I am a teacher and a lifelong learner.
In Sanskrit, a guru is a teacher. The word guru broken down is ‘a dispeller of darkness’, where darkness is a lack of knowledge. Teachers are seen as awakeners who bring the light of dawn that brings flowers to bloom. A true teacher intersects with each student to bring out the most beautiful solutions in them. This type of teacher would give different answers to the same question depending on who asked it.
I have a lot to learn from the teachers and also from the students here in Nepal.
I was a teacher in the San Francisco bay area… probably the most privileged part of the world… with kids who had access to many opportunities… and who actually had very caring, conscious parents…
And yet they did not always act like angels… often the opposite. Of course I still love them, and they are angels. Though the kids who were so kind and caring and respectful and thoughtful and sweet always seemed special and stood out to all the teachers… and yet that seemed standard in my travels in other parts of the world… even in teenagers.
It’s not their fault… they are just sensitive sponges… trying to figure out how to learn and grow in this crazy confusing world where we are so completely disconnected from everything worth caring about and told and sold to fill that hole with commercial crap. And kids are often raised by robots and screens… and an education system designed to dumb them down… and adults who also have a lot of learning and unlearning and healing to do. And they are being poisoned by the things that are meant to nourish them.
Don’t get me wrong… I’m definitely not blaming the parents… I am just blaming the imperialist racist capitalist heteropatriarchy.
Guru Aama gave me the Nepali nickname Savitri, meaning innocence, which she said is a great goddess virtue. I have noticed that even the adults here have an openhearted innocence. They spend their days loving and laughing and singing and dancing and glowing. I don’t remember ever seeing either of my parents doing any of those things. In many ways the adults here are actually more responsible and less childish, yet more childlike. How can we expect our children to hold onto their sweetness in a society that seems to so easily steal our hearts and souls and humanity?
I also have learned here that children need fierce love, and it can be fierce, but it is love… and it is unconditional.
So what’s up with the kids here? I couldn’t even be their teacher… I would have to be their student.
Maybe because they live and learn a respect for themselves, each other, their teachers, their elders, and the earth… that fits into the context of the culture and community they live in?
And children imitate what they see.
So what do we want them to imitate?
I feel like if we can answer this question we will find the solution to saving the world.
Please nepalese children teach me.
This is for the little chitlins…
I remember the day someone said to me that knowledge is power
And I remember the days when I was making good grades
Straight A’s
I was a classic school geek
Well if knowledge is power why did I feel so weak
If knowledge is liberating why didn’t I feel free
Well like any good geek I sought the answers to these questions
And now I see our system of education is a prison
That teaches kids a lesson
And practices these seven deadly sins
#1
A prison, by definition, is a place of restriction of liberty
And the fact that school is forced by law seems involuntary to me
#2
So now how do we force kids to do what we want them to
Well we can’t use the cane
But we can exploit their emotions of pride and shame
By grading and ranking
And comparison and competition
#3
This education system interferes with the innate nature for cooperation
#4
And interferes with the development of self-direction
Kids naturally know how to play in ways
That teach them about the world
And they have the mentality to take responsibility for their own reality
#5
And while we all love to learn
To know
To grow
Please tell me
Why we call learning ‘work’
That breeds so much anxiety
Kids will say “no thanks”
Instead of “yes please”
#6
And if noone can learn everything
Why do we insist that everyone learn the same things
Instead of pursuing their own interests
#7
And I won’t even start with the way
Kids learn to take tests
Instead of think for themselves
And why do I know more about the number pi than about how to eat healthy
And more about philosophy than my own body
Or more about the solar system and spaceships
Than how to have healthy self esteem and relationships
And why didn’t I learn how to fix a tire til I broke down in traffic
And does anyone else think it is tragic
To learn how to make good grades
But not how to make music or magic
Because I promise you I did not learn this poem in school
#Que sueñes con los angelitos