GENERIC SOLUTION PERSPECTIVES PART #3
By: Errol A. Gibbs
I was thinking; why are we having these discussions in the twenty-first century of enlightenment and academia; in our modern era of exponential growth in world religions, science and technology, human intelligence, and great financial and material wealth? Why are we having these meeting in our modern era of advanced sociological and psychological research in human development? Why, in the twenty-first century the world seems to be paralyzed by youth violence? It is a paradox, we are afraid of the children we brought into the world. The wealthy lives in gated communities; our governments build super prisons to incarcerate youths and adults; and some of us pray daily for our safety. At the same time, we feed our youths on a daily diet of violent video games and violent movies.
National and international leaders (globally) attempt to comfort their citizens with words such as: “Tough on Crime.” These words resonate from political to public forums, but what do these words really mean. Deeply concentrating on the state of our world, I came to the realization that getting “tough on crime” is the solution to the plight of youths, but let me state once again to avoid any miss-understanding. This discourse is about human survival as a viable species. It is not about sociology, psychology, criminology, or meant to scapegoat any group or system. I ascribe my capacity to engage in this discourse only to the knowledge of the ages. I do not put forward any academic or scholarly answers to the problems that confront humanity. We all have the same opportunity to draw from this inexhaustible foundation of true knowledge. It is with great respect and admiration for the noble efforts of our great institutions of religion, [academia], education, politics, justice, and science and technology that I present the following twenty-one suggestions.
First: fundamentally, modern education has reached an apex in its capacity to provide for the material needs of humanity; it has recycled itself for decades, generally pursuing the same goals as student becomes teacher. Its failing grade is in its incapacity to liberate us spiritually, morally, socially, intellectually, and physically. This is the new challenge to modern education; education can liberate the individual and the nation, but it is only a
“wholesome education” that can liberate completely. A wholesome education is an approach to education that focuses on the five essential foundations of a student’s development, spiritual, moral, social, intellectual, and physical. These foundations must have measurable outcomes that are similar to academic information literacy and numeracy measures. Let us get started, respectfully.
What if:
1. MINISTRY OF EDUCATION: Establish a school curriculum that comprehends a “Wholesome Education” such as discussed in Five Foundations of Human Development (FFHD): spiritual, moral, social, intellectual, and physical development. This approach begins the process of ensuring human survival as a viable species. It must begin from kindergarten, to high-school graduation, to graduate schools (Reference: © 2011 Errol A. Gibbs & Philip A. Grey. Five Foundations of Human Development (FFHD), Foundation 4 —Intellectual Foundation: What is Education? (See: Figure 1.).
We should transform our public schools into ‘Centers of Excellence’ in religious and cultural diversity to underpin academic information literacy.
3. MINISTRY OF EDUCATION: Set a national goal to achieve zero percentage (0%) dropout rates for all high-school students in every Province in Canada, including the Territories. It is possible. Current global trends in employment and job creation should awaken us to the need for a revolution in the way we look at the educational needs of our children. This is particularly critical in public schools where eighty percent of a nation’s children attend. (Reference: 80/20 Rule (Pareto’s Principle), “Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923).
4. MINISTRY OF EDUCATION: Dismantle zero (0) tolerance guidelines and any other guidelines that are not applied equitably across the spectrum of human behaviors. Reexamine if such guidelines fulfill the intent of a better society. Remove the word “tolerance” as a legal imperative of human behaviour, and replace it with such words as, “love”, [compassion], “understanding”, and “empathy”. Furthermore, elevate the understanding of positive impacts on human behaviours fostered by positive nurturing; and the negative
impacts due to lack thereof.
5. JUDICIARY: Encourage parents, schools and the legal system to work harder for the benefit of harmony between parent and child. Walk an extra mile in an attempt to better understand and empathize with parents, and the challenges that they face in raising children in our modern era. Paradoxically, the impacts of mass-media have, in all probability surpassed parents and peers, as having the greatest influence on the behaviour of children, youths, and adults alike. PEOPLE: Pray for our judiciary, for the overwhelming nature of their occupation. Do not despise the law, they are appointed to serve and protect us.
6. ACADEMIA: Despite the great advances we have made in science, engineering, medicine, and exploration, human knowledge is always in an embryonic stage. The evidence is not only in the genocide, wars, slavery, colonization, and apartheid of past decades, but also in the continuation of these atrocities into the twenty–first century in various parts of the world. Transform our educational tactics from an individualistic to a pluralistic approach. Create “Faculties of Wisdom” at every major university, like the Hebrew schools of old to train teachers and leaders for the twenty-first century. Transform our graduate schools into wisdom schools of learning, similar to those of ancient Egypt, where wise men went to hear one another and borrowed wise maxims from Hebrew literature. Let knowledge, wisdom, and understanding of God underpin academia.
7. MINISTRY OF EDUCATION: Establish a national apprenticeship program, and align and associate every corporation of 100+ employees with a college, polytechnic or university. Create a path by which apprentices can obtain an undergraduate degree, by virtue of corporate and extra-curricular training. This model exists in Europe and even in the Caribbean (I have experiential knowledge in this area). Investigate the German model in which some 85% of corporations engage in such programs. Our corporations would not be in a conundrum for skilled labour to make the necessary technological shifts, as industries are
transformed.
8. JUDICIARY: Set a goal to reduce the prison population only to dangerous persons in five years or less. We can effectively reduce the prison population by 80%. (Reference: 80/20 Rule (Pareto’s Principle), “Vilfredo Pareto (1848–1923). Prisons are deficit financed. Use the ‘scaled down’ prison budgets to ‘scale up’ early learning, intervention, and mitigation programs. FAMILIES The judiciary is a legal instrument, and not essentially a moral instrument. Care for your children. It is a “Spiritual” responsibility of the first order.
9. GOVERNMENTS & COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS: Use the ‘scaled down’ prison budgets to ‘scale up’ early learning, intervention, and mitigation programs. Use some of the finances to conduct “mind expanding” ‘outer city’ trips with ‘inner city’ youths to mass manufacturing plants, power dams, great thermal and nuclear facilities, and great architectural monuments to ignite a spark in the minds of youths, to inspire them of possibilities [Build training simulators and hold year-round youth camps].
10. JUDICIARY: Commission a national inquiry to determine why visible minorities and native Indians are incarcerated —disproportionally. Spiritually, and earnestly seek answers to the question why prisons (nationally and internationally) are disproportionally populated by the poor, the hopeless, the fatherless, the abused, and the disenfranchised of God’s created beings? No nation can reach the apex of true spirituality when segments of its populations exist in various stages of hopelessness.
11. MINISTRY OF EDUCATION: Create mirrors of members of parliament in high schools to foster debates on the great issues of the day, and broadcast through various media formats. Sponsor great debates among high-schools in national competitions to elevate the status of schools, and to help inform and engage youths —politically.
12. CORPORATE CANADA: Establish an index for measuring “Integrity 500” corporations, institutions, and organizations. List these organizations in a magazine, namely: “Integrity 500” (one of our established goals), synonymous to “Fortune 500”. These are corporations that will subscribe to, and demonstrate the highest standards of corporate integrity. Such indices as overall employment equity; equitable remuneration, employee satisfaction; customer satisfaction, disciplined leadership; fair trade; fair adjudication of complaints; and superior corporate citizenship can be the criteria.
13. GOVERNMENTS: Create a national social index namely: Gross Social Progress (GSP) Index, alongside Gross Domestic Product (GDP) and Gross National Product (GNP). GSP is a measure of the health of nations. GDP and GNP are not measures of the health of nations. They measure productivity; primarily based on the high performance of “Artificial Intelligence” — machines.
14. JUDICIARY: Establish national a enquiry on “The Drug Wars”, but first, let the nation (religious leaders, parents, family members, dealers, manufacturers, doctors, lawyers, etc) atone for the suffering to the good and the bad alike. Let us atone for the fact that after approximately 60 years on the drug battlefield — globally, using the most sophisticated scientific tools and technology, and financial and human resources, we should have declared victory before the advent of the twenty-first century, with its emerging new “Cyber Wars”.
15. JUDICIARY: Hold a national dialogue on VIOLENCE. Gun violence is probably the lowest statistical form of violence, but it is elevated to the highest status, because it commands the attention of the criminal justice system [as it should], and it evokes fear in the citizenry, particularly, when violence is committed in public places. Other forms of violence such as: verbal, economic, and violence carried out with weapons other than guns need to be elevated as well. More importantly, we should seek out the ‘root causes’ of violence, because violence is merely a symptom of a deeper underlying problem in the human spirit, that demands “spiritually” based solutions as well.
16. MASS-MEDIA: Create a mainstream daily newspaper that features good news, entitled: Changing the World through Good News! Our society needs to hear more good news than bad news. We could get used to good news. In fact, we were created for good news. More importantly, the mass media alone, facilitated by advanced digital electronics, has the greatest capacity to disseminate good news that can change the world.
17. MINISTRY OF EDUCATION: Develop and administer a human relations and international relations curriculum beginning at kindergarten, to high school graduation, to university graduate schools. There is a need for global understanding, global empathy, and a “wholesome education” to forestall the emerging “Clash of Civilizations”. The Global village is a misnomer.
18. MARRIED COUPLES: Marriage is the only human relationship ordained by God (Matthew 19:5-6). It is God’s original ideal and the most important relationship outside of our relationship with our Creator. Unmistakably, a stable international community is ‘rooted’ in stable nations. Follow me! Stable nations are ‘rooted’ in stable families. Stable families are ‘rooted’ in stable marriages, and stable marriages are ‘rooted’ in a ‘sacred bond’’ between husband and wife. Children are the offspring of the marriage relationship.
19. CHILDREN: “Honor your father and your mother, as the LORD your God has commanded you, so that you may live long and that it may go well with you in the land the LORD your God is giving you” (Deuteronomy 5:16 NIV). “Children, obey your parents in the Lord, for this is right. ‘Honor your father and mother’ – which is the first commandment with a promise – ‘that it may go well with you and that you may enjoy long life on the earth’ (Ephesians 6:1–3 NIV).
20. PARENTS: It begins with the child in the family. From the moment a child is born, he or she begins to experience the effects of his or her first social environment – the home. It is the school of altruistic love. The responsibility for childhood behavior begins at home. The home is the first institution of accountability. Parents are responsible for the behavior of children, and it is first, a spiritual responsibility, not one that simply relates to parenting. The Psalmist enlightens: “Behold children are a heritage from the LORD, The fruit of the womb is a reward” (Psalm 127:3 NKJV) (circa 975 BCE). The Apostle Paul instructs: “And you, fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord”
(Ephesians 6:4 NKJV) (circa CE 63). PARENTS: Please be mindful of the spiritual and emotional state of your children. [Observe the city streets in major cities around the world, the mentally afflicted roam the streets aimlessly. Are these not someone’s children? Are these not the nation’s children? Are these not
God’s creation? Arguably, the military budget of nations around the world increases yearly relative to GDP. Is war against fellow man, more important than love for fellow man? [Do we not know that mental illness is an invisible enemy of humanity that can strike anyone at anytime?]
21. CHURCH AND OTHER RELIGIOUS INSTITUTIONS: The world looks toward you for enlightenment. The operative word concept is “light; to shed light, to enlighten.” God alone can enlighten us, because He is a God of light. “Then Jesus spoke to them again, saying, ‘I am the light of the world. He who follows Me shall not walk in darkness, but have the light of life’” (John 8:12 NKJV). Our Worship of God; Service to Humanity; Care for the Family; Obedience to Authority, and Management of Creation, must, of survival necessity, be the first obligation of human existence. CHURCH: Please! “Let your light so shine before men, that they may see your good works and glorify your Father in heaven” (Matthew 5:15). I invite you to join us in making new history, not just for ourselves, but for future generations, as well.
Errol A. Gibbs.
Errol Gibbs is a former project management and business consultant; engineering technologist;
process designer; project management analyst; and planning and scheduling engineer/officer. He
relinquished his technical career to research and write about human development. You can reach
Errol by website: www.ffhdwritersinc.com/
E-mail: info@ffhdwritersinc.com /
Tel: 905.875.4956.
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