The Independence of the Supreme Court has been captured by those rabid in their religious/autocratic beliefs. They are tied to billionaires who hide behind corporate veils and are sick and tired of having to be responsible players on this planet. How long can these zealots be allowed to commit such disgusting crimes as the compromise of the Supreme Court?

For several years Americans have been following the research, information and insights provided by Rhode Island Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse about the scheme that was developed by Leonard Leo and other fanatic Catholics (Yes, those responsible including the five so-called conservatives on the Supreme Court, are rabid Catholics who believe in medieval authoritarian dictatorship). Their sick beliefs about women and women’s rights are so out of step with the majority of Americans that they represent only the smallest minority. These evil people, who set out to capture America, have attached themselves to billionaires and multimillionaires who believe that No government should serve the needs of the people or the planet.

They operate with a rape-rip-and run philosophy. They must be exposed and held responsible.

The capture of the Supreme Court is the result of years of well-planned subversive activity. Roe vs Wade sucker-punched women and the majority of men. Citizens United allowed dark money into politics to buy, defeat, contaminate, or disrupt fair and representative government. These seditionists were also able to infiltrate state governments in attempts to destroy voter’s rights. Remember, the captured Supreme Court also destroyed the Voter Rights Act.

This is not the first time democracy has been under assault. History shows us a repeating pattern of fascist actors whose primary goal is toreplasce democracy with autocracy. Much is known about the plans to destroy the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, and yet those responsible for preserving the American dream have turned a blind eye and let the infiltrators get away with it time and time again. During the last 60 years of America’s story, those who have committed these vile crimes have been rescued from punishment by the corruption of our judicial system. Be aware of the damage senators like Mitch McConnell and a handful of others have done. Pay attention. Listen to their words. Be aware of their deeds. Yes, there is rot in Congress. Don’t forgive them, for they know exactly what they are doing. If you find them guilty, Vote them out.

The wolf has ripped the fabric of society. If it gets in even the great hunters like Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse will be pulled down and quieted for the length of the dark age that is almost upon us.

If it really is darkest before the dawn then there is hope for the world. We all imagine the storm will blow itself out. We are waiting, hoping the door will hold.

You are not their best buddy. And they do not exist for you to use them to figure out your own problems. You provide guidance by your example and your understanding of unselfish love. By your example, you provide ways of dealing with discomfort, hate, joy, judgment, fear, discipline, support, and how you deal with adversity. Doing this requires a parent to become aware of their own life choices and not to pass on contaminated or wrong information to the child. You model effective and necessary actions that they must understand are appropriate even if in your own life you often take other paths.

As a parent you now have the responsibility of building a foundation for another human being that is not limited by your own programming or experiences. Good parenting passes along the goodness, and all the things that will help them become beautiful beings. When parenting is no longer necessary, hopefully by mutual agreement, the friendship and deep bonds of love you have shared flow naturally.

Learning boxed stuff and regurgitating it back on tests that are really teaching devices is the basis of our past educational systems. Formulas or data or partial information may have been necessary in the past, but it is now of little or no value. Information of all types is immediately available and is many times more accurate than anything taught by humans, books, or computer programs. Our students have infinite resources at their fingertips. This library of information far exceeds the capacity and capabilities of human brains. To survive in their future, children need to know how to access, understand, and apply information; how to live in a world that isn’t based on mastering data or partial learning about how things work.

Educational systems must still teach young children the basics of reading writing and arithmetic so that they can access the information they need and use it, as philosopher John Dewey pointed out more than a century ago, to make a contribution to themselves and to society.

Because it is impossible to compete with AI, we are seeing the end of competition, one against another, which we once believed motivated humans to get higher scores on tests or to be successful. Physical competition in sports may work, but that kind of competition does not enhance education. It is obvious that the qualities of human beings which result in collaboration and focus on more profound and much more meaningful challenges will ensure that humankind can work with alien intelligence.

Experiential learning enhanced by collaborative processes and non-restrained thinking redefines human intelligence that is not boxed-in by our past approaches. In essence, our students must be taught to think outside of the boxed subjects (disciplines) which are held rigidly in place by walls of tests, measurements, and archaic philosophies. Those who thought and processed information that exists outside of the box were penalized or … they became the leaders of entirely new industries like Microsoft, Apple, Amazon, Google, or space-age technologies.

We must accept that these expanded ways of thinking increase the capacity of the human mind in an evolutionary process that lets us use artificial intelligence as a tool to help perpetuate our species.

About the time you are learning how to modulate the messages you are sending to your children, you become aware that you are embedding emotions that belong only to you into their operating systems. As an example, my mom had an extreme reaction to spiders. The sight of even a tiny eight-legged creature almost paralyzed her. One of my earliest recollections – perhaps I was three years old – was of my mom, back against the wall, begging me to “step on it and kill it”. From that day forward, through much of my adult life, I carried her fear of spiders.

As a parent, I want our kids to know that some spiders are dangerous and there are ways to avoid them. Broken glass is also dangerous, so is sticking a fork into an electrical outlet. So is touching a hot stove. A parent who passes on personal unsubstantiated fears is actually programming and limiting the child’s future options.

Just because someone in my mother’s past was afraid of spiders, she passed that fear onto my mother. My mother passed it on to me. I was fortunate enough, through introspection, to break that chain of misinformation. I often wonder how many other chains of misinformation I’m passing on to my kids. I’ve found some whoppers just in time.

As we taught our sons the names for objects and people, we realized that the English language was limited in words to adequately describe human emotions like love. Some cultures, have names for every type and condition of snow  It is so fundamental to their survival that they require a rich vocabulary to describe it. You would think that the concept of love would necessitate the same in the English language. Instead, we say we love hamburgers, our mate, and a fishing pole.

The English language severely limits what we can communicate about the emotion called love. We use the same word love to refer to an emotion so strong and powerful that it dominates us and for simple inanimate objects. This four-letter word requires the listener to interpret the context and differentiate the meaning.

By our actions as parents, we must teach our children how to love each other and how to receive love. We must also teach them that it’s okay to love ice cream. Personally, almost 40 years after the birth of our sons, great feelings and energy bursts from my heart when I tell them that I love them. I assume they know I’m not talking about my love for lilies blooming in the pond or yellow curry.

(Part 7 of 7)

A few years ago, I created the Facebook site, Education For Their Future Not Our Past. I was aware that with the coming of AI, the way we presently educate students is ineffective and does not prepare students for their future. The idea that students need a head full of facts and data is wrong. Today, right now, facts and data, in fact all information is provided by AI. What students need to survive in the future is the ability to use all this available information to make a contribution to themselves and to society.

Why? What human beings can hold in their brains is incomplete, partial knowledge and often incorrect. Curricula centered on teaching partial and often biased information must give way to AI systems that are readily available and easily accessed by Siri, Alexa, Google and others. Even our testing and measurement devices are inaccurate and must be replaced. Entire philosophies behind measurement like the SAT and ACT must now be bypassed in favor of new “tests” that have not yet been developed because limited human brains cannot grasp what skills we need to collaborate with AI.

There are a few things we do know. We know that children must master basic skills like reading writing and arithmetic. Education at the elementary school level must still teach the basics, and collaboration to solve real problems. Major changes are required at the secondary level as we end competitive systems that result in winners and losers. Preparing all of us for the future requires collaboration. It requires experiential learning and involvement with multi-age groups. It signals the end of the inculcation of canned information. How we deal with these changes will require new ways for humans to work together to partner with a super intelligence.

(Part 6 of 7)

I think that some people imagine that experiential education is what happens if you don’t wash the dirt off your hands before eating. To Jo and me it meant leasing our home for a year, packing our belongings in backpacks, buying airline tickets and Eurail passes and stepping into the future. Alex was just 11 and Nate would turn 8 in a month on the Eiffel Tower in Paris. A teacher asked us if we were taking curriculum guides and workbooks. We knew where she was coming from. We didn’t intend to teach canned lessons. We intended to learn new things together as a family. We didn’t plan to be their teachers. The boys kept journals and were involved in budgeting and all the decisions we had to make as we ventured out. The communities we became a part of, even for a short time, were our schools.

When we returned to Sedona, we learned that the legislature had turned the charter school system into a way for individuals to tap into state funds and become wealthy.

A few months later we took off for another year of what we called “travel learning” and discovered America East of the 100^th Meridian. When we returned, we knew that the boys needed to have experiences in secondary school and teenage communities. I visited nearby Prescott and spent some time evaluating the Mile High Middle School where Nate would go. I discovered one the best middle schools I had ever evaluated. Jay Collier, the principal, had remarkable insights into education centered on each child.

For Alex, who was entering high school, we were able to identify and select exceptional teachers. The biggest problem was that our sons were far ahead of other students in some areas and needed time to catch up in other disciplines. They were highly motivated to learn and self-direct their education. They soon filled in the gaps.

We had been warned that by taking our kids out of school they would never be graduated from high school or able to enter college. The school’s testing programs showed that they both had average intelligence, but according to the tests they were not “gifted”. This advice made sense if you bought into the idea that our educational testing systems measured real aptitudes and not just the ability to regurgitate data. Or if we believed that the education programs prepared kids for their future. We were not intimidated. After graduating from high school, three years apart, both were admitted to the Barrett Honors College at Arizona State University.

Alex went on to receive his MA from Copenhagen University with a perfect score on his Master’s Thesis. As part of a 5-person team, he won the Communication Case Competition, sponsored that year by Maersk—one of Denmark’s largest and most prestigious corporations. As a Youth Goodwill Ambassador for Denmark, he had the opportunity to join multiple sessions with HRH Prince Joachim of Denmark. He has written and podcasted extensively about Danish society. He published his first book, Practical Curiosity, in 2017. It is a delightful examination of human growth and development. He still volunteers to help new students at the University. For the past nine years he has worked at one of Europe’s largest Adtech companies and currently holds an important position as Senior Product Marketing Director. He is an award-winning photographer who recently secured a top 10 placement in NatGeo’s global Photo of the Year competition, has traveled widely, continues to maintain his website, VirtualWayfarer, and recently designed and launched MistDefender, a unique photography accessory.

David (aka Nate) loves theatre and the arts. In high school, he was an active member of the Prescott show choir, the theatre program, and president of the Prescott High School Key Club. Following his passion for understanding the wider world, David attended Arizona State University and Barrett the Honors College studying the international system (Global Studies). He was graduated from the Honors College Magna Cum Laude. He interned for 20 weeks at the United States Consulate in Milan, Italy and while there improved and used his Italian in his day-to-day work. He served in the Peace Corps in Zambia, Africa for 3 Years, the first two years in a remote community, and the third year as Peace Corps Volunteer Leader, supporting Peace Corps across Southern Province. He speaks Bemba, certified in 2011 as advanced-mid level. He was identified by the European Union as an Erasmus Mundus Scholar, awarded a scholarship and support to relocate to Europe and complete a master degree. He studied in Poland for a year and Denmark for a year successfully completing his studies with a 12/12, the highest score, on his masters thesis. For the last five and a half years he has been an advisor in the International Work Group for Indigenous Affairs (IWGIA). At IWGIA he was general editor for the Indigenous World 2019, organizing an exhibition on Indigenous Peoples during the United Nations Permanent Forum on Indigenous Issues 2019, and from December 2018 has acted as program coordinator on the Indigenous Navigator project, which now supports Indigenous Peoples in 30 countries to monitor and report on their rights. In that capacity, he has traveled and conducted workshops and training sessions in Africa, the Arctic, Asia, and Central America. He has provided support, worked together with UN mechanisms, and participated directly in official proceedings of the UN, and particularly those bodies working with Human Rights and Biodiversity in New York and Geneva.

These are two examples of the many students that my co-host Dan Kenley and I interviewed on our podcast, Insights into Education. They are positive evidence that experiential learning works. We know that it takes many communities to grow our kids. Our educational systems can do much more to prepare students for their future.

(Continued in Part 7: https://www.edwardfberger.com/2024/05/03/finding-and-building-community-7/ )

(PART 5 OF 7)

When Jo and I left Crow Canyon, we decided that parenthood would be the most important focus of our lives. As the boys neared school-age we studied the educational systems driving the schools our children might attend. We did not find any educational program or community school program that based its curricula on each child’s individual needs. In essence, we were looking for a school that did not force the equal treatment of unequals.

We wanted a school that did not make students of the same age but different developmental levels compete. We knew that in many ways girls mature earlier than boys. Perhaps this is nature’s way of preparing females to be mothers as soon as they reach puberty. Males have different levels of maturity. When boys and girls of the same age are forced to compete, they are damaged. I have observed that young boys do not recover from this competition until they are in high school, if ever.

We were looking for a school where students learn to collaborate. If students are working together to solve real problems, and not to best each or shy away from each other, a tension is relieved. That kind of tension can destroy self-images and a love of learning. It is no accident that Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts have different programs, or that combining these programs results in boys dropping out.

I traveled in 22 different countries looking for an educational program based upon children’s needs. I have spent years trying to supplement and enrich the structures that were put in place because the planners devised systems to inculcate values believed necessary to conform future factory workers.

The educational programs that became the backbone of Crow Canyon were all designed to do what Montessori had urged us to understand a century before when she said: You cannot teach a child well whom you don’t know well.

In Sedona, a community of parents and educators adapted many Montessori programs. A great leader, Kathy Levin, welcomed our sons and soon asked Jo to be codirector of the Montessori school. That was about the time that the State Board of Education introduced the charter school option. Had the Board of Education been allowed to keep a tight rein on the development of charter schools, Arizona would be a national model for education. Instead, a State Board for Charter Schools was formed. The promise of accountability was lost.

A community group from Sedona met for months and produced a remarkable model for the Sedona Charter School. It carefully followed the directives of the State Board of Education. We opened the 2^nd charter school in the state of Arizona. Within a year, all that knowledge and insight and child-centered educational programs were ignored as the legislature made sure that the charter school system was turned into a free-flowing tap of money for private individuals. Communities and children be damned.

As it happened the legislature took away control of the charters and created a State Board for Charter Schools. Arizona has suffered greatly, especially the children, from the greed of elected representatives.

(Continued in Part 6: https://www.edwardfberger.com/2024/05/03/finding-and-building-community-6/ )

Part 4 of 7

Nations full of good people understand that they can enhance the value of their own lives by working together and building collaborative communities. As this happens, fewer people are isolated and alone. These ways of organizing to solve structural and/or social challenges are multi-age experiences that should involve every member of the society.

It doesn’t matter where you live you must be involved with groups working to improve and enrich the quality of lives. What COVID taught us is that individuals working in isolation have extremely high suicide rates. The rise of self-inflicted death rates is alarming, especially the percentage of deaths of young girls. Young men, veterans, and the homeless find that the final solution to their anguish is death. In almost every one of these tragic cases, isolation due to the lack of belonging to a supportive community focused on collaboration and problem solving can be identified as a major cause of their inability to fight futility.

In our society we remove young people from the society and the broad spectrum of multi-age, multi-generational contacts that humans need. Many have never learned how to join or form communities that provide positive support systems. If they had these experiences and this information it is likely they would not feel that there is no purpose to life. In tourist-centered towns like Sedona, communities have formed around artists, business owners, developers, and educators. Moving into a new community it may seem like all the slots are already filled with others. On closer examination, one usually finds that they are needed. If they have children, especially young children, there are always ways they can be involved to support the educational programs. If they are adults, they have many more options. However, if they are teenagers, they soon learn that they are not needed. What the greater communities have not learned is that if young people are not involved as part of the community, they form gangs and other support systems that often show their contempt by acts like spray painting graffiti, defacing public restrooms, and committing status crimes. They often direct their frustration into self-abuse.

(Continued in Part 5: https://www.edwardfberger.com/2024/05/02/finding-and-building-community-5/)