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.