Can you answer this question?
Watch the following and see which questions you can answer? Don’t get too confident… there is a twist. And that twist is what could be make or break not only for you – but for your children.
Let’s build a better world. Will you join us?
In an extraordinary initiative, GEMS Education, in association with Dr Sarah Rasmi at the Thrive Wellbeing Centre in Dubai, has committed to provide every family in the UAE with a way to make a difference and make the world a better place for everyone.
All you have to do is… ask.
It does not matter whether your children go to a GEMS school or not. As GEMS told us – this is about children, families and making a better world for everyone and “a better world knows no borders.” Whether you are a boy, girl, young man, young woman, mum, dad, school, or business…. young, or older, whoever and wherever you are in the world, this is for you.
Forget Trivial Pursuits, Forget the Xbox…..
If you reach out, GEMS Education will send you a way you can access a beautifully illustrated pack of 26 playing cards that will enable you to play “The Alternative Alphabet” – a game and experience that opens up ways of looking at the world and answering the types of questions that you cannot learn the answer to in books. Each card is supported by a famous celebrity, artist, entrepreneur, sporting personality – people from every walk of life who believe that now is the time, must be the time, to make a better world for children, families…. all of us.
Facts versus Feelings
Education has changed – and is changing. Many of us can remember the ways we were taught in schools only a generation ago with days spent learning from books filled to the brim with facts and paragraphs we had to memorise by rote, often to the point we felt we would explode. So many of these apparently vital facts few of us can still remember…
Those we do are usually related to something that matters to us, something that makes us feel something or solves a problem that we need to solve. An outstanding education today increasingly rests on the recognition that our feelings, and the ways we perceive our lives, breathes life into bare facts, giving them, and us, the context and meaning to be creative and apply them. Learning is not something to be imposed on us – there is a person, someone that matters, that learns. We are not machines.
Bob Dylan, in “Like a Rolling Stone”, captures this perfectly when, speaking with a woman about the reality of her life and what is really important, he questions repetitively:
“How does it feel? How does it feel?”
Reportedly, Dylan struggled himself to even ask the question as he constructed the lyrics whilst searching… for a way, any way, he could find a way back… home to what is real and matters. “Like a Rolling Stone” almost did not happen at all.
Wellbeing… You can make the difference
Around 1 in 5 of us will have an identifiable mental health issue at one or more points in our lives. Yet, whilst we can talk comfortably about having a cold, or breaking a leg whilst jumping out of a plane, most of us struggle with saying anything about how we are feeling.
And it’s exactly the same for young people.
Almost 1 in two children will face struggles with their self-worth, identity, friendships, bullying, feelings of hopelessness…..despair – and an infinite number of other issues that are not so easily solved in the way we can, say, plaster a wound, use sunscreen or take a headache pill.
How on earth are they supposed to be successful in school if we do not help them; if we do not allow them to ask the questions that matter to them, about them – and then listen and give them the language and space to answer them?
And in these sorts of areas it is about learning how to speak about, open up about and explore feelings, not facts. It’s not so easy.
- In the old world, to be a boy, or man, you were expected to just “get on with it” – until, far too late, you crashed – and a hospital, or relative, picked up whatever pieces of you were left.
- In the old world, to be a girl, or woman, you were encouraged to speak – but too often no one actually listened.
- Resilience, in the old world, meant perpetuating a collective, hugely damaging delusion that enforced silence about something that actually matters: you. Until you…. broke.
It is time we said, and certainly we said in our schools, enough, is enough.
After that… it’s up to you…. and all of us.
Further information
Access “The Alternative Alphabet” free here.
Learn more about Thrive Wellbeing Centre here.
Learn more about the Top Schools Award for Happiest School in the UAE 2023 – 2024 here.
© SchoolsCompared.com. A WhichMedia Group publication. 2023 – 2024. All rights reserved.
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