Thinking for ourselves- when Education takes over!

In the light of The Corporation and Bowling for Columbine, Google and I have been looking at the economy and how it works. What the subject would be called at school is debatable. Certainly economics, possibly psychology. What I do know is that he wouldn't be studying it at school as part of the current National curriculum in the United Kingdom

 We have considered the power of large companies over the public and politicians, seen "Black Friday" and "Cyber Monday" (both American imports)  come and go, and the efforts of small business ' in Britain to fight back with "small business Saturday."

In "Bowling for Columbine" we saw that despite easy access to guns in the USA and Canada,gun crime in the USA is much higher. In the Canadian large cities gun crime was virtually non existent. The conclusion of the documentary was that the news media in America fed fear into  people, promoting negative and tragic stories because that's what brought in the money.
Whether the conclusion was right or wrong it made us think about society and the world we want to live in.


Google commented that he would like to live in Canada and we were certainly left with the impression that it was a country where community has not been lost, where people trust one another, where health care is free and wealth is distributed more fairly.

We also spoke to someone in the village who regularly watches News from France or Russia and Japan to get a more open view of what is happening in the world. Someone called her 'sad'. I call that open minded.

With petitions in circulation daily against injustices highlighted by members of the British public Google and I  have explored the working conditions of several large and 'successful' companies and are having to rethink  how and where we shop.

We've also looked at how food is marketed, what goes into processed food,how the obesity is rising and it is causing us to challenge what we do as a  family. In fact home education is changing our lives.

I've mentioned before that home education has made us more politically aware. Certainly Google follows current affairs with interest and has an opinion on most matters. He certainly doesn't sit back and accept the status quo!

I think that's what's wrong with our current education system.It doesn't challenge teenagers to think for themselves it's simply an exam processing machine!

 This morning I read a free E book about helping our children to develop into well rounded thinking individuals .It's called Re framing Success and it challenges the notion that those with high grades are 'successful"

I'm glad we took Google out of school.It's challenged us to look at what we do and change things when they don't sit comfortably with our beliefs.

So this year most of our Christmas presents are home made of from local businesses.We are trying to buy more fruit and less processed food,I've unsubscribed to some of the companies who send me daily promotional emails and trying to reuse and recycle where we can.

We have a long way to go but no matter how long it takes,each step is a step forward. Education is becoming part of our lives!