Sling for Fractured Education

By Christopher Regier

In most countries, a standardized public school curriculum usually consists of a multitude of classes that are considered to be the essential subjects for a student's success. Four common subjects may include English (depending on the native language), math, history and science, each of which can be broken into variables within the same field. However, I have found in my recent research that teenagers are more interested in another subject not being taught in schools. Surprised? Me neither.

Years ago I decided to take the initiative to learn about the part of my mind that is responsible for my personal identity and how I value it: the ego. After years of self-observation and journaling, I have come to the conclusion that I somehow acquired an assortment of unhealthy psychological habits, all of which had developed over a number of years.

A question I would later ask myself which would change the course of my life for the next five years was "Where did I learn these habits?" For example, they certainly didn't offer a class in high school that encouraged low self-esteem in ones special abilities. I can't recall either one of my parents pulling me off to a private room in my house and having an explicit talk as to why I wasn't good enough.

I never once had a teacher insist that I accept a life of struggling with self-love and assurance. After all, the Buddha did say, "All that we are is a result of what we have thought." Although many of these thinking habits crept their way into my subconscious over time, with proactive work on my part, I've been able to build a much happier, stable and more realistic inner world to this present day.

So the question was "Where did I learn these habits?" Here's my answer: It's complicated. The issue concerning me presently is the adolescent boys and girls who secretly live in self-resentment because it's considered normal for a teenager between the ages of 13 and 17 to feel and think negatively on a regular basis. These negative thoughts contribute to the development of unhealthy identities in young adults. Robert Collier once said, "Any thought that is passed on to the subconscious often enough and convincingly enough is finally accepted." That piece of wisdom would indicate danger for those seemingly free spirited teenagers who appear to be full of unconditional life and love.

What they won't tell you about are those evenings they secretly spend alone, bombarded with subconscious negative thoughts, which are transmuted into unexplainable anxiety towards ominous contingencies with friends and family.

As a result, their new distorted paradigms can translate into outwardly negative actions. However, depending on the teenager's upbringing and biological reactions to the nature of things, those actions will vary from person to person. For example, an intimidating robust football player would act very differently from a timidly slender, school oriented honors student.

Let's not forget those students who suffer needlessly on the inside, which is reflected by their apparent shyness at home or in class. Or those middle grounded students who spend hours in front of a book or videogame, projecting themselves anywhere else that's not their own reality.

What has separated us from other evolutionary species is the complexity of the human mind. All other creatures are liberated from our man-made anxieties and suffering, due to the simplicities of their brains. The function of that extensive section of the brain which largely controls our thoughts, reasoning and memory (The Cerebral Cortex) is what has helped us become the presently dominant species on this planet, but it is also what is destroying us.

Eckhart Tolle made a palpable and uncomforting point when he reminded us all that we "humans killed in excess of one hundred million fellow humans in the twentieth century alone." Doesn't it seem appropriate to be educated as to how this fascinating part of the human mind functions, so we can prevent such a devastating statistic in the future?

I will not argue that biological changes occurring during the preliminary stages of puberty into adolescence can arouse much confusion and emotional pain, but how do teenagers think about their dumbfounded mood swings? Are students ever educated to recognize that it's not important to control "what" is happening, but "how" you let it affect you?

Please don't be taken back when I tell you that it takes practice and hard work; active work that is needed for healthy, mature development. Moreover, please be open to the idea that if those thoughts are not managed properly, the long-term damage will be harder to undo than the 20 minutes of work, which can be done everyday to manage it.

There is also no doubt in my mind that cultural upbringing, family, friends and experiences have the heaviest of influences as to how we shape our conscious and subconscious reality from childhood into adulthood. But has anyone ever monitored these children, and asked how they perceive themselves, people and the world around them? Sure, if you're participating in a 13-year research program at Stanford University.

Or if a child shows early symptoms of behavioural or substance abuse and is forced to seek regular school counselling. Notice something peculiar here? One situation is uncommon, and the other only occurs in a controlled environment. Have you asked yourself yet why this subject matter, which deals with healthy inner growth and development, has not been included into school curricula as a prerequisite for graduation to the next stage of life?

Some people as they mature later become their own worst enemies, and don't even realize it until it's seemingly too late. Carl Jung described this scenario by saying, "It is often tragic to see how blatantly a man bungles his own life and the lives of others, yet remains totally incapable of seeing how much the whole tragedy originates in himself, and how he continually feeds it and keeps it going."

We can habituate our own self-deprecation, suffering and unhappiness in our lives, and it's extremely hard to break a mind-made habit after we've been accustomed to it for many years. Some of the students I have personally worked with were surprised to realize they had started developing bad habits in the most subtle ways.

Subconscious destructive thinking develops like a smoking habit, except, you're unaware of when you started, how many negative thoughts you go through a day, and the long term damage it can have. If you're not careful, your mind can become addicted.

So why isn't this awareness of self-deprecation being taught at an early age? Why haven't we yet stressed the importance of conditioning our subconscious mind to help us, rather then fight against us? Teenagers need to become aware of what's running through their minds, and learn the skills necessary to consciously take control of the subconscious processes.

If we look, for example, at sex education in Western countries, it is a subject deemed appropriate to be taught in public middle schools; why not teach about our minds as a subject? Has the anatomy of the opposite sex become more important than the risk of viewing the opposite sex through distorted paradigms?

It blows my mind when I have a student not only tell me in person, but also in his written work that what I teach is "the most interesting stuff I've ever learned." These skills aren't a bite of the forbidden fruit of knowledge, it is an ongoing stream of inner peace that can be practiced and internalized regularly.

However, little effort has been made to stress its importance in early teenage development. This is where I have come in. The main principle of my teaching is "One needs to be together within, before the real learning can begin."

Christopher Regier is an English teacher and a behavioural development instructor at Busan International Middle School in the nation's largest port city. He can be reached at mrregier@gmail.com.