I visited today a local elementary school to find out if they would be willing to cooperate in a research project about the current reading abilities of the children. I talked to the principal and presented the projects and all the benefits for the children, parents and the school. All that school was to do is to hand flyers with forms to the children and they would return the filled forms from the interested parents.
However the principal explained that she is afraid about the reaction of the parents since she already had a very negative experience once. She explained that someone suggested to have the Transcendental meditation in the the school for the children a while ago. Soon after the announcement, some parents went on the internet and found bunch of negative articles about this trademarked form of meditation.
I have heard about TM before and from what I have found out is that this meditation is promising to deliver a high stage of enlightenment and one is also to pay a couple of thousand dollars for the advanced lessons. While there is nothing ilegal with charging lesson fees, I personally also find this kind of meditation to be harmful and a typical love & light deception.
But the main point here is that the principal developed a strong fear of future criticism based on the past experience. However there is always a reason behind every event. Our thinking and behavior patterns create experiences in life where we are taught about our limitations. One is to learn on this lessons and take self-responsibility and not develop a pattern of fear by projecting a responsibility onto others.
One needs to understand that there will always be criticism from others and there will be always a negative publicity about every single product on the web and no one can do much about it. And there are also those who basically criticize anything and everything simply for the pleasure of criticizing and that is in fact a projected low self-esteem.
It is best to learn on past mistakes and see what could be done different, but then be open to the new events without pre-judging them. Everything is new it this moment, everything constantly changes and past needs to be constantly released in order to be able to accept the present reality. It is of course wise to understand the relation between the cause and the consequence, however accepting and seeing things as they are, without emotional reaction and past-projection is important.
Now about the schooling system in Slovenia it is so that elementary schools have complete autonomy in regards deciding what projects to allow in the schools. There is Ministry of education who prepares the guidelines, however it is upon the school principle and board of directors to decide what to allow and what not. It is understandable that the principle is in a very demanding position since it takes the heat from the children in the schools who have to obey the rules and heat form the parents who want their kids to have freedom and blame the school for everything that is wrong in child's life.
Parents are the biggest influencers when we talk about child's personality development. They transfer their own inherited thinking and behavior patterns onto their children without being full aware of that. And thus the cycle goes on and one from one to the next generation and nothing much changers. So by research and change that I want to implement in our schools I expect to bing a better change that would clear the harmful behavior patterns from the children. I will now also contact other schools in the city to see what their response will be.
