop focusing so intently on ourselves and we start to understand we are here for a mission. We realise we do have a unique destiny should we choose to walk our own path.

Imagine a world where everyone was living their purpose. A world where people didn’t help eachother out of guilt or the need for recognition but out of pure instinct because it just made sense. We wouldn’t need to advocate for people to help solve the world’s major problems. People would be naturally drawn to come up with innovative ways to solve the climate crisis while others would be drawn to work on advancing particular causes set out in the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals.

How these values will lead to a shift in how we do business

We’ve created a view of business that is somehow cold and cruel. “It’s just business” is a term used to excuse any behaviour that goes against what we know to be right. Fuck that model of business. Business is about people! It’s about relationships. Businesses exist to serve society and improve the lives of its people. Yes businesses are also about making money but money is merely a tool that can be used to put more energy in a certain direction. It is not inherently bad or good. Money can be used to make the rich richer or it can be used to put towards the causes our society needs help with the most.

Businesses in 2030 will act to improve people’s lives and people will give money to these businesses in return for a greater experience of life. The money these businesses make can then be used to fulfil the needs of the business owners and staff and also expand the businesses reach to help more people. Businesses will be an engine for change as they can also funnel a percentage of their profits into other areas of society that need improving. It will be a win-win-win situation as the business makes money, the customer’s life improves and problems in society are solved. This creates a positive reinforcing loop that moves humanity forward.

I’ve written before about how the charity model doesn’t work. The new model will be businesses with a social mission. A percentage of profits for their great work will be funnelled back into side organisations aimed at solving issues charities used to attempt at solving. Competition will be eradicated as businesses work together on solving problems and costs of buildings, administration and wages will be reduced through collaboration thus creating much greater impact with much less need for huge amounts of funding as is currently the case in charities.

And businesses will see the benefits of pooling resources to provide greater services with more ease. Cooperation is overtaking competition as a means to success in the business world. And this philosophy of cooperation needs to be promoted in schools too if young people are to transition into these new types of businesses.

What does an ideal society look like?

It is a place where all people exist in harmony to create a greater experience of life for all in a manner that promotes a greater future for the next generations to follow. Cooperation comes as a result of unity. When we see other groups with the same respect and reverence as we see ourselves and our own groups. I’m not advocating that we must all leave our tribes behind. We can still exist within the groups we cherish and love but at the same time we can see other groups as friends instead of enemies.

Conclusion

I hope this article has opened your eyes to the need for a transformation in education. While this was written with Ireland in mind, values such as these should be filtered through to every education system in order to empower our youth with the chance to create a brighter future for themselves.

If this article has sparked any of your own ideas or if you would like to find out more about our plans for education at Wolf Academy, check out our vision on our website.

We are also releasing a suite of online wellbeing programs for Senior Cycle students (ages 15–18) in the new year. We have collaborated with experts in different fields to create 8 unique courses to help young people live happier and healthier lives, become their true selves and achieve their ultimate vision. If you are a teacher or parent who might be interested in learning more about our courses feel free to reach out to us also. You can email us at info@wolfacademy.ie

Thank you for reading.