School: The weapon of mass disconnect

I have been in the middle of conflict most of the time. All of us are. Don't you agree? And every time I am in a conflict, I just don’t know how to go through it. I speak the best possible ways to convey my thoughts but somehow it doesn’t reach to other. It makes me panic. I get stress and anger. When I have a conflict with someone, how hard I try, I am not able to make relation with the person. So I just want to avoid the conflict.

I was not born in this way. I was born with smiling face, with dark glowing eyes and dark complexion. And I knew the best language to convey my thoughts. I used to smile and I used to cry.

But then something strange happened in my life. I was sent to school. And thus this is the beginning of the end of ME.
I was taught how to get evaluated, compared, diagnosed , judged, analysed, and criticized. I learned it all.
From then, I am a different man.
They call me educated.

Praise and reward create a system of extrinsic motivations for behaviour. Children (and adults) end up taking action in order to receive the praise or rewards. - -Marshall Rosenberg, author of Nonviolent Communication.

Marshall has studies conflicts around the world and he arrived to a conclusion that the system of punishment and reward is the root of all the violence. And surprisingly, school is the first place where I learned this. I used to study in the morning only because I was promised be allowed to go out and play in the evening. I don't remember enjoying algebra and probability. Although I remember cycling with my friends. And the day when I was not able to finish the homework, I was punished by not allowed to watch my favourite TV show. I was made felt like I had done a big blunder.

I feel myself lucky enough to get this thing understood early in my life. Once I was at in a Cycle Journey without money and food for 7 days. This journey made me question everything I was taught in the school. From Economic System to the way we produce food in the farm. From our neighbourhood to our relationships.

I am confident that if our next generation is raised without school or without fear of punishment and reward, we can create a courageous society where everyone will do what they love to do with kindness, compassion and authenticity. If the skills to connect with each other and to oneself is not destroyed, we can create the world of better humans.

As John Holt says -
My concern is not to improve the ‘education’ but to do away with it, to end the ugly and anti-human business of people shaping and to allow and help people to shape themselves.

To read more about Unschooling, read John Holt’s Escape from Childhood.