PM* BLOG

If we want to change the world, we have to be unreasonable, unrealistic and impossible. Foolish. The way we used to be as kids, when we believed anything was possible, even our imaginary, magical land where we had the best time, the one we used to draw on the world map. Some people called it Utopia (Greek Ou=no, topos=place; or land that doesn’t exist) and we called it Moge (Croatian kids for “can be”, “possible”). That’s why I still prefer kids to adults. They always notice and naturally know more. Because they haven’t learned not to see.

But… (this „but“ worries me);

Even though a child’s soul needs noticing, the culture around it constantly demands blindness. Even though a child’s heart requires play, energy, imagination, passion – the society, school system, institutions suffocate those characteristics and shrink them to the smallest atoms, not letting them live. It sounds like a painful tension they have to endure. And so rowing up, they wilt, shrink or go mad. On their path it doesn’t help at all to be surrounded by constant narcissism, spoilage, envy, selfishness and unnecessary competitive “spirit” because as soon as they venture into the world of countless possibilities, the world of plenty, of insecurity, the world of competition and cruelty, a great number of them break and fail confronted by the uncomfortable truth that they are not prepared for life having “mastered” that which was requested from them. On the contrary, their “built in” narcissism hides a sea of insecurities, fear, depression (the WHO already predicts this will be the most common disease within the next ten years and in Croatia every seventh child suffers from it).

But… (this “but” shouldn’t worry me);

History teaches us one simple but important lesson: we can live differently. The world of today wasn’t built on some axiomatic laws anyway, firmly carved systems of development brought by the Dodo bird in the 17th century – it was built by people and people are the ones who can (and have) build their path and create historical changes. Let’s not forget that there are people in our past who have advocated for termination of slavery, for women’s right to vote, those who have led us to amazing technical inventions and succeeded, at some point probably considered lunatics.

When you think about it, it is all incredibly ironic.

Never before have we been less convinced that we have something to believe in. We are so under the spell of this attitude that we can’t see the injustice that is right in front of us or the values that can’t be expressed through numbers but are of the utmost importance to the welfare and future of mankind, such as – happy children! Why don’t we immediately give play, imagination, creativity, laughter back to them? Let’s give them space to breathe, let’s not suffocate them with activities, tasks, let’s not prepare them for some ludicrous job market that we don’t even know what it’s gonna look like! Let’s prepare them for life, a happy one.

Because when you think about it, it’s more than ironic.

Maybe we already know that our search for a better world should start in our classrooms, maybe we know that would be our best intervention for a finer society. But we still keep loving our routine forms, embedded rules of “success” measured by grades (they’re numbers, after all, and we trust our numbers infinitely), grand discussions of capability instead of value, didactics instead of ideals, of the “most important” (incredibly wrong) question – which skills and knowledge sets will pupils have to gain in order to prepare for the job market in the next decade? Wrong question! Absolutely wrong. Wroooong! Or in the words of Depeche Mode - the wrong questions with the wrong replies.

We can’t even ask ourselves the right questions. No wonder, since our lives come down to economic calculation, transient and superficial information, baseless arguments. We wave around statistics, reports, tables that show us everything but that which matters, we follow the trends of analysts, wannabe experts, instead of creating trends, changing the word and wondering:

What kind of knowledge and skills should we give to our children by 2030? How do we want to live in 2030? What do we even want? More time with our families, for our hobbies, nature, art, volunteering? What do we miss? Love? Solidarity? Truth? Freedom? Health? Free time? Morals?

Those questions are important and the answers start in the classrooms. They start from a different education system based on new ideals because after all, no market or technology decide what holds real value – the society does, people do, WE DO. We decide how to tailor our future and constructions such as “job market” is forced to follow what we imagine and realize. Sounds simple, because it is.

But… (again this “but” worries me) – new ideas are never the problem, it’s letting go of old ones that is. Sounds familiar, right? But then if we think about it, ideas, no matter how silly they might sound, are the only ones that have ever changed the world, and they will again. Somehow I believe most people have their hearts in the right place. So anything is possible.

Let’s start with the right questions then! Here, I’ll go first – what is it that we really want?

Linda Poščić Borovac,  “idealist lunatics…“, something that could easily describe me while writing books, making movies and creating, but history has proved me right many times

Coauthor of „DISASTER – A Diagnosis of Modern Business“, awarded as Best Corporate Book in the world 2021 by CMA, NY, USA