Teaching Pro-kindness

I read something the other day by a wise thinker which said ‘Educating our children’s minds without educating their hearts is no education at all’. This got me thinking about the purpose of education. What exactly are we wanting future generations to create in this world? What we teach is what they are likely to become.

So I started to question how our ‘systems’ are currently ordered and whether this current ‘system’ is still fit for purpose in our ever changing world. As a Personal Development Coach with a background in education and youth work I am keen to develop the minds of our youth, but what about their hearts? I would like to see the creation of an education system that encourages and develops the potential of each young person, within an environment of compassion and kindness. I would like to encourage each young person to strive for excellence in the endeavours they are passionate about, which set their souls alight. I would like to see ‘lifelong learning’ become the norm, not the exception.

Do we really know ‘how’ to get the best out of our children?

Do we know ‘how’ to get the best out of ourselves?

I would like to see environments where we promote the ethos of ‘No such thing as failure, only feedback’, whereby young people are encouraged to push out the boundaries of what we currently know without the fear of failure. I know there are some thinkers who think we need to ‘fail’ in order to grow, in order to learn but ‘feedback’ and ‘failure’, albeit just words, create a very different learning environment. We need to provide opportunities for those who wish to learn, to improve, to find their own ceiling, to do just that. We need to find ways of re-engaging with those families who are switched off from education altogether due to negative past experiences and we need to do this within a culture of kindness. I enjoy competition, and yes, life is in itself competitive, but we also need co-operation. Are we in this together?

Can we promote systems that allow young people to find their own ceilings in life rather than a ‘professional’ imposing (through testing) very early on in their lives, their own view of what they can and can’t achieve in life? I agree there must be some assessment of progress, I get that, but what I am saying is that many children develop their ‘talents’ later in their childhoods, yet have been discouraged from pursuing their interests because they have been ‘compared’ to others and feel that it is not worth pursuing their area of interest because they are ‘just not good enough’!
What about if EVERY child and young person understood that we each have a ‘role’ in the world to serve each other, for the benefit of each other? That we all have something of value to bring into this world? How might I show up differently if I KNEW without doubt, that what I had to offer the world mattered? That I mattered.

I’m a fan of pro-kindness; a fan of helping each of us to reach our true potential as human beings, with whatever we’ve been born with. I’m a fan of bringing out the gifts. So pro-kindness starts with us:

As educators what kind of role models are we for our future generations?

How do we SHOW children and young people how to pursue excellence in an educational environment of humility and compassion rather than hostility and aggression?

I feel that if we can be encouragers of finding the best in our children and young people we will more than likely watch them flourish rather than perish.