12 posts tagged “social”

How Public Schools Fail Us Tragically

"The social, emotional and spiritual are part of a child's connection with the world."
- Mary Paradis, director of development at the Vancouver Waldorf School

Why doesn't every child deserve the kind of education kids get at some private schools? The schools I refer to--Waldorf and Montessori are among them--teach the whole child, not just curriculum dictated facts and skills.

Children develop along four main streams: intellectual, physical, emotional and social. Mainline school systems address the intellectual and physical needs of their children, but curriculum seldom leaves time or room for social or emotional/psychological development. At that, intellectual development follows strict guides and physical development varies hugely from school to school and among various districts.

What would those strict guides be that schools follow? Education systems, in general, are designed to produce future employees who can do the jobs that big employers such as industries need to be done. And they produce consumers who will buy, use, throw away, then buy more of the products those industries manufacture.

Schools produce employees and consumers. The evidence is so glaring that those who argue against the claim have difficulty finding evidence of support. In fact, those who argue that schools are not designed to produce employees and consumers of the future delude themselves and try to persuade others so they don't feel so alone. If you doubt, just look at what topics fill school curricula and the young adults the schools produce.

Ironically, many of the leaders of the industries that employ public school system graduates themselves attended private schools. Is this true irony? In fact, no. Private schools, in general, prepare children to be leaders in their communities, not followers as public school systems do.

Providing "the right thing at the right time" in a child's learning development is the key to teaching to the whole child, according to Ryan Lindsay, president of The Waldorf Association of Ontario. Public schools, on the other hand, provide indoctrination of facts and skills in the employee-consumer model at the time most child have the ability to manage them. Those who are not ready fail--emotionally, if not by repeating school years--drop out when they reach the minimum age, often believing that they are too dumb for school. They try to work for large companies so they can depend on a steady income.

"We make sure we focus on teaching children how to think and not what to think," according to Lindsay. "We like to think we are laying the foundation in a more thorough way so that when children get to a certain age the approach aids their intellectual development."

Casting aside the lack of expertise you may feel regarding the topic of education as a whole, if you attended a public school do Mr. Lindsay's statements ring a bell about how you were taught? From what you know of adults today, do they know how to think, not just what to think when they make purchases?

We must keep in mind that private schools have the same number of teaching hours in their days as public schools. They don't have eight-day school weeks. Private school students are in class roughly the same number of hours as public school students the same age. Sometimes less if they have special assignments that take them outside the classroom.

What's the difference?

Some may claim that public schools have many more problem children to deal with than private schools. From my personal experience as an educator, I can see that argument having some merit. I also know that classes I taught in public schools had far fewer "problem children" than many of the other classes in the same schools.

In my teaching years in public schools, it was the teacher in my classes who kept getting into trouble, not the students. In my case I kept wanting to deliver to my kids what they needed and wanted and were desperate to take in and develop, not just what was on the curriculum. I believe my mission was to grow whole people, not just adults who were ready to be employees and consumers. I did. Administration often objected.

In general, classes with "problem children" do little to address their emotional and social needs. Consequently their problems tend to be emotional or social in nature--bullying, depression, fighting, shyness and so on. Where children have intellectual development problems--slow learners--very often the slowness of intellectual development relates back to emotional or social problems of the past.

And often to emotional or social problems of the present. How efficiently can we expect a child to learn if he or she has problems with a drunk or abusive parent at home, with a classmate or neighbourhood child who bullies them to and from school or on the bus, with a parent who does not provide a home atmosphere that supports what is taught at school, or even with the results of a recently broken close friendship?

For a child, emotional and social problems always take precedence over intellectual challenges in school. Always. It's how we are built. Emotional and social problems are related to our individual ability--our basic instinct--to survive. For our ancient prehistoric ancestors, intellectual development and learning took place when survival and personal safety and comfort were not at stake.

Most private schools address the social and emotional needs of their students. "I could never say enough good things about the value of community in a school," says Karen Murton, principal of Branksome Hall, a private school for girls in Toronto.

If a child can't get enough help with social or emotional development at home and his school doesn't have the time or the authority in its curriculum to address these needs, where does he get it, where does he turn to fill in the blanks he knows inherently he must fill? Television. Movies. Video games. Rumours picked up in casual conversations with peers. "Information" gleaned from overheard adult conversations behind closed doors and at parties.

Please consider that list carefully. Your child, or at least many of the children in your community, derive most of the emotional and social development information they receive from these same sources. Are they the sources you want young people to take as models? Think about their content.

Public schools could provide factual input, but most don't. They have the same amount of time with their students as private schools, but public schools spend their non-curriculum time dealing with created problems rather than teaching what the kids need to know to prevent them from happening.

One kind of school deals with kids who may already be broken. Another teaches what kids need to avoid breaking.

As astonishing as it may sound, addressing the emotional and social needs of children would not be a costly change for public schools. Most teachers already know this stuff and just need some direction, guidance and the authority to teach it.

If private schools can grow men and women who can lead major industries, professions and governments, public schools should easily be able to grow men and women who can think for themselves, who are more than mere automaton employees and consumers who work and buy as they are told.

If you believe what you have just read, then your family, your community, your world needs you to speak up about it. Only by speaking up will you find how many others think like you so that we can all work together to make life better for the future.

If we don't talk about this, we leave industries to manipulate their way into the lives of every student of every public school.

That's simply not acceptable.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents, teachers and other interested people who want to know what children need to learn and when, not just what industries want them to be taught and how.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Every sin is an attempt to fly from emptiness.
- Simone Weil, French philosopher, mystic, activist (1909-1943)

I have never met a person who, as a child, wanted to grow up to be a criminal, a drug addict, a gulper of prescribed drugs, a divorcée, a workaholic, a gambling addict, an alcoholic or a wife beater. Nor have I ever heard or read of one.

Yet somehow so many of us grow into these roles in life.

Are we a society of losers?

A recovered alcoholic, a member of Alcoholics Anonymous, considers himself a lifelong addict. Does that mean we should consider him a lifelong loser and treat him as a social pariah, as human detritus?

If not, then how should we think of and treat such people? How, indeed, should we think of and treat those who still "suffer" daily with their affliction? Is it even possible to have our governments provide sufficient assistance to help a significant number of them recover? Many people believe it's not possible.

The subject of helping people to recover from their life problems is so enormous that most of us prefer to not think about it. "It would just cost us more taxes." Of course those people don't realize how much of their taxes already go into dealing with the social problems these people create, including the cost of health insurance and maintaining prisons and rehab facilities for them. Some estimate that figure as high as half our taxes today.

We don't want to face up to the fact that society has failed them. Especially because we have no clue about how we could have failed them. Fair enough. Let's worry about what we can fix.

Now return to my first sentence. We, as parents, as teachers, as relatives and neighbours, grow our own children from scratch. They learn what we teach them.

They learn what we teach them. They learn what we teach them. So let's teach them what they need before they need it. Before they break.

Too many of us believe that children should be kept in innocence for as long as possible. Such people are wrong and dangerous to society. The whole purpose of childhood is to learn how to cope with the rigors of adulthood. Not to turn childhood innocence into adult ignorance. A child that doesn't learn as early as possible about the pitfalls as problems of adults is doomed to fall victim to them and not have any defences at the ready.

We have long established traditions for teaching children what they need to know. One is called schools. The other is called parents. If that sounds patronizing, remember that these are the primary sources of education for children, all children. In a Canadian study of teens a few years ago, 89 percent of them claimed that most of what they learned about life came directly from their parents.

In general, schools are not allowed to teach what kids need so that they can cope with the rigors of the adult world they are growing into. Schools are directed, by curriculum and policy, to teach what kids will need to be employable, to be good employees. However, schools suffer from the lack of need satisfaction in the teens they teach through discipline problems. Students who can cope with their problems suffer from loss of classroom time when the troubled kids act out.

Most young parents know little or nothing more than what they learned about parenting from their own parents. Which is grossly insufficient. Which dooms their children to develop the kinds of problems mentioned at the start of this article.

New parents whose goal is to be better parents than their own parents were to them are lucky. They know they need to do something different. Unfortunately, they don't know what to do. They know what they want to be different for their kids, but not necessarily how to achieve it. They have no easily accessible source for that information.

Western societies are extremely lucky that they don't have more social problems than they do. They must be doing something right. After all, western societies have few problems with terrorism, war and other forms of rampant violence found in other parts of the world, parts that claim that parents do know what they should be teaching their children. Maybe not.

No matter where in the world you look, social problems abound.

Does that mean that social problems are unavoidable? No. It means that, in general, people in all parts of the world have no clear idea what to teach their children to help them cope with life in the 21st century.

Sadly, the last time our ancestors did have a good idea about what to teach their children to help them to cope with life, they all lived in tribes. In tribes, the social norm is that every adult bears some responsibility for teaching every child. As little changed from one year to the next, from one decade to the next, knowing what to teach children was adopted as social policy for the tribe. Everyone taught children the same things. Every child got the same message.

We don't do that today. If anything, parents go out of their way to make sure their kids don't grow up like other kids. That's a social norm. Everyone should be different, we believe.

Yet everyone is the same in many ways. We all have the same needs, for example, with few exceptions.

Schools address the needs of employers. Parents address the needs of their children so long as they know what those needs are. However, so many of the needs of children are unknown mysteries to many parents. Most parents learn parenting "on the job."

Many parents don't teach their children about drugs for fear that the kids will "experiment" with drugs. By the time the parents decide to teach the kids about drugs, the kids have already learned about drugs on the street, in the schoolyard, in the parks, virtually everywhere they go. Some kids already take drugs by the time their parents decide it's time to teach them about drugs.

How's that for timing, for knowing what kids need and when?

Why would a child, an adolescent, an adult need to turn to drugs? Simone Weil said it's an attempt to fly from emptiness. What's empty?

Better to say that human needs have gone unfulfilled. The need for fulfillment of needs is what is empty.

Does that sound like psychobabble? That's what many people would say, people who don't know what children need at all, let alone when they should learn stuff that will fulfill their needs. Ignorant people often have strong opinions against evidence that they are ignorant.

It's true that children are not small adults and should not be treated that way. If they were, we would have to punish them for offences they didn't know were offences. For misdeeds they did because they didn't have the words to explain to their parents and teachers what they needed. For bad stuff they did out of frustration because they needed something they couldn't talk about, but adults didn't know either so they ignored the needs of the children, thinking they were just misbehaving. Yet that is what most punishment of children is about.

A child needs to know how to deal with every social situation he experiences. We know that for adults, so we provide ways to teach them social skills, sort of. Few children receive any significant amount of instruction about social skills. They learn the hard way, by making mistakes. Or by watching what happens when other kids make mistakes.

But that is teaching what not to do in social situations, not what to do proactively, before the information is needed. We need to teach social skills to children, to address their social development when they need it most. They need the skills before they need to put the skills into practice. In teaching skills to children, especially social and emotional skills, timing is critical.

We also need to address their emotional development. Huh? Why do so many adults experience heartbreak when a relationship with a mate who is incompatible with them breaks up? Why do more than half the couples who marry get divorced later? That number should be even greater except that many couples today skip the wedding part and simply live together until they separate later because one of them "failed" the other or they "grew apart."

Understanding emotional skills and knowledge is part of what we need to get along well with others. As a social species, we need to have social interactions with others. In most activities people do--either personal or work related--they need to interact with others.

Socially and emotionally well adapted and developed children and adolescents become socially and emotionally well adapted and developed adults. Moreover, socially and emotionally successful adults are not only well liked and appreciated, they do a great deal to help others in their families, their communities and their countries. They gain great public respect because they do things they seem to understand--almost intuitively--are right. Nobel Peace Prize winners, for an example.

Teaching to the social and emotional needs of children and adolescents is not hard. We simply have not put into place the mechanisms for doing it. The needs themselves are not secrets, they're public information. Unfortunately, most of that information is contained in psychologists who specialize in fixing broken people rather than in teaching everyone before they break. And in sociologists who manipulate us by advertising, religion and politics because we don't want to listen to what they know otherwise.

While we long for innocence, what we get is ignorance. There is nothing pretty or beneficial about ignorance.

We have schools, but we use them almost exclusively to train children to be successful employees, not successful adults. The change would be easy and cheap, but someone has to make the first move in every community.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow socially and emotionally well developed and balanced children, not just intellectually well developed employees.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

A competent and self-confident person is incapable of jealousy in anything. Jealousy is invariably a symptom of neurotic insecurity.
- Lazarus Long, fictional character in Robert A Heinlein novels

"Neurotic" in this case may be taken to mean "emotionally excessive to the point of being harmful."

Insecurity breeds jealousy. The two are not irrevocably linked. Insecurity can also lead to bullying, to lack of an ability to commit to a relationship, to various emotional problems other than neuroses, to addictions, to violence and rage, to bad relationships and to divorce.

Consider how prevalent these are in our society.

They are so common that social scientists refer to them as social problems, meaning that so many people have these problems that the numbers alone create further problems in churches and clubs, in communities, in the workplace, in legislative assemblies of government, in countries, even at the United Nations.

People learn to feel secure during their maturation, as they grow from children, through adolescence, into adulthood and beyond. They key word in that last sentence is "learn." People learn to feel secure. It doesn't come as a matter of course. People learn insecurity as well.

If security or lack of it is learned, who teaches it? We all help in the process of teaching insecurity. Insecurity is another word for fear. People learn insecurity in their families, as children, in school (not intentionally in the classroom), in the playground, in various groups and unhealthy friendships. They learn it from television and newspapers that encourage us to fear each other, on the street, in offices, in elevators, in our homes. They learn it from clerks in stores who ignore them while helping other customers who came in later.

Where do people learn security? That which should be learned is usually taught by someone, isn't it?

No one teaches people how to be secure. No one teaches them that fear is not just harmful, but unnecessary. In the United States, the recently retired president, self-titled "the war president," taught the necessity of believing in a War On Terror (with what results?) and he personally controlled the status of alerts (Amber Alert, Red Alert).

Learning to avoid fear and how to feel secure can be taught. It's a matter of understanding certain facts and mastering some skills. If it can be taught and if it's so important and so damaging to us personally and to our communities and our countries, we should be teaching it.

The information needed and the skills to be learned are available. They are neither hidden nor secret. They simply are not taught.

Are you afraid of anything? Do you feel insecure? Lots of people do, but it's not a necessary consequence of modern society as ultra-conservatives would have us believe.We fear and we feel insecure because we have not learned how to avoid these harmful emotions.

Someone has something to gain by making us feel afraid and insecure in such massive numbers. Of that you may be certain. I won't point fingers because it will not take much thinking on your part to figure out who is responsible for your fear and insecurity.

The economy is bad, are you afraid to lose your job? Unless you die within the next two years, you will survive the recession and get another job. Plan now what you would do and how you would go about it if you were to lose your job. If you don't make a plan, maybe you have something to worry about. If you do, you won't need to worry because you will know exactly what you will do.

If your spouse died or unexpectedly announced his/her desire for a divorce, what would you do? With a plan, these events would bring unhappiness. But they would not necessarily destroy your life. Having a plan of what you would do in case of tragedy is not a self fulfilling prophesy. It's simply being ready.

There are two ways to avoid insecurity and fear. You learned them by reading this article.

It would be wise if this kind of information and these skills were taught to everyone. It could be taught in schools, if we wanted it.

It would cost almost nothing to prepare teachers to teach social and emotional skills. Just give each teacher a book about it and the authority to teach it.

Imagine a world without fear.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow secure and self confident children into adults who won't contribute to the social problems we endure today and who will lead emotionally and socially healthy lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Men are born to succeed, not fail.
- Henry David Thoreau, American author, poet and philosopher (1817-1862)

Well, heck, that sounds simple enough.

So why doesn't it work?

Because to succeed, a person must have the tools to succeed and the attitude that the goal is possible. In other words, a person needs a good work ethic, something to do and the means to do it.

Easy again.

But most people settle for less than what they are capable of, then either overwork to benefit their employer or underwork in the mistaken belief that only partial success at work does not equal only partial success in life.

If the original statement is correct, then why are most people not feeling successful, fulfilled and personally complete?

We don't teach to success of the individual. We teach success for the nation. We teach that success for corporations is good. We teach that our working to keep corporations successful is good. We teach that spending every bit of income we get is good, that it should make us happy and keep the economy rolling.

But we don't teach to individual success. That is, we don't teach to success of the individual on a massive, nationwide scale.

What we do teach individuals is that they should have the skills to satisfy employers sufficiently that they will keep us employed. We almost never teach entrepreneurial skills because that would be counter to the benefit of corporations.

Ask most teens why they will continue with their education past high school and you will hear "so I can get a good job" more than any other answer. In other words, "so that I can get a good paying job." Hopefully, one that will not disappear when the employer downsizes because it has not forecast future markets correctly and has lost money, so needs to cut staff to show more profit or minimize losses to satisfy its shareholders.

We don't even teach our children what it means to be successful, other than that they will be happy being constant consumers. Which few are, really. Again, ask a teen what it means for an adult to be successful and the answer will most likely be related to a secure job with good income (with which to buy lots of stuff).

It's not my purpose to teach you what success is. I know what it is for me. But it took me a few decades of searching to learn.

You need to learn what success is for you. What it really is. What it really means to lead a fulfilling life.

Then teach it to every kid you know.

Schools don't do this. Their purpose is to train employees to be good workers and consumers.

Corporations control the curriculum. If you doubt this, check the name brands on all kinds of products in today's high schools and even in grade schools. Including in text books.

First you must learn what success in life really is. Then teach it to others, both adults and children.

How many people, on their deathbeds, have claimed that they should have worked harder or that they should have spent more of their money in order to make their own lives and the lives of their family members better? Corporations want us to believe that we should follow that line of unthinking.

Learn, then teach. It's what we are supposed to do. Corporations took that responsibility from us because we walked away from it ourselves.

When you teach children what is meaningful in life, don't report it to your employer. The employer won't like that. Just do it in private.

A recent study (actually several of them) showed that large corporations were set up to be sociopathological (amoral, capable of violence or spreading fear without feeling guilty). It's part of their corporate ethic.

This is the power that will control the destiny of your children unless you change what your kids believe.

If you don't like it, do something about it. Talk it up. Social change happens only when enough people believe that children should be taught differently. Every socially acceptable norm of today was once a radical idea. Then people talked about it.

So talk. It's easy.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to have a time scale, content and methodology for teaching children what they need to know to lead successful lives.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

A censor is a man who knows more than he thinks you ought to.
- Granville Hicks, American novelist, educator, editor (1901-1982)

First of all, censors are no longer just men in western countries. Women comprise half of most censor boards.

In Canada, film censors watch three films per day, with usually a break between the first two and a lunch break before the third.

Some refuse to have a meal before their final movie of the day in case what they see in the last one causes them to lose their lunch.

Very seldom is anything censored in Canada, that is, removed from the list of items which may be sold to or viewed by the public, forbidden from public scrutiny.

There are those who oppose any kind of pre-screening of anything going before the public. Generally speaking those people are idealists who have little idea about what the censors actually have to take in. It's not just "dirty movies" and books about sexual encounters any more.

Censors usually only last a few years, at most, on their respective boards. By then, so a few claim who have spoken out publicly, their minds have become so enured by a constant assault of movies where people abuse each other that their lives are changed forever. They leave to try to recover what they once had, some semblance of respect for the vast majority of their fellow countrymen who are not abusive.

While most of us would rather not have anyone scrutinize what we see or read, we must admit that some people produce print or film material that is abusive to the point of being illegal if the people involved in the films could be caught. When one has seen many such movies or read many novels of this type, they tend in one of two directions. Either they become desensitized to the welfare of their fellow humans (in which case they no longer care if someone is abused) or they become abusive themselves.

Censors do not become abusive because they undergo psychiatric and psychological tests before they begin their service and once or more each year to check their reactions to certain shocking human motivators. Average citizens (who may not be so average in their lack of social and emotional well-being) often do not have the support systems that prevent them from straying off-centre into anti-social behaviour if they subject themselves to anti-social material repeatedly. Once an already unbalanced person comes to accept that a certain kind of anti-social behaviour is acceptable within a particular context (the film or book), that person may stray too far from what is generally accepted and chose to use some of the abusive methods he has seen or read about.

Censorship today is not about "protecting" God fearing citizens from shameful sexual exposures. It's about maintaining a level of respectability beyond which average people don't want to know people do to each other and the police should possibly intervene.

There is no doubt that censors see and read everything that people create that may border on the anti-social or may be intentionally outright anti-social. I, for one, thank them for taking the brunt of the most disgusting stuff that people produce today. I have seen some of the filmed material and I don't want to think that people do that to each other.

In times past, censors prevented average citizens from seeing or reading about sex, something that almost everyone did but no one was permitted to talk about publicly or to show any signs of it taking place. Those were the days when people devised euphemisms to refer to body parts and to sexual activities because saying the words for the real acts was horrendous to some. Today those who "cross the line" in literature, art or film are abusive. Abuse of others has never been socially acceptable.

Countries whose militaries are engaged in wars fairly often have soldiers who return to civilian life and some have trouble adjusting to non-violent ways of solving problems, including their own. Those countries tend to have the highest rates of civilian violence. Just recently a few have begun to offer psychological re-programming and some retraining to returning soldiers so they will be able to fit again into the society they had been working to protect. They got used to violence, now they need to become un-used to it.

We should not need to institute social reprogramming for people who have seen too much abuse in movies that they can no longer fit into society by staying within the bounds of acceptable behaviour.

Remember "Banned in Boston!" It was a surefire way to sell a book a few decades ago. Today kids watch more sex than what was in those book as they watch soap operas on television during the daytime. Sex is acceptable now. Let's hope that abuse of any kind never becomes a common way of life.

Censors do the job that most of us would not want (could not take psychologically) so that the police have something to use as evidence if the producers of abusive movies sell their product to the public. Most of us don't want to contemplate the fact that some people accept money to be physically abused so it can be filmed and shown to the public. Most porn is like sandbox play compared to what the hardcore abusive stuff is producing.

We really don't want to know. Censors protect us and those less psychologically stable than us.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to grow children who know right from wrong and to avoid what will be harmful to them.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Your life today is a result of your thinking yesterday. Your life tomorrow will be determined by what you think today.
- John C. Maxwell (Think on These Things, Beacon Hill Press, 1979), American leadership coach (b.1947 )

Don't think you are alone in believing that life is mysterious, that reality is impossible to understand. Anyone who doesn't think that has allowed his brain to settle with what he has been told to believe and to understand.

As you read this sentence, there are nearly seven billion versions of reality among us humans. What's more, by the time you finish reading this article, many of those realities will have changed. Some people will think differently, thus they perceive the reality of that moment differently than they did before.

Can you remember what you thought about the world ten years ago? It's not the same as it is now, is it? In fact, it wouldn't have been the same for you five years ago, one year ago, even a few days ago. Everything you experience alters your sense of what is real.

If you pay attention to (believe) what the media tell you, you will believe that the world is rapidly becoming a more terrible, even horrifying, place. It isn't, based on a huge survey of factors around the planet, but it serves the needs of the media for us to experience some fear about the way of the world, enough that we will tune in to their next broadcast or read their next newspaper or magazine.

If you believe those who criticize you--many do, even if you are not aware of it--then you will see yourself as a clearly inferior being among a much more superior group of fellow humans. They want you to feel that way. If you do, then they have changed your reality. If you do not believe them and act contrary to what they think of you, eventually you will change their reality by giving them a different impression about you.

Even the belief you have about the reality of the world--your world--this moment will be different from someone close to you, such as your spouse. What's more, your spouse's (friend's, mate's, mother's, sister's) sense of reality where it concerns you will differ significantly from your own sense of reality about yourself.

I am reminded of the chipmunks I see outside my window where I live. Chipmunks (known properly as the eastern chipmunk) are solitary squirrels that live in burrows they dig in the ground. They fight with every other chipmunk they meet, usually over food or burrow space, throughout the year (except when they are sleeping during winter). But when mating time comes, they are great romancers and lovers. Once the deed is done, with as many mates as they can find, they return to their solitary existence. When the females have tended to their young, they send them off to fend for themselves, as most rodents do, so they can be alone again.

Being more sociable creatures, we don't try to live alone for most of our lives except to mate. Yet mating is one of the few things we do that we all agree about. Many of us try to avoid procreating during the process, but we still want to have sex because it's fun, pleasurable, satisfying and most of us get a good feeling by helping our partners to enjoy themselves and to feel good.

Once the sex is over, we become relative strangers who cohabit, friends and roommates who live together for their mutual benefit. Until it's time to have sex again.

How can two people ever stay married under circumstances like that? Actually, it's not that hard. But the condition is that we must always consider and work toward the best interests of our partner (or immediate family). Sometimes (often) that means putting their best interests ahead of our own. When that doesn't happen--when one person's own best interests take precedence for themselves most of the time--a relationship is little more than a way to pass time between episodes of sex. Eventually, the relationship will fail.

For some people in a failing relationship, their reality is that their marriage is good and healthy, until the other person passes them the word that it isn't. We may call it betrayal or cheating, but it's simply a matter of two people having realities that are too different from each other's.

A good relationship is not a matter of compromise, as we are taught. Compromise is part of it, but only as a consequence of putting the best interests of the other person first. Compromise comes after, not first. Compromise only comes first in business relationships.

How can we put the best interests of our significant other first if we aren't sure what those best interests are? If you think that your other half's best interests are the same as yours most or all of the time, then you likely don't know what the other person's best interests are.

It has wisely been said that a good relationship is not a matter of staring lovingly into each other's eyes, but of looking outward in the same direction and seeing similar realities.

Just a little something for you to think about.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a book of solutions to social problems that most people and governments consider realities of modern life, but that aren't. They can't see the solutions because they don't look in the right directions. The solutions are easy and cheap, but hard to find it we aren't looking for them in the right way.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Picnic--the joyful experience of eating good food in the open air while enjoying the company of friends and family in a relaxed atmosphere--is on the wane in the western world. More of us gather around the barbecue in the back yard. More still don't eat outside at all, or migrate from the inside of our favourite restaurant to its summertime patio.

Picnicking is practised most by first and second generation immigrants for whom this tradition still holds value. A fast-paced lifestyle that makes no time for relaxed appreciation of what others have to offer us and what we can happily share with them finds no room for picnics. Unlike back yard barbecues, picnics were usually held in beautiful natural environments.

Traditionally, picnics were a way for extended families to get together to share stories and get caught up on each other's affairs when no home was large enough to hold the group. The gathering had to be held outdoors to accommodate so many people.

In addition to lacking time, today's city people have little interest in their extended family members, so "catching up" would be considered a waste of time. We tend to associate with those relatives who can benefit us through their own influence or their respective contact networks.

While we in the western world supposedly support "family values," as a society we lack appreciation for the value of the family itself. Thus we find picnics with extended family members unnecessary, if not anachronistic and inconvenient.

Picnics became popular in the 19th century, before cell phones with text messaging, before VOIP (Voice Over Internet Protocol) phones that allow us to speak in real time with people in any part of the world that has internet connection, before televisions, even before radio. In general, they were large get-togethers held in the warmer months so people could engage in simple forms of fun together. They usually had a specific purpose, always social, involving an extended family, a church group, a service club or a Sunday school.

Not all picnics were of this nature. Some were simply single family outings, usually to scenic spots, where people sprawled on blankets and ate al fresco, which gave the food a special characteristic you couldn't get at home. Some said "It's the sunshine" that made picnic food taste so good, for others it was the open air that did not wreak of city smells.

While family picnics were well planned for food--the feature form of entertainment for the event--the extended family or group picnic was more potluck. Each family brought a lot of one or two things--like a potluck supper--and everyone ate from what was at hand. As much as the kids hoped that every family would bring dessert, it never happened. Moms were too careful to let that happen.

Every picnic had its downside, whether it was rain, ants or forgetting the condiments for the potato salad. The odd time they even stirred up old resentments among family members. But in times past--less so today--people were willing to set aside those differences (most of the time) in order to recognize the value of family.

After all, when tragedy struck, it was your family you turned to for support. Today people don't believe that tragedy will ever strike them and are shocked when it does, leaving them alone in the world without a support system to turn to. Picnics, in a sense, were an indicator of the interdependence of the community.

Extended family picnics were social occasions. Staying in touch with extended family--grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, second cousins, kissing cousins and the children of them all--had value. As most single families ate meals together at home, social occasions were not necessary for them in the same way.

How did single family picnics get started? One theory is interesting.

Today, cemeteries are lonely places where few people go to express their grief for the loss of a loved one other than for the actual burial ceremony. After that, cemeteries tend to be more places where teenagers can hang out without parents or security oversight. And, in some cases, where drugs may be bought and used apart from prying eyes.

Cemetery plots are cared for, indefinitely, by cemetery staff through a fund purchased when the plot itself is bought. That development happened within my own lifetime. When I was a kid, families had to look after the grave sites of family members and others they once cared for. Cemetery plots were tended by the loved ones left behind when someone died.

As caring for grave sites often involved some travelling as parents and children became separated over time, especially with young people flocking to cities as older parents tended to stay in more rural areas, it may have happened only once or twice a year that a family would make a trip to the cemetery to tend to the grass and plant flowers around the grave site.

There was clearly work involved in only tending to a grave site a couple of times each year. Everyone's help was needed, even from the kids. As the whole process took some time, food and beverage were brought to get people through the event. Food and beverage became the second focus of the visit.

As few people believed that real people--as opposed to discarded and decaying bodies--were in the graves, tending the graves of family members (often several generations of them in the same cemetery) was a solemn occasion--just plain work--unless something was done to lighten up the day.

Food and beverage did that. So did playing games after the meal. In those early days of picnics, cemeteries were not supposed to be as quiet and sedate as churches. It was quite all right to have fun there after the gardening and open air dining were over.

People enjoyed the non-gardening part of the event so much that they chose to have other picnics, such as at a beach or in a park or other natural setting. This happened more as people had more leisure time. They felt they could be more natural, more relaxed, less guarded, while enjoying themselves in the open air, surrounded by natural beauty.

Today we don't have picnics much, so we have to consciously teach our children about nature or they don't learn the lessons. The less they know about nature, the more inclined they are to look away as big corporations clear cut forests, create great fissures covering many hectares with open pit mining and freely pollute the air and waterways with their waste. And we eat food produced using growth hormones, pesticides and chemicals with names so long they're hard to pronounce let alone understand what they mean and what their long term effects on our bodies are.

Picnics may have been imperfect, but they were pure. We can't say that about many things in our lives any more.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to know what to teach their children that schools don't teach, and when is the best time to teach these lessons.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Nobody realizes that some people expend tremendous energy merely to be normal.
- Albert Camus, French writer (1913-1960)

Well, I do, Albert, so where are you so I can refute your statement?

Seriously, Camus was right, some people do go to extensive lengths to be considered normal by others. But why?

We are social animals. As such we have standards, mores and rules/laws by which people must conduct their affairs so that our society does not descend into chaos. When we deal with a clerk in a store, for example, we have an idea of what to expect from that person, as the clerk does for us.

Two or three decades ago (depending on the location) a movement began to make people in wheelchairs have access to every building they may need to enter. That made sense for a medical building, for example, because someone in a wheelchair would certainly need to visit a doctor eventually.

People in wheelchairs wanted to be treated like everyone else and have access everywhere someone with two working legs would have. To them, normal meant having the same rights or access as those who could walk.

Striving to be normal goes much deeper than that. A child who is socially underdeveloped may work very hard to be like the rest of the kids, but that child can never be "normal" in a social setting. The child may seem to be a loner, may stutter, may remain quiet with others around, may agree with the leader of the group most often, will likely not do well with schoolwork, but try as he or she might they will not be able to be like the others, normal in a social setting.

Being socially underdeveloped as a child carries through adulthood, sometimes through life itself. Many socially underdeveloped kids eventually learn the social skills their peers did as children, whereupon they can interact in social settings like others, thus be "normal." That catching up socially requires a huge amount of effort, something Camus says that few understand.

Certainly the peers of a socially underdeveloped child don't understand. They consider the kid weird or strange. They nitpick to find faults with the child that may not exist in reality so they can talk about the odd one in their own "normal" groups.

Often a socially underdeveloped child will be bullied by another socially underdeveloped child. Bullies are classic cases of social underdevelopment, perhaps with a touch of maldevelopment. They need social interaction with peers, but have no idea how to achieve it. They want to be normal, but can't, so they lash out at the weakest among them, which is usually another socially underdeveloped child. The same happens with adult bullies and their victims.

Children who are underdeveloped emotionally have similar adjustment problems. They tend to be punished for their deficiencies and the resulting behaviours, as socially underdeveloped children are as well. What we don't understand in odd or strange children usually causes them to violate social norms, thus we punish them to teach them how to act normally.

Yes, we punish children and adults for being socially and/or emotionally underdeveloped and acting out because they can't cope with their inability to be normal with their peers.

By punishing them as children we ensure that they will not likely rise to the level of development of their peers because they will believe that it's impossible for them to be normal. They will always feel left out, different.

Almost every adult in a prison is either socially or emotionally underdeveloped or maldeveloped, or both. At that age they have been broken for so long that society could not afford to do the necessary psychological repairs, so we put them behind bars and forget about them. Pretend they don't exist in our society. Call them bad, social offenders.

It may be true that most children are born with the same potential. That potential is very different among them by the age they enter the school system because of their different opportunities (or lack thereof) to develop socially and emotionally as well as they do physically and intellectually in the intervening few years.

Trouble begins in the school system. Teachers are not only not granted permission to work to develop children's social and emotional skills according to the curriculum, they may be denied permission (in most classroom settings) by the administration. "There isn't time." "Stick to the curriculum."

By the time kids enter school, many parents believe they have taken their children as far as they need to socially and emotionally, so they leave it up to the school to carry on. The school can't do much in most cases.

Every socially or emotionally inappropriate behaviour of adults can be traced back to social or emotional (or both) deficits when they were children. No one wants to do this and few will try because it upsets everyone who prefers to deny any responsibility for underdevelopment or maldevelopment of social miscreant adults, when they were children.

Society can manage social and emotional development of children the same way it manages intellectual and physical development. In fact, plans to do this are fairly easy and very cheap to implement.

Before anything can be changed, we must admit as a society that we have children who are not receiving assistance with their social and emotional development. Then we can put programs in place to train parents and teachers how to fulfill the rest of their respective roles in raising a child.

Talk about it.

Bill Allin is a sociologist, retired teacher and author of the book Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, as well as the fountain of inspiration for programs related to the TIA program.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

Be not angry that you cannot make others as you wish them to be, since you cannot make yourself as you wish to be.
- Thomas A Kempis, German ecclesiastic (1380-1471)

Let him that would move the world first move himself.
- Socrates, Ancient Athenian philosopher (470-399 BC)

Many people claim they wish they could change the world, but they can't. Yet they would find it difficult to change themselves, even offensive if someone else suggested it.

Changing the world isn't hard. It simply can't be done by one person. Because they know they can't do it alone, many fail to make any attempt. Rather than working to gather others who will spread the same message, they do nothing, often ignoring the advice they would give to the world as to how to achieve new objectives and goals.

"If you can't beat them, join them." As common as that saying is, it identifies its users as guilty of something, and as quitters, if not as losers.

Starting with the ancient Jew we know as Abraham, the Semites began to spread the word among the other tribes they met about how to live a good life. Jesus of Nazareth picked up the theme about 550 years later. The Muslim Prophet Mohammed continued the theme with his own religion. In about 2500 years, around half the world believes the same precepts about living a good life.

Mind you, not every one of those people adheres to the rules. Generally speaking, the Jews are fairly peaceful people, except as they must defend themselves against those who would annihilate them in the Middle East. A large majority of Christians and Muslims are peaceful people, I believe. In fact, most of the people who belong to non-Abrahamic religions have similar beliefs about how to live a good life.

Considering how incredibly brutal the world was up until 600 years ago (and how brutal it still is in pockets around the world), we have come a long way. We probably have six times as many people on earth today as 600 years ago, which means that even more than in the past we humans have changed to a more peaceful and helpful life style.

We have no trouble hearing about those who violate our norms. The media ensure that we hear as much that's bad among us as they can get their hands on, and they make up some of what they tell us as it is. But the vast majority of people on the planet live good lives, healthier and longer than ever before in history.

Abraham, Jesus and Mohammed spread their words, others paid attention and passed them on. The same can be said of The Buddha and the originators of Hinduism, Taoism and other religions.

These people believed that their words would eventually spread around the world. They were right. They didn't give up because it couldn't happen within their lifetimes.

What does that make us, the good people of today who don't believe we can make a difference? Short-sighted, at the least.

Changing our own attitudes about what effect we could have on the future of our world could make such a difference in decades, centuries and millennia to come.

It's not so hard to tell others about the values we hold, so long as we don't try to convert them to a particular religion or ask them for donations. They will listen and, in time, they too will spread the word.

You can make a difference, if you believe in yourself.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents and teachers who want to make a big difference in the world of the future by teaching children what they need to know to operate it with integrity and with honour.
Learn more at http://billallin.com

"A child is a person who is going to carry on whatever you have started. He is going to sit where you are sitting and when you are gone, attend to those things which you think are important. You may adopt all the policies you please, but how they will be carried out depends on him. He will assume control of your cities, states and nations. He is going to move in and take over your churches, schools, universities, and corporations. Your books are going to be judged, accepted or condemned by him. The fate of humanity is in his hands. So it might be well to pay him some attention."
- Abraham Lincoln

"He is going to...attend to those things which you think are important."

What do you think is important? Did you (Do you) consciously, proactively, knowingly teach those things to your children?

Surprisingly, most people don't. Children, to a great extent in their first six years and to a slightly lesser extent during the following five years, form and reform concepts of their world frequently. Not your world, but the one they perceive with their senses and conceptualize with their minds.

Their entire existence rests within the concept they form of their world, usually based on what they observe from their parents, what they are taught by their parents and how they are treated by their parents. If their parents have extensive social skills, the kids will pick them up whether the lessons are taught formally or not. They will fare better if the parents teach pertinent social skills (such as how to make and keep friends, how to treat casual friends and classmates) rather than requiring the children to pick them up vicariously.

What children don't learn by watching is emotional skills, knowledge to advance their emotional development, especially in a small family with only one child. These kinds of skills--how to cope with life's problems and downturns--need to be taught and learned through experience and lessons from parents.

Will your child "assume control of your cities, states and nations" and "take over your churches, schools, universities, and corporations" as you move on, the way Lincoln said? Yes, but only a very few of them will. Those who receive a balanced upbringing, with equal emphasis on intellectual, physical, social and emotional development will have the ability to assume leadership roles.

Don't the smartest ones reach the top? Not usually. The people who reach the top of situations such as Lincoln described have had thorough and balanced development in the four streams listed in the previous paragraph, but they also have a great deal of drive and determination to excel. These they usually pick up from their parents, though other sources (mentors) are possible.

Most people in our various societies are drones that get by with sufficient knowledge and skills in what they need to know and do, but know little else beyond that. An architect may not be able to sort recyclables on trash pickup day. A factory worker may know how to change a flat tire, but not how to economize on fuel efficiency and eliminate as much pollution as possible from his vehicle.

We all depend on others to do for us what we can't or don't know how to do ourselves. Mostly we don't do these things because we never learned how. We weren't taught by a parent or grandparent. Most of us know very little and can do very little beyond what we do for a living and what we do as hobbies.

We can't do what we never learned how to do. Most of the fundamentals of what we can do we learned from our parents, either by watching them or by learning from lesson they taught. Or we were prompted by them or some experience we had.

As children we depend on our parents to help us form our world. If they don't help with that (and many don't do it actively and knowingly), we grow up with many misconceptions, misinformation or ignorance about many subjects we should be able to get by with.

Sadly, there are few classes where parents can learn what they need to know and do to be parents and what they need to teach their children to help them with their various kinds of development. Every parent tries to do their best, but few know what they need to know.

Maybe you could get together with some others of your neighbours and encourage your board of education or school administration to launch such a program.

Bill Allin
Turning It Around: Causes and Cures for Today's Epidemic Social Problems, a guidebook for parents who want to know what their children need and when they need it.
Learn more at http://billallin.com