Conditioning a Hurdle to Boy's Development
• Intuitive right brain thinking skills required for the knowledge economy
• WA researcher shows boys educated for rugged individualism
• USA, Canada, and England similarly do not nurture right brain development in boys
• Right brain thinking required to ideal with unknowns
• 70% of jobs in 2020 has not been thought of; 80% of technology then has not be invented yet.
Albert Einstein, that cool dude with more than a few smarts, said : the intuitive mind is a sacred gift; the rational mind is a faithful servant - we have created a society that honors the servant and has forgotten the gift.
That is changing.
The post industrial knowledge economy requires the use of all our thinking abilities and increasingly the lateral, emotional, creative, qualitative and intuitive ones - all those right brain processes.
If you are an Aussie male, you may feel somewhat apprehensive about this shift toward using our right brain in the hard edged reality of a corporate world created by and run on predominantly left brain rational, linear, analytical and quantitative thinking.
The western world's educational philosophy since WWII focused on mastering the rational skills inherent in the sciences and mathematics. Science was truth.
Suddenly, we need to use our intuitive mind. We must think in ways we have not been taught, coached, or encouraged - unless we are the tiny percent of the population who pursues highly creative professions such as design, architecture or the arts.
We might ask how our current education system is responding to this trend for right brain thinking skills in our future workforce. A recent conference of 700 teachers and school administrators in the Warren Blackwood district of southwest WA discussed the need for quite different curricula and pedagogy to educate and skill up our primary school kids to be more intuitive, lateral, and creative - especially to ideal with the unknown.
According to global futurists, 70% of the jobs that exist in 15 - 20 years have not been thought of yet, mostly because 80% of the technology existing then has not been invented yet and technology is the greatest driver of change for the next 30 - 50 years. No one knows what most of our school children will be doing in 15 years time; they must be prepared to deal with the unknown as a matter of course.
A comparison of how we stack up against English, American, and Canadian schools in our education of boys was the topic of a Churchill fellowship last year by Ian Lillico, Principal of City Beach High School.
His research findings showed the disturbing trends against the nurturing and development of our boys' creative, emotional, and intuitive intelligences. All the nations studied indicated that school is the primary institution to influence boy's development, and that even mothers seem to reinforce the suppression of their boys' feeling from birth.
In both USA and Australia, boys by the age of 7 typically do not cry. By 10-11 years, they exclude soft feelings. By 14-16 years only two emotions are allowed: anger and laughter.
Historically in WA, we required rugged individualism as exemplified by bearing pain silently, continually proving oneself, always being in control, and avoiding all signs of weakness or need.
No wonder we forgot the gift of intuitive thinking - men have not been allowed to use it.
Business News 31 May 01
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