Thank you. My name is James Phillips.
I'm a music teacher and father from the Watford chapter here in the UK
and I'd like to talk to you about an educational website
I'm piecing together for the movement called TZM Education.
The purpose of this site is twofold:
First, I want to present existing studies that validate
the educational proposals put forward by the Venus Project
and second, to collaborate with and help movement members
communicate these ideas with young people currently in mainstream education
to help them start to think differently about learning
and the world in which they live by presenting the educational notions
proposed in a Resource-Based Economy.
The tenets of a Resource-Based Economy are wide-ranging
but for me they rest on two very firm footings:
They are the physical sciences and the humane application of them
to the social design holistically.
It's clear that a productive and relevant education for all
with regards to these areas would be essential
for such a society to function properly.
Unfortunately, I know from working in schools
that we are a long way from a productive and relevant education
with regards to our species' sustainability on this planet right now.
The reason for this is simple: Education reflects culture
and culture reflects education.
Just a cursory glance at human beings' conduct on this planet
would surely seem enough to realize that both education and society
as a whole need to undergo a significant change in values
if we are to move into any sort of sustainable social structure.
How do education and culture reflect each other exactly?
The main incentive system in the world today is money
which basically equals competition for profit.
This was an excellent idea when we had a true scarcity
of much needed resources for our survival.
However, this does not need to be the case anymore
as we now have the technology to not only sustainably produce
long-lasting goods in a relative abundance for all the Earth's people
but we can do so with little or no physical human labour at all
and with a far greater level of efficiency.
In a new incentive system based on progress rather than profit
the cultural and educational emphasis would be on finding new
and creative solutions via the scientific method to solve problems
rather than relying on arbitrary opinions.
Self-development, critical thinking, effective communication
collaboration and a general knowledge of the subjects
that have a direct correlation to the integrity of the planet
and everyone on it would be the new educational paradigm.
Learning would be seen as a fun and lifelong pursuit
instead of seemingly stopping at a certain age
so that you can earn some money to own as much stuff as possible
before you die.
Punishment and reward is essential for a dysfunctionally-rooted society
such as ours to work at all, and is therefore the current
dominant teaching philosophy that is promoted in most schools today.
Quite simply, the educational system is a natural by-product
of the society it's in, and vice-versa.
While there may be some positive change in education
it will never be significant enough in a society based explicitly
on greed, differential advantage and acquisition at any cost.
Punishment is an easy behavioural tactic to attack in terms of its ineffectiveness
towards modifying aberrant behaviour in the long term.
As I'm sure that everyone in this room is well aware, people act
according to what they pick up from their environment.
How many times do we have to hear
that the abused become the abusers before we recognize
and realize that we have to change the causal mechanisms
behind these tendencies?
When a child is punished, the inappropriate behaviour
is all but forgotten instantly.
Chastised children will not be thinking of the errors of their ways
but will instead be thinking about the punishment brought upon them
how much they dislike the parent or teacher who inflicted it
as well as how they will go about not getting caught next time.
Children are not born bad and teaching them right from wrong
does not have to come in the form of discipline or bribes.
Trying to help them understand how their actions
may have hurt another person's feelings is a pretty good starting point
in attempting to instill in them a decent set of moral values.
Above all, a child needs to feel appreciated for what they do
who they are, and who they want to be.
Ultimately, they need to feel loved.
The seemingly nice twin to punishment
in the act of behaviour modification is reward.
While this may at first glance seem to be a preferred route to take
it's not all it's cracked up to be.
While prizes and praise may be effective in the short-term
they can be detrimental to long-term, intrinsic, creative motivation
and will keep needing to be applied in order for the desired behaviour
to continue. More on this soon.
It's first important to point out that the reasoning
behind the desire to modify behaviour in the first place
(who you're doing it for and why).
It's one thing to want to stop a child being violent
or running across a busy road, and quite another
to tell them to stand still and be quiet when in actual fact
they don't have to.
This is really just an adult enforcing their will upon a child
to coerce them to act as they do
as well as to impress other adults
with how well they have their 'pet' child trained
to behave to the current social status quo and apparatus.
It's the use of punishment and reward
that really keeps our current social model working at all.
School is no exception. In fact
it can't be if the integrity of the system itself is to be maintained.
Rewards seem to be the more palatable of the two
behaviour modification methods currently used in education.
Let's take a look at them now in more detail.
Extensive research now shows that the use of rewards
as an incentive to get a child to learn leads to the students
merely meeting the bare minimum of what is required of them
in order to get the grade or reward offered.
Not only this, but it also has a significant impact
to their long-term, intrinsic interest in a given task or subject
rather than them feeling enthusiastic
autonomous and creative in what they're doing.
This point is well made in the book 'Punished by Rewards'
by psychologist, author and teacher Alfie Kohn
"When we are working for a reward
we do exactly what is necessary to get it and no more.
Not only are we less apt to notice peripheral features of the task
but in performing it, we are also less likely to take chances
play with possibilities or follow hunches that might pay off.
Risks are to be avoided whenever possible because the objective
is not to engage in an open-ended encounter with ideas.
It's simply to get the goodie."
One example from the numerous studies that point to the detrimental effects
the use of rewards has with regard to problem solving
and general motivation was done at the University of Rochester.
In this experiment, 20 children were taken into a room one by one
to play with some puzzles.
Half the kids were told they'd be given a $5 reward
for each puzzle they tested, and half were not.
Once these puzzles were completed each child was left alone in the room
for a few minutes and observed via a hidden camera.
Of the 10 children who were paid for completing the puzzles
only one continued to play with them in these remaining few minutes.
However, every single one of the 10 who weren't paid
continued to play with them, even though they didn't have to.
Hopefully this study and many others much like the work of Daniel Pink
who's well recognized in our movement (I'm sure some of you
may be familiar with his work)
hopefully this, and other studies should make this point abundantly clear:
Rewards kill long-term, intrinsic motivation.
Praise can surprisingly be detrimental as well
for it elicits the same actions as any other reward mechanism.
This is not to say that making relative or positive, constructive comments
about the work in question or general encouragement is not beneficial
but heaping praise on top of what should already be rewarding
only detracts from the true sense of achievement an individual
actually feels towards the task in question.
The student then also starts to become dependent on praise
from an authoritarian figure in order to feel motivated
to apply themselves to future tasks. Indeed, why is praise needed
other than to encourage students to complete the tasks
'we' set for them and that 'we' deem worthy of praise?
This further cements 'our' position of dominance
rather than allowing children to pursue their genuine areas of interest
with our help.
Learning is currently the process to get rewards rather than the other way around
and then we wonder why kids are so disillusioned with learning in school.
Please understand, that a monetary-based society
demands a constant influx of wage slaves and that school is designed to be
the perfect 'cookie-cutting' plant for just that.
In the words of George Carlin "They (the rich elite)
don't want a well-educated public capable of critical thinking.
They want people just smart enough to run the machines and to do the paperwork
and just dumb enough to passively accept increasingly, shittier jobs."
[Applause]
[Displayed is an image of 2 children holding guns to an adult's head]
This is what our system produces: competitive
manipulative gaming strategies as a mode of survival.
Then, in the same breath, we try to teach our kids to be nice
and share and we wonder why an ever increasing amount of them are on
or go on to being on anti-depressants later on in life.
Could it have anything to do with the fact that adults do the exact opposite
of what they teach their own kids to do in their own day-to-day lives?
When a child (You might have done this. I know I did.
That's why I had a very turbulent school career)...
When a child in school asks the teacher "Why do I need to learn this?"
or "How will I need this later on in life? " the teacher replies
"Of course you need it! " or "because you have to".
This masks the fact that the real answer is
in a streamlined job market, you probably won't!
School is largely a test of your character
with regards to completing tasks, whether relevant or not, on time
and to the required standard.
This means that you will be a good worker in the market place
as you will not question the merits of the task at hand
and will instead make sure you do what you are told when you are told to do it
to the best of your ability even if you hate the task in question.
There's another word for that and that's called slavery.
I thought they abolished that!
[Applause]
Remarkably, there are certain rule-free schools actually in existence today.
While these would not be the same as in a Resource-Based Economy
they do provide evidence that suggests that a more liberating approach to education
can increase the intrinsic desire of the student to learn.
Two examples of this to check out would be the Democratic School system
in the US and the Summerhill School here in the UK.
At these schools, teachers and pupils arrive at decisions together
and children do not have to go lessons if they don't want to.
You'd be forgiven for thinking that these children would not be able to reach
a descent academic standard at such schools
and would simply muck around all day, but you would be wrong
because the kids at these schools attain the necessary GCSE results
even though they don't have to.
More importantly, in all the independent reports done on these schools
the kids are found to be absorbed in learning, happier, creative
have a strong moral sense of right and wrong, a good community spirit
a fantastic ability to communicate constructively in general conversation.
This shouldn't be a surprise. Kids are born with an inquisitive nature
to learn about the world around them. They don't need to be forced.
It isn't their fault that the lesson is so drab, uninspiring
and utterly boring that they've switched off.
It could be that the child was not given a choice
in how they would like to learn the topic in question.
Perhaps it's because the teacher is really thinking of the money
he or she will be paid at the end of the month and hitting academic targets
rather than making the content of what is actually being taught
relevant and interesting.
[Applause]
Because of this ill-informed judgement that kids do not want to learn
we've decided to turn to using extrinsic motivators
in an attempt to incentivise them, which actually
makes the problem you're trying to solve even worse.
Therefore, I have a collection of activities and presentations at the site
that members themselves can take into their local schools to start informing
the adults of tomorrow about the ideas behind a Resource-Based Economy
so we can start to help show them that learning should be cherished
and never a chore.
[Applause]
[Image with caption: I'm trying to see things from your point of view]
Forgive me but I couldn't resist.
I feel this personifies the adult world rather well.
As this picture points out, adults tend to take a longer time
to get their heads around the concepts we've discussed.
For the most part, they've been surviving by doing the exact opposite for so long
that the thought of questioning their current social status quo and apparatus
seems completely asinine to them, regardless of its merits.
Kids, on the other hand, have not been fully indoctrinated
into this system as of yet and are therefore still able to grasp
the incredibly simple notions proposed by The Venus Project.
This is why those of that can should start to focus our attention
on informing the youth of our communities of this new direction
in fun and engaging ways.
The Zeitgeist Movement is an activist educational movement explicitly
so we have to ask ourselves the question: What is the most effective way
to get this message across to the world at large?
In reality, we live in a monetary-based society and there's a word
for what you have to do when you're trying to get an idea across to people
in this culture: It's called marketing.
We must start to be strategic and approach those who will understand
what we are talking about in the most effective way possible
rather than wasting our time with people who just don't get it.
[Applause]
I'm not knocking any form of communication per-se
(although I would say that even myself, I spend too long on the middle one)
or suggesting that we shouldn't answer our critics, far from it.
I merely want you to question the approach they're using to see if they feel
it's getting the message across effectively into the right demographic.
The simple fact is that the youth of today are more in tune
with the notions of protecting the environment due to climate change
and environmental issues now being propagated in the mainstream media and in schools.
In my experience, they're ready to hear what we are saying with a far more open mind
than the older generations are.
Also, on a more pragmatic note, they will be around for a lot longer
to be able to push for this direction than any adult will be.
That may seem harsh and cold, but it's true.
We all have old schools for example.
One will give them a call to see if you can do presentation there.
In the UK we have the perfect opportunity to do this with what's called
citizenship lessons or general studies.
I'd never done a presentation of this kind before, but I'm a big believer
in jumping in the deep end and learning to swim.
I ended up talking to a captive audience of a 180 kids
and teachers at a secondary school I teach at
about The Zeitgeist Movement and The Venus Project.
[Applause]
The bottom line is
that if even 200,000 members of the Zeitgeist Movement did this
and just went to one school and talked to 180 kids as I did
then we can potentially reach approximately
36 million young adults about to enter this system.
[Applause]
If we are an activist educational movement then activities like this
are imperative. We must make sure we're walking the walk
and not just talking the talk, myself included.
That is why I've been into several schools to do everything
from playing collaborative games with seven-year-olds to giving full presentations
on The Venus Project to seventeen-year-olds.
One example I'd like to share with you is a game I played for the 5-10 age range
where you take 3 hoops and put them in a row at equal distances over a few meters apart.
In the middle hoop you have an uneven number of beanbags
and at the hoops you have an even number of kids per side.
The rules are that you have to get as many beanbags in your team's hoop as possible
and you're only allowed to carry one bag at a time. Other than that
try not to kill each other but anything goes.
I'm sure you can imagine the chaos that ensued.
Before long there were beanbags up jumpers, throwing the bags
from the middle hoop to their own and all sorts...
Occasionally I would stop the game and count up the beanbags.
The team with the more beanbags, as they were cheering their supposed victory
I would remind the opposite team that the game was not over
and the chaos would start all over again.
After a while at this I stopped the game and asked them how long this could go on for
to which of course they replied "Forever!"
I then asked what the solution was and one child got it.
Anybody got any ideas? (Audience member) Join teams.
- Join teams? Yes, you're going in the right direction.
(Other audience member) "All the beanbags in the middle."
- You got it. Put all the hoops together and put the beanbags in the middle.
The only way to win was to share. And the seed has been planted.
I think this game personifies our current social paradigm rather relevantly:
We could stop the game any time we like.
It's ideas like this...
[Applause]
As Bill Hicks said "It's just a choice between fear and love"...
It's ideas like this that came from members' contributions.
I now need a team of people to help me correlate all the necessary studies
for the site and to contribute any ideas that you consider useful
with regards to helping get this message across to the younger generations.
The project is still in the developmental stages
so please do let me know if you want to be involved
and can help me by emailing the website
at www.tzmeducation.org
(obviously don't mail the website go to the contact section).
The children of today deserve a better tomorrow than the one currently on offer.
The time to start making that tomorrow a reality is today.
Many thanks.
[Applause]
The magnificent James Phillips!