Where There's A Will, There's An "A" --
The Ultimate Fall Into Darkness
In our third issue of "Great Education Moves," we gave
our Turkey of the Month award to a set of audio and video cassettes
entitled, "Where There's A Will, There's An 'A'." These
tapes, which are still being promoted by a famous, unnamed movie
actor, are designed to help children improve their grades. If you are
a parent with a child who attends school, we recommend that you
seriously consider buying these tapes if you think that they might be
of help to your child. in fact, we recommend that you consider buying
any such products that might make it easier for your child to attend
school.
We know from our research that every child who attends school is
going to be assassinated--mentally, emotionally, spiritually and
characterologically assassinated. Using these tapes will not prevent
children from being assassinated. However, these tapes will help some
children improve their grades. It is much less painful to be
assassinated while getting good grades than it is to be assassinated
while receiving failing grades. Since children who attend school are
going to be assassinated anyway, we recommend buying these tapes,
because we believe that children should be given any help that is
available to ease their pain while they are being destroyed. We do
not know about you, but we would much rather be assassinated with a
lethal dose of heroin than be tortured to death.
Even the unnamed movie actor who promotes these tapes realizes
that children need all the help they can get to withstand the
destructive educational practices which are used in schools. In order
to convince parents to buy these tapes, he uses a soft, pleading
voice with his audiences. One would almost think that he was asking
parents to contribute to "Save the Children" to help
prevent the children of the world from starving to death. He uses
this pleading voice because he is asking parents to save their
children from the disgrace and humiliation of getting failing grades
in school. In fact, he even reminds parents of the times that they
themselves were faced with failing a subject or doing poorly on a
test. Of course, neither he nor the manufacturers of "Where
There's A Will, There's An 'A'" promise parents that if they buy
these tapes their children will grow up to be healthy, competent
adults with all the skills they will need to lead rich, fulfilling
lives. This is because it does not matter if a child gets all
"A's" or all "F's" in school, he (or she) will
still graduate from high school without any of the skills he needs to
function in adult society.
For our purposes at the Gentle Wind School, having achieved good
grades in school proved to be a serious drawback for the people in
our research project. We attempted to set up an environment in which
our research subjects would have every opportunity to discover their
natural interests in the physical world. We hoped that in providing
our subjects with opportunities to become involved in the physical
world they would be able to discover some of the things they liked to
do and might even find what would best be described as their
individual hearts' desires. Our subjects were given the opportunity
to become involved in numerous physical world activities, including
all aspects of carpentry (house construction, boatbuilding,
cabinetmaking), plumbing, electrical wiring, electronics (including
ham radio), photography, welding, and building and flying model
airplanes. Our subjects represented a wide range of economic, social,
cultural and educational backgrounds. Some had been academic
successes, some had been school failures, and others fell somewhere
in-between
Success in school condemns children and young adults to a world
and a life that is non-experiential. It deprives them of the richness
and fullness that they would have found in life had they been able to
fulfill their own individual and unique destinies.
After working with our subjects for several years in the best
possible environment, we found that the people who had done well in
school were the least able to become involved in any of these
physical world activities. They were only able to become minimally
involved in those activities which they perceived as carrying some
kind of social status or prestige in the way that getting good grades
carries social status and prestige. Furthermore, people who did well
in school operated under the false impression that they were able to
do things that they actually could not do. The fact that someone is
able to do well in school only means that that person has the ability
to memorize unrelated data bits. There are no other skills conveyed
in the classroom. People who did well in school believed that
achieving good grades meant that they actually knew something about
how to do things in the world. But in fact, getting good grades in
school is antithetical to finding out about anything in physical
reality. Furthermore, the people in our subject population who had
done well in school tended to be so self-assured and self-serving
that it was difficult for them to take assistance from anyone outside
of themselves. The subjects in our project who had been the most
successful in school required the most work and were the least able
to become involved in physical world activities. On the other hand,
the subjects in our project who had not done well in school were more
able to take help from outside of themselves and were more able to
become involved in physical world activity. For the purposes of our
project, subjects who had not done well in school required the least
amount of work and were able to achieve the most positive results.
We also found that the people in our subject population who had
been the most successful in school and achieved the highest grades
were, in general, the least able to relate to other people. They had
the most difficulty figuring out how their behaviors affect other
people. This is because people with good memories can always be
successful in school. Since having the ability to memorize unrelated
data bits is all that is required of them, everything they do in the
classroom is supported and applauded. In a sense, they can do no
wrong. Academically successful people therefore assume that
everything that they do in their personal relationships is just great
and that they can do no wrong. Furthermore, academic success requires
that people disconnect themselves from the needs and feelings of
others and focus all their resources into memorizing unrelated data.
When academically successful people get out of school, they are so
disconnected from reality and so assured that everything they are
doing is just great, that they are unable to perceive how their
behaviors affect others around them. Academically successful people
get out of school and go out and lay mine fields in their personal
lives. Physicians are probably the best example of society's greatest
school success stories, and they tend to have dreadful personal lives
when it comes to relating to their spouses and children, not to
mention their inability to relate to their patients.
Homeschooled children, incidentally, even very intelligent
children and children with very good memories, do not develop any of
these problems. Only academically successful children who have been
educated in government-run schools lose their ability to see how they
affect other people. This is not to say that there are not some
children who do well in school who are sensitive to other people,
because there are. These children, however, are rare exceptions. And
these exceptions are held up as examples by educators of what schools
can produce. In reality, schools destroy the majority of the
children's ability to relate to other human beings.
While these are the results of what we discovered at the Gentle
Wind School, parents who are sending their children to school are
looking for very different results from what we are looking for.
Parents who have sent their children to school are looking for good
grades because that is the nature of the educational system. As the
unnamed movie actor who promotes "Where There's A Will, There's
An 'A"' readily admits in his television commercials,
"Grades are everything." And he's right.
We must mention here that these tapes entitled, "Where
There's A Will, There's An 'A'," would be more accurately named,
"Where There's No Will, There's An 'A'." The reason for
this is that if a person, even a child, had real will, he or she
would also have character. Doing something as dysfunctional as trying
to achieve good grades in carved-up, uninteresting, disconnected and
unrelated subject matter is incompatible with real will and
character.
The fact that someone is able
to do well in school only means that that person has the ability to
memorize unrelated data bits. There are no others skills conveyed in
the classroom.
These tapes, "Where There's A Will, There's An 'A',"
were designed for children and young adults who have been stripped of
their character and who have no will left, but who (for various
reasons) have been unable to identify with the false claims and
erroneous assumptions about the nature of reality offered to them by
educators. These tapes were cleverly engineered to bridge this gap in
these children and to enable them to identify with the false claims
and erroneous assumptions of educators enough to want to achieve good
grades. Once these children and young adults identify with the way
the educators perceive the nature of reality, they are able to
succeed in school. But, educators live in the non-reality oriented
world of non-experience. Success in school condemns children and
young adults to a world and a life that is non-experiential. It
deprives them of the richness and fullness that they would have found
in life had they been able to fulfill their own individual and unique
destinies.
However, if you are a parent with children who attend school, your
goal is not to help your children achieve their individual destinies.
Neither government-run schools nor private schools are designed for
this purpose. Schools assume that children have no individual
personal destinies and that children have been put on this earth
without purpose. Educators assume that all children are the same and
should be treated in the same way, regardless of their personal
interests, talents, skills, hopes or dreams. Educators force children
under conditions of extreme psychological duress to pursue grades and
ignore their personal destinies.
If you are a homeschooling parent or a homebirthing parent who
might one day choose to teach your children at home, we strongly urge
you to stay away from products like "Where There's A Will,
There's An 'A'." These products are of no use to parents who
believe in the individual personal destinies of their children.
The thinking behind "Where There's a Will, There's an
'A'" is typical educators' thinking. The motto of most educators
is that if life deals you lemons, then the best thing you can do is
make lemonade. In other words, educators believe that it is noble to
make the best of a bad situation. The problem with this idea is that
some situations are so bad that human beings should not be subjected
to them. Schools are one of these situations.
Academic success requires that
people disconnect themselves from the needs and feelings of others
and focus all their resources into memorizing unrelated data.
But educators think that if life deals you lemons, it is okay to
go on a steady diet of lemonade, even though too much lemonade can
kill you. Educators believe it is okay to just go ahead and give
children a steady diet of lemonade even though the overdose of acid
is making the children sick. Every day, educators stand before their
classes and say, "Now children, who wants some more
lemonade?" And the children, who have been stripped of their
individual character, say, "We do, we do." So it is with
grades. Educators know that grading is harmful and destructive to
children. Educators know from their own research that grading
children does not motivate them or improve their academic
performance. They know that grades only reflect how much a child is
able to memorize and retain about a particular subject on a
particular day. But the cry of the beleaguered educator is,
"Yes, I know these things. I know that the system is bad, but we
just have to make the best of a bad situation." The
manufacturers and promoters of "Where There's a Will, ?'here's
an 'A"' also know that grades are destructive to children. But,
like educators, they too believe that people should use these tapes
and make the best of a bad situation. It has not occurred to
educators or the manufacturers of these tapes that children should
not be placed in this bad situation in the first place. They just
assume that we are stuck with these lemons, stuck with these grades,
so let's make lemonade and have children drink it all day long, even
though the overdose of lemon juice is poisoning them.
While these tapes will definitely help some children improve their
grades and thus make it easier for them to withstand the tortures of
school, this cannot be accomplished without a price. You could say
that "Where There's A Will, There's An 'A', someone is going to
pay!" Educators and parents who send their children to
government-run or private schools have come to the conclusion that
life is a course in which children and adults should strive to get an
"A." This idea is promoted every day in classrooms
throughout this nation. Yet, in reality, life is not a course, nor
does real life resemble any course that is offered to children in
school. Nowhere in real life are human beings graded on their ability
to memorize unrelated data bits except in school.
When children and young adults are exposed to "Where There's
A Will, There's An 'A'," they are driven further into the false
conclusion that all of life is a course in which they should strive
to get an "A." Employers should be especially cautious in
hiring anyone who has used these tapes because once exposed to
"Where There's A Will, There's An 'A'," children and young
adults are going to try to change the structure and the nature of
reality. They are going to take a four or five-dimensional reality
and try to make it a one or two-dimensional reality in order to
support the idea that life is a course in which they should strive to
get an "A." Employers should be wary because these people
are going to try to turn the company into a course in which they can
personally achieve an "A."
Some employers in this nation have already discovered that hiring
superstar "A" students from prestigious business schools
can lead to some very serious problems because these competitive
"A" types do not work well in groups. The superstar
"A" students are locked into doing only those things that
will promote them personally and yield them the highest personal
gain, while the less academically successful people are more able to
do the things that will promote the interests of the company as a
whole.
This nation is already burdened with self-promoting, self-serving,
unintelligent jerks from the "A" system who use memory and
ambition to cover up a lack of real intelligence. One need only look
at what is happening in the stock market, the banks and in many of
this nation's large corporations to see what the "A"
students do to an economy or a company. We would suggest that readers
look at the grade averages of those people who are responsible for
the destruction of this nation's Savings and Loans, for example.
The problem with products like "Where There's A Will, There's
An 'A"' is that the people who design and promote these products
have chosen to ignore all the evidence which suggests that what is
going on in schools is destructive to children. They act as if they
did not know that human beings should not be fed material that has
been taken out of context and which has no relevance to them in their
personal lives. They act as if they did not know that humiliating and
punishing children causes children severe psychological harm.
Educators and parents who send
their children to government-run or private schools have come to the
conclusion that life is a course in which children and adults should
strive to get an "A." This idea is promoted every day in
classrooms throughout this nation.
"Where There's A Will, There's An 'A"' may just catch on
and produce a whole new generation of self-promoting, self-serving
political and industrial leaders. Employers, if you think that you
have been seeing some unidentifiable, random crap coming your way
fresh out of this nation's schools, wait until you see the happy
campers who have been exposed to "Where There's A Will, There's
An 'A'." These people will set a new benchmark in self-promotion
and unbridled self-interest.
Furthermore, the current educational system is designed to support
two aspects of humanity only, memory and ambition. These tapes
encourage children and young adults to channel all their existing
resources into memory and ambition for the purpose of getting an
"A." Memory and ambition combined together produce
cunning. Cunning is this society's substitute for real intelligence.
Intelligence is a result of real knowledge combined with the
experience of relatedness to others. Educators refuse to offer
children real knowledge, and educators punish children when they try
to talk or relate to others. Cheerleaders are necessary at school
football games and sports events because the players out on the field
have lost the knowledge that the people in the stands are there to
support them. The players and the audiences have to be intensely
stimulated by the cheerleaders in order to get a minimal response
from the players to the support being given to them by their fans.
Perhaps with the help of the author of "Where There's A Will,
There's An 'A'," along with the unnamed movie actor who promotes
these tapes, humanity will get a good, big dose of cunning. Perhaps
then people will be able to decide whether they want their schools to
promote intelligence. It also appears that, if enough parents buy
these tapes, people will also get a good dose of the mental and
emotional destruction that is promoted in schools. These tapes kill
off any particles of personal, individual interests, talents, goals
or dreams that might be left in a child after being exposed to
schools, and they teach children to use all their remaining resources
to memorize and retain useless pieces of data. "Where There's A
Will, There's An 'A'" insures mental and emotional death. One
need only look at the deadened faces of the people in the commercials
for these tapes who claim to have used them with great success. Any
bioenergetics therapist who could get 20 of these people in therapy
would be set for life, because trying to get these emotionally
deadened corpses to emote would be a life's work.
Even educators know from the research they have done on themselves
that children learn only through direct personal experiences, and
that rote memorization is one of the least effective ways for human
beings to learn about anything. Even educators know that children
learn best in small groups of five or less and that small children
under the age of nine have to be coerced into doing school work
because they are too young to be separated from their parents in the
first place.
All of this information about the destructive aspects of current
educational practices is common knowledge. Yet the designers and
promoters of "Where There's A Will, There's An 'A"' act as
if none of this information existed. What these people are really
saying to parents is, "We know how to destroy your children more
efficiently and effectively than ever before. We know how to do these
deadly things to children with great success!"
In our final issue of "Great Education Moves," we
predicted that this educational system is so destructive that it is
destined to collapse in the next decade. These tapes represent the
ultimate prop to this failing educational system and the ultimate
fall into darkness. Hopefully, these tapes will be so effective in
destroying children who might otherwise not have been so corrupted by
school, that they will, help to bring about this collapse at a more
rapid rate than we had previously predicted.
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