#006 - Is Our Current Education System Breeding Ignorance in Our Youth?🌐🧠✨

What are we doing in our education system that we can come out so ignorant? What are we doing here in the West and in the first world when we have so many children that have such a disparity of wealth and experience? What is education if we are just doing the same thing year after year? If we don't change what we do in our education system, we're going to be creating the exact same result. Welcome to Neuroeducation, where we're exploring the neuroscience of how to switch on the brain to

supercharge learning. I'll be sharing with you innovative teaching techniques, effective parenting strategies, and educational advocacy. I'm your host, Angie Dee. Together, let's revolutionize children's learning. Hi everybody, thank you for tuning in to Neuroeducation Podcast with Angie Dee. I had an interesting experience in my final years of high school. I would say I had what you would call a pretty typical year 12 experience.

I did move from Sydney to Brisbane, which was interesting. But I got to do some cheerleading in high school, got to date one of the footy boys, it was pretty exciting, he was a hottie. But something happened in the end of my year 12 journey that really shook my world forever. So I met a bunch of guys who I actually

thought were from South America, but it turns out they were actually from Afghanistan. But one of them had asked me if I wanted to go along to an awards night and he had been nominated for international student of the year. And I said, oh my gosh, yes, I loved everything multicultural, anything about other cultures, languages, dance, anything multicultural, I'm in. So there I was on the awards night watching my friend who

actually got the award. And lo and behold, when the award was read out, it had a spiel about his life. And so I found out, no, he wasn't from South America. He indeed was actually from Afghanistan and he was from a group in Afghanistan, an ethnic group called the Hazaras. And what I found out that he had been through so much in his life. more than I could possibly imagine in my entire life. He had been through a war where the Taliban had come, had taken his

father for questioning. His father was never returned. He came from a village where so many women died because they didn't have any access to hospitals. There was no running water and he had lost so many members of his family to so many different tragedies. And he had come to Australia as a refugee because he didn't have any other choice. In his village in Afghanistan, the Taliban were making the rounds, taking the eldest son from every family. And

they were back for their second round. And I think it was his uncle that actually helped him to come out to Australia. Now here I was as a grade 12 student at the end of grade 12, mind you, about to go out into the world. And I tell you, I had no idea about anything that was going on in Afghanistan. I had no idea about the war. I didn't know it had been through a social war. I didn't know that it had been through a civil war that Russia

had tried to take over. And now the Taliban, I had no idea. And so I was dumbfounded that

I could go through all of my education and be so ignorant about so many facets of the world. I was desperate. I was desperate to be able to make an impact for people like my friend, who had gone through so much, who had lost so many family members and literally been thrown across the other side of the world because the only other solution was death. And here I was in my privileged little life, doing some cheerleading, dating a little footy boy,

actually dating a very strong, strong footy boy. But here I was with no idea what was going on in half of the world. So what are we doing in our education system that we can come out so ignorant? Like

as a global citizen that I now consider myself to be, I have educated myself on the current situations in the world. I have done the research. I went on to volunteer with the Oak Tree Foundation, which is Australia's very first youth run aid organization. And what we did is we went into schools to teach them. what was happening and what we could advocate for for our government to make sure that we had greater impact for our local aid and for fair trade and making a positive impact in

our global community. When you look at something like the eight millennium development goals created by the United Nations, you can see what a huge disparity we have of wealth in our world. A huge disparity. There was one story that I read on a human rights watch when I was doing the work with the

Oak Tree Foundation and it had the story of a little girl from Tamil Nadu in India and this little girl said, I don't care about going to school, all I want to do is bring my sister home from the bonded labour man. Every morning at six she has to go to work and every night at nine she comes home and if she doesn't go to work he comes and he beats her. All I want to do is bring my sister home. I don't have 500 rupees and I will never have 500 rupees so I cannot bring

my sister home. The sad fact is in this human rights watch it shared that well not only is only 500 rupees about 20 US dollars but that this girl is among millions that were working in bonded labor because they had no other choice as a family when you're living on less than a dollar a day than as millions of people do. If absolutely anything happens, if somebody gets sick or somebody needs medicine, the only way they can get money is by going to

the local factory and signing bonded labor contract. These parents have never learned how to read and write, which is why they only getting a dollar or less than a dollar a day in their job. And they have to sign their children over in bonded labor, which has mean they're working off whatever the debt is for labor. Because they can't read and write. Half of these contracts have ridiculous interest rates. And some of these children are working for 20, 30 years to pay off a debt of $20. I

was horrified when I read that story. And I thought, what are we doing? What are we doing here in the West? And in, I would say, the first world. When we have so many children that have such a disparity of wealth and experience. And it sent me on and a quite interesting adventure to look at what are the daily things that we can do that make an impact to

children in other countries. Recently, I have been running my own homeschool group. Uh, and what was so fun to research during that homeschooling was the process that our clothes go through. our coffee, our chocolate? What processes that go through from

growing and production to getting it to where it is today for us to actually to eat, to consume or to wear? And looking at is it a fair trade process or are these people actually paid a decent wage? And not only is it a fascinating way for children to be able to engage and understand the world around them, what's happening in different countries, the reality of how people are living, how much money that they're being given and how much people are being paid for, how much of the money that

we pay are actually getting back to these people. And so when we look at these kinds of things, I think it's important to look at We live in an incredibly privileged society and what is education if it's not a help to life?

What is education if we are just doing the same thing year after year? If we don't change what we do in our education system we're going to be creating the exact same result. So as global citizens helping to create global citizens in our students, we want to be creating a mindset that says, okay, what's a problem that we have in this world? And how can

we change that? Adolescents have some of the most outrageous hormones, but we know adolescents also have passion and belief in themselves that they can make change. So we can use these crazy outrageous hormones, this incredible belief in themselves, to be able to take the world's problems and to give it to children because you can look after story after story of children all around the world creating solutions to problems in their local and global communities.

The young boy who created, it's called Harness the Wind, I think, on Netflix. Amazing system of electricity over in Africa. Children in Bali that are creating amazing solutions for all of the pollution that they have. But we here in the West and in first world countries, especially here in Australia, we can use our educational system to empower children to make positive changes for

the world and for the future. So next time you're getting children to read something on a nursery rhyme, or you're getting children to read something about a novel or a narrative, you

can think, what is a real world situation we can embed into this subject or scenario so that we open the children's eyes to the reality of the world and give them the motivation to make a positive impact. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. It would be in a massive favor if you could give us a review on Apple podcasts or Spotify and please subscribe on YouTube and you can look down below for more information and all of the links to find out more information. Join us