On Monday in Sheffield a child was murdered by someone in his own age group. Channel 4 reported a doubling of attacks on teachers and 5,000 violent injuries on school staff per annum. Just over a year ago Ruth Perry ended her life after she received her OFSTED (standards in education) review.
Upward trends in our mental and social problems establish that our pre-existing approaches are failing to deliver required improvements. Focusing our efforts on tackling the symptoms of these trends is failing to address the relevant root causes.
The root causes are to be found in our paradigms (unconscious mindsets) which are responsible for:
- Our interpretations of life circumstances
- Our sense of urgency or lack of it
- Our decisions and actions or lack of them
Substantial improvements in mental health and societal problems can only be achieved by:
- Addressing the real root paradigm causes
- Making functional paradigms accessible to students, parents and teachers
You might be asking yourself:
How on earth are we supposed to develop new paradigms for teachers, students and parents?
If we really want to improve the situation, we can use insight gained from paradigm progress in healthcare.
Doctors treated ‘symptoms’ for centuries, mediaeval medical interventions often did more harm than good. But by understanding the real root cause of many diseases enables the development of healthcare education.
Now most people know that their health is likely to be:
- Negatively impacted by tobacco and alcohol
- Positively improved by a healthy diet and taking regular exercise
Healthcare education is in the best interest of both the patient and the healthcare system. Through education smoking rates have fallen from 73% among adults to 11.6% in 2022.
Part of our educational paradigm is that education will:
- Prepare young people to join our society
- Equip them with the skills to make a positive contribution
Escalating mental health problems and the killing of fellow citizens suggest the current system is not achieving its intended outcomes.
The academic curriculum includes ‘History’ enabling students to spend hundreds of hours learning about atrocities carried out by one race or nation upon another. Our paradigms take in messages unconsciously, in this case the unconscious message is that when things do not fit in with our view or agenda we can resort to violence.
Do you know of any Schools and Universities which have ‘Future Paradigms’ on the curriculum?
Can you imagine the fundamental and achievable transformation to be gained by teaching children and young people how to proactively manage their own mental health? And would things be better if we taught many of our students in Universities to think systemically for societal improvements?
We would need to change the current reliance on theoretical academic models currently on offer but instead teach practical paradigm development tools which build mental health into people at an early stage in their lives.
When trying to tackle our mental and social problems the current paradigm includes:
- Writing an Academic report
- Collecting mental health and injury data
- Treating the symptoms rather than causes of mental disturbance
I have found a more proactive approach delivers better results….
Action: I have already designed and implemented a mental fitness programme, Optimising Your Own Performance (OYOP). Rather than treating symptoms OYOP equips people with a mental fitness skillset to take responsibility for managing and improving their own mental health. Results here.
Action: I will make the OYOP programme available via pro bono online evening webinars to any teachers who think they would be benefit from enhanced mental strength if they are willing to commit to one evening a week during term time. In the first instance if you would like to receive the pro bono development could you email Adoni Mais, who is Momentum’s Head of European Student Development at doni.mais@achieving-momentum.com.
Action: I will provide an introductory OYOP webinar available to teachers and anyone else who has commitments during the day on March 6, 19:00-21:00 (GMT). Sign up here.
Action: I will deliver a webinar for parents to teach them how to provide their offspring with paradigms which will reverse the deteriorating social trends in the future on March 11, 18:00-20:00 (GMT). Sign up here.
Action: If you know anyone who would benefit from improvements in confidence, happiness and achievement please can you let them know about the actions I will be taking to support their development?
Action: If you are responsible for educational policy or leading an educational establishment you can find out more about my previous contributions in the public interest here.
