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AS…
As ecosystems are stressed and careen towards collapse…
As the world population increases beyond the limits of capacity…
As communities split apart and are consumed by fear and hatred…
As nations come apart at the seams or barely hang on to some semblance of coherence and sanity…
As cultures lose their identities, but are feared and hated anyway…
As families disintegrate and disperse around the globe…
As religions mesmerize the masses and are lost in the quest for power and money…
As corporations plan their take-over, while abusing their workers…
As politicians seem to have lost all sense of what it means to govern…
As tyrannical despots take over positions of power…
As the use of nuclear weapons moves from past memories to distinct possibilities…
As people lose their senses of empathy, compassion, integrity, and generosity…
We approach a POINT…
A point around which we find ourselves spinning.
We may spin out of control towards total self-destruction.
Or… we may spin into new ways of thinking and relating.
So far, schools and their corporate over-lords have been complicit in the movement toward total collapse.
But, if there is to be any hope, schools must step up and take the lead.
Schools must prepare our children to create new ways to live together and within our ecosystems.
Schools must prepare our children to collaborate and think in more complex and creative ways.
Schools must help children learn to survive and thrive as ecosystems collapse or change.
Our children are the generation that will face the brunt of all that humanity has done wrong.
Welcome to My Consulting and Services Site
This site is dedicated to promoting systems thinking, pattern thinking, and other ways of understanding our world that promote healthy connections and relationships to self, others, society, and the environment.
I worry that we are losing sight of children in schooling. By politicizing schooling, our children have taken on the identity of a number in a box. Politicians aren't really interested in "THE child," only in the political capital they can accumulate by playing on the emotions of the voters. Corporations are only interested in the billions of dollars to be made in tests, curriculums, and books. In addition, our educational institutions focus on educating "heads"… and only the left side of heads at that. This "educating" focuses not only on the logical and rational, but also on the superficial and disconnected. High-stakes testing, narrow and mechanistic views of curriculum, dispassionate and detached views of children, and limited views and visions of learning are "killing" our children. Most children enter school with their intelligence, curiosity, and creativity intact and thriving. However, it doesn't take long to turn them into living "robots," who no longer enjoy learning and who've lost their curiosity, passion, and creativity. Even though each child is unique, schools expect them to conform to some sort of lifeless standard. Children's voices are silenced; and their spirits are deadened. Yet, children are capable of so much more than we can ever imagine. This site and my other sites are devoted to exploring these issues and to pushing the limits of our assumptions about schooling and learning.
My passions focus on helping children and adults learn and grow in ways that will help them to survive and flourish in a challenging world of the future.
Please "contact" me to join the site so that you can participate in the forum and leave comments. By the way, unless I already know you, please tell me a little about yourself and why you want to join, so that I know you're not a spammer.
If you want information on my services and consulting, please click here or on the link near the top of the left sidebar menu.
My work is embedded in the notion of children's abilities to think deeply and creatively. At the same time, they are capable systems thinkers, pattern thinkers, and inquirers who learn through play, talk, and other forms of social interaction. Schools tend to limit their learning and limit the ways in which they communicate what they know. As adults, parents, and educators, we need to provide children with different opportunities to learn, explore, and communicate. In fact, we must provide such opportunities. My work focuses on the complex dynamics of learning and thinking as an ecology of mind, in the way Gregory Bateson conceived. If humanity is to survive, our children need to develop their abilities to learn and think in ways that are consistent with the way natural ecological systems work. And, as their guides, we must rediscover such abilities in ourselves. Many of our systems are stuck… social, political, educational, economic, energy, etc. We need to work at getting these systems unstuck. The video on the right describes the work of the International Bateson Institute, which focuses on just such problems of stuck systems. |
My work with The International Bateson Institute and "How to get systems unstuck." |
Membership
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If you wish to join this site, in order to participate in forums, make comments, and receive occasional newsletters, please use the "Contact" button to request membership or fill out the information in the links below. If I do not already know you, please describe a little bit about yourself and why you wish to join.
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The 8 most recent posts are highlighted below. For more blog entries, visit My Blog at http://blog.jeffbloom.net. I'm trying to put up new blog posts at least weekly, so please check back regularly.
We Need To Pay Attention… & Take Action
Just for curiosity's sake… at about 9:50 pm MST, 2015/08/05, the population was 7,357,073,800. What is it now?
©2015 Jeffrey W. Bloom