I just graduated in psychology (yay!), and wrote my final work on the therapeutic potential of entheogens, and was working with education in the final year

I think the main problems of our society (environmental, crimes, psychological pathologies) are in a great part due to educational systems

Education could, instead of molding people according to the established rules and forms, cultivate each person's potentials and help living in the context we live in or will live in.

How do you think education could get better? What sorts of lessons/subjects/ideas should be included?

Entheogenic initiation "Rite of Passage" ceremony into adulthood at age 17.

We need a clear dividing line between "adult" and "child" if you ask me.

Ha, i was actually thinking about posting the same question a few weeks ago. I would say for one, in public schools they should stop holding the whole class back because a few stundents are having a hard time. Thats why we have a system of failing a grade and being held back. I was gifted in math, but was never put in a gifted class. I hated english, yet i wrote the best 2 page story in my grade out of the state. Yet i ended up droping out of school in the 8th grade because i was a kid and they did not keep me entertained. I got really tired of the teacher makeing me write down my math process for homework when it was simple adding and subtracting, i did math in my head alot quicker than writing it down. So i usally just wrote the answer, it was adding! Another thing would be the fact that they felt we needed to spend half the year learning adding and subtracting, every year. Really, from 2nd grade to 8th grade we were still learning to add??? When i say entertained, i mean with learning, at any age learning about something you want to know about is entertaining, being forced to learn something you care nothing about is even hard for me to do today, imagine how a kid feels. Is it really surprising kids want to play instead of learn something they don't care about. Also giving them choices of what they want to learn is a very good angle, sure somethings everyone needs to learn, but you could slowy introduce that along with there choices to make it alot better for the kids. So they want to learn rather then wanting to go home.

at this moment it still wouldnt be accepted in most places for this to happen

what would be acceptable otherwise is a trip at a certain moment in school (say, 17) to amazon or similar, and those who could take entheogens would, and others who couldnt would anyway participate in some sort of rite of passage and get the benefits


so you know there is this anthropologist, margareth mead (I think is how you spell), and she was interested if everywhere in the world there was this 'adolescence troubled years'. She studied people in the easter islands I think, and she saw that they had not such thing, as there were rites of passage that helped dealing with this specific important moment of one's life. I suppose this is true in many other cultures that still have this ritualistic aspect to the culture

nice contribution btw, all others welcome too

yes important points

this certainly has to be thought of. There are some existing alternatives out there but I at least havent found one im totally in tune with. There always seems to be a (intuitively) shamanistic side missing.

Another fallacy of common education is to strictly separate people by their age. Sure socializing with the differences of levels in your own age is important, but its not good to 'lock' someone to such group.

Western education follows too much the influence of the industrial revolution 'assembly line', where each step 'hammers' some new part/knowledge, with the desired end result being a formed product of certain expected and predictable qualities

Rather than teach people what to think we should teach them how to think. Teach them how to ask the right questions and seek the correct answers. Especialy in the current information age this is much more important than just memorizing facts. We should also embrace idiosyncracities rather than attempt to medicate anyone who is different.

yes!

muhammad said "asking the right questions is half the learning"

I agree with you completely and this must be a main point of the educational system

This is why philosophy should also be mandatory in the educational system.

Plus, a new course that could be called "questioning of the system" or "Critique of the government" or anything else around these lines.

A (much older) friend of mine from Germany had a similar course like that when attending classes at an experimental highschool. The idea was that students would be able to critically see their government and its actions and be able to stand against it. The course aimed to make the masses of young germans clever enough to say no to a possible next nazi state.

Dunno if such course still exists.

There are already some institutions which together make up for the lack of a "rite of passage". First time Sex, obtaining a drivers licence etc.

I'd like to see ethnology/cultural anthropology beeing taught in some form, so kids learn to compare systems of believe in order to manifest their own.

interesting

any possibility of finding out the name of this school?




yes some institutions may serve as a kind of 'relief' but they are quite rudimentary in terms of consciously forming a person. Its generally more a question of pleasure/freedom/belonging to a group, then an act denoting the acquired maturity. These institutions are obviously not useless, btw, but I dont think by themselves they can help establishing a smooth transition. We need something more specific, at least imo (where people who cant have sex or cant drive can also participate )

but yes ethnology and cultural anthropology of some sort, with a moderately relativistic and open view of the different systems of belief, culture and reality, would be very important!

I'd like to see that too.


Here's most of my ideas on the subject

I've taken up studies on the subject of ethnology and there are actually some more or less ambitious efforts to establish ethnbology at high schools.