Aquarian Education

By Agni Lakshya

Featured Song: Supertramp – School

Featured Video: Gaia.com – Superhuman: The Invisible Made Visible

As promised, I will continue my vision of the future Atlantis during the Age of Aquarius. Education is already shifting dramatically as the cost of the existing infrastructure is too exorbitant for most countries to afford. It isn’t that we can’t afford education, it is that we can’t afford such enormous structures to house all the children we must educate. The cost of a new high school is between 50-100 million dollars. Multiply that by 20,000 cities and you get the idea.

This is a problem since we desire socialization yet want to integrate more technology into the picture. While we should steer clear of the Vulcan method of education, we must integrate Artificial Intelligence into the mix. We are already doing that, but to what degree do we push this new technology while satisfying our children’s needs?

First, we must determine what our children’s needs are. Is the rational education of the past the model we wish to carry into the future, or do we need something more specialized for students? Is generic conformity a desirable goal, or should we focus more on aptitude, ability, and desire?

Unfortunately, we have some basic realities to confront when discussing education. Because of the inequities of the past, we have created a social system which dictates all students can go to college and that all students have the potential to do whatever they desire. I challenge that notion and suggest another option: all students have the potential to be happy, productive citizens working towards the collective good of our world and our species.

As a secondary teacher, I see the different abilities and aptitudes of students daily. Advanced studies are not for everyone, and yet we push them in that direction despite the obvious. This idea of inequity must end if we are to ever conquer education for the benefit of our world. When we remove the barriers that hold people back from growing into their highest potential, inequity is no longer a problem.

We do not need a billion doctors, engineers, scientists, or professors. This is an outdated notion which often sets children up for failure as adults. While most adapt, many do not. As a math teacher, we discuss this all the time. Does everyone really need Algebra? What about chemistry or physics? I am very aware of the idea I am proposing here, and it is controversial: tracking.

The problem is tracking was often used to discriminate against particular demographics in the past, so we decided it should be avoided at all costs. That is false. We must not avoid it, but do it properly based on a more complex selection of metrics than institutional knowledge. Institutional knowledge is too coarse and does not provide adequate coverage of a student’s potential and interests.

I have always preached to my students that you must find something you like and something you are good at. I did this in my life and have been a happy and productive worker because of it. But it is very hard to discern those two things on your own with little input while you are young. It requires an overhaul of the way we assess students, and I believe Artificial Intelligence will be the answer to this problem.

The final difficulty is we tend towards organizing and sorting based on need rather than ability. When I was in college, the push was for geological engineers to tap into fossil fuels for our growing needs. Then half of those students went without work as the economic landscape changed. I am not saying need isn’t a valid metric, I am saying it should not be so important. We must do this better than we have in the past.

A Brave New World

This brave new world should take the best from the past and implement it in a new way using technology. In the past, a child was identified by aptitude and desire and became an apprentice of those who came before them. They grew, learned, and expanded their skills to take the place of those who taught them. There was never a concern about having a job, because they had skills and experience through their apprenticeship. We have lost a lot of that model in favor of conformity.

This will require those new set of metrics I mentioned earlier. We must prepare our world to change their notion of education away from ivory towers and institutions of classrooms and integrate some of it back into industry and society as a whole. It does take a village! We have needs at all levels of work, and yet we usually fill most of those needs accidentally by people who are thrust into a job they have no skills for, and maybe no desire to do.

I have made the comment over the years that an 18-year-old graduating from high school is nearly a worthless individual because they lack any skills to be productive. Then we ask them to go into massive debt for a college degree which most will not use in their lifetime. This is the most inefficient and ineffective way to educate a society, and we are feeling the backlash of this model in a very real way today.

I will say it simply: all education should be free no matter what track a student is in, and when they finish their education, they should be productive citizens of this world with specialized skills based on their desires and their aptitude.

It is impossible to try every single thing to see what you like and what you are good at, and there is the rub. It is solvable, but we will need new thinking and new tools to make it happen. Think Artificial Reality Simulations and you are beginning to scratch at the surface.

While working in the tech industry, we had non-engineers doing engineering, some without even a rudimentary college degree. One person I worked with had a psychology degree and was writing telecommunication software. WTF? It isn’t that they couldn’t do it, but they were forced to change their career much later in life and learn through trial and error. Inefficient, difficult, and set their long-term goals back by a decade or more.

With more and more jobs constantly being created, the ability to sort and select students for any particular track becomes a difficult task. This is where Artificial Intelligence comes into play. Artificial Intelligence is good at pattern recognition while parsing through billions of data points. The problem isn’t that we have been doing it wrong, the problem is it is more complex than we can handle, thus why new technology is needed to perform this task. We are rather terrible at it.

Starting in a track should never mean you are stuck in that track, only that it best matches your interests and aptitude. I started in Electrical Engineering and switched into Computer Science once I realized I was far better at software design than hardware design. It cost me a year of college to make that switch. We have been moving in the right direction, but it is time to accelerate the process and move it further down the education tree rather than wait until high school or college.

It isn’t that those I worked with in tech were not capable of adapting, but they could never reach their full potential because they were not in the right field. They were usually the least happy workers as they knew they were in the wrong place. If you have experienced this, then you understand. No one wants a job they can’t do.

Specialization

The assembly line approach to education is archaic, expensive, and inefficient. We are not creating one size fits all robots and sending them out into the world to do every job we need. That is impossible, yet we continue to try. But things are changing. We now have specialized schools which target certain students based on their desires and their aptitude. Unfortunately, they are too few and only target higher education fields.

Proverbs 16:18 Pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall.

We know we need this, but there isn’t the political will to make it happen. They point to the failed experiment of our education assembly line but propose nothing new or innovative. Other countries do this better, so why don’t we learn from them. Pride. We know what is best because we are the richest and most powerful country on the planet. All empires fall, and those who fail to educate their citizenry fall the fastest. Innovation is the keyword, and we are stepping backwards rather than innovating forward. A lack of vision is to blame.

I hope to change that as we move the discourse into the age of Atlantis. No pride, only innovation and adaptation. Our economy, our technology, and our culture are rapidly evolving, and our ancient paradigms are failing in massive numbers. This was inevitable, and why I talk about new humans, Homo-Illustratus, replacing Homo-Sapiens. Homo-Sapiens cling to old paradigms and yearn for a mythical golden age of the past. If it was golden, it wouldn’t be in the past!

New technology is driving our change, and everything must adapt or perish. We need specialization to provide the support for this new economy. In the next century, we will create new jobs most can’t even imagine right now. How can we adapt to this unique specialization in our workforce when we cannot adapt our education systems to our current world?

We will see vast changes in every segment of our society, and we must create a specialized workforce which can adapt quickly (years not decades) to the ever-changing landscape. The ivory towers of core knowledge will no longer serve all our needs. Smaller and more agile education centers are needed which can adapt their curricula as needed in a specialized segment of our economy.

No, I am not talking about some dystopian future like Divergent, but a real structure which provides basic knowledge and specialized skills based on aptitude and interest. If I had known I was better at software than hardware, that would have simplified my education and its cost significantly. But how do we accomplish that.

My daughter is entering University this fall, and she has entered into the College of Business. They start all business majors with general business studies which introduce them to all concentrations in business their first year. From there, they declare their concentration based on their interest and aptitude. My daughter took accounting classes in high school and loved it while being the top student in the class. Aptitude and desire. These are classes they are considering cutting from high school. Really?

At least she is coming out of high school knowing she likes business and finance, so she already has a step ahead of other students who have no experience to guide them from high school. But step back further than high school and imagine a system which includes exploratory curriculum, aptitude testing beyond academic knowledge, and simulations that engage students with skill challenges to determine their aptitudes and interests. From that, high school becomes specialized curriculums based on their aptitude and interests.

Yes, I know we are trying this to some degree already, but we are not very good at it, so that is where technology comes into play. General education is what we provide in K-6, followed by exploratory education in 7-9, then specialized education in 9-13, followed by advanced education in a declared field by 14-17, or undergraduate schooling. Yes, all trades will be part of all of this! Not everyone is going to college, so stop acting like that is the default!

Add into this new model a definitive experiential learning from 7-17, and we produce skilled workers entering into the workforce with guaranteed job placement at age 20-22. Theoretical knowledge is great but does not produce skilled workers. Workers with potential, maybe, but not skilled workers. I want my workers to be productive on day 1, not years later.

All of this K-17 schooling should be free and supported by the community and businesses that benefit from the graduates. Now, it would be easy to claim we would miss out on the menial labor jobs where uneducated people end up today. Actually, those would be filled by these students as part time workers to earn money and understand the basics of personal finances. They would get money, education credit, and experience for their work. Win-win-win!

The other jobs which are too hard or dangerous for younger workers will be filled by robotic automation which will be far more advanced in this new age. You won’t need a forklift worker when automated robots can do this work cheaply and safely. Remember, robots are not human intelligence but programmed mechanical devices used for dangerous and difficult jobs. They aren’t slaves, just tools with an edge.

We are moving away from physical human power for most of our work in the future. A farmer won’t need to know how to drive a tractor or combine, but will service, manage, and direct those things through automation. This is not too far off. Though we are moving rapidly, we are still using an education system developed in the late 1800s to early 1900s. Let’s agree it is time to kill that old model and reinvent education.

Specialization with real-world experience is absolutely necessary in the education of Atlantis, and it must take place earlier to make it more efficient and productive. I do not have all the answers, that is for a dedicated community of great thinkers to figure out down the road. I am simply offering the vision and will offer eventually offer an organizational structure to begin bringing these great thinkers together with a common vision.

Future Curricula

It is hard to predict the curricula of the future, but with specialization, we will be tied into industries that are constantly evolving as our technology evolves. This was the case in the tech industry. We were constantly changing and adapting to a new landscape. That is okay, but with our current system of education, change is too slow and incomplete. What good is a school that is a decade or more behind?

However, there is another aspect which must be considered beyond real-world skills. In the future, new humans will possess incredible new abilities, many of which are not believed in today. Yes, I am talking about the Noetic Sciences which my yoga integrates into. The featured video demonstrates these new sciences where human consciousness integrates with real-world application. It is coming.

When these abilities begin to manifest early in life, it can be problematic and cause all sorts of difficulties. We need to prepare for that, and that means educating our children for this eventuality. Psychic abilities can be difficult to manage when you are young. My own abilities manifested in elementary school, yet I knew nothing about them nor had any method to develop them. We must change that for our future children.

We need our new humans to have access to all their aptitudes including those most do not believe in today. These skills were common in old Atlantis, and you were instructed in what they were, how to develop them, and how to use them ethically and responsibly. Think Stranger Things and you get the idea. Caroline Cory’s show Superhuman is an example of this happening right now, today!

Our current rational education system is incapable of dealing with this since they discount the Noetic Sciences as utter non-sense. It is not, which is why our governments and industries have been harnessing remote viewing for a long time going back to the Stargate program in the 1970s. Everything we know and see is energy, and our consciousness can control that energy. Yes, very significant, thus why my yoga exists.

This will be normal for Homo-Illustratus as they begin to access more of their dormant DNA than Homo-Sapiens. It is coming and will become a problem if we do not start preparing for it. No, we will not do what Stranger Things portrayed as that is Homo-Sapien thinking and not Homo-Illustratus. Their control and concealment of this aspect of humanity will end and it will become mainstream. We will move it from Science Fiction to Science Fact.

Now add into this magical aspect of humanity the integration of extraterrestrial knowledge into our culture and education. We could see whole new segments of job possibilities and specializations as we adapt and integrate their technology into our society. Yes, I know most of you don’t believe such things, but you will once disclosure has been validated by those currently concealing it.

Our species will learn new energy technologies, fabrication techniques, and material sciences as we expand our existing knowledge base. It is hard to imagine what new jobs and specialization will be required, but if we are not prepared to adapt to these changes, we will never integrate them successfully. We can do this, but it requires a whole new paradigm of thinking which Homo-Sapiens are not entirely capable of doing.

This is why I am writing about this now, so all new humans can begin the conversations and preliminary designs. This won’t all be developed next year but will take a century. The current century is all about re-designing and re-tooling our society before we put these new paradigms into full practice. It will be a slow, and iterative process, refining it as we go until we have a fully efficient, adaptable, and successful education system worldwide.

Yes, the concept of countries competing against each other is a ridiculous notion only entertained by Homo-Sapien gorillas of the past. Competition will be for the glory of designing, developing, and implementing new technology for the benefit of everyone, not just a few billionaires in a single country. This is hard to swallow in our selfish world right now, but it will be normal thinking in the new age. Start adapting, because it will be here in a single lifetime. Prepare your progeny!

Spirituality will be another piece to the next generation curricula. For those still new to the concept, spirituality is knowing God through the Divine within yourself. My Kriya Serpent Yoga helps you achieve this through a steady practice which tunes you to the energy within and the energy without. No need to go to church to pray to a God who may or may not speak with you when you can meditate every day and have a conversation with the Divine.

Though the energy work of higher levels of meditation will not be for children, they will learn the rudimentary knowledge of it and practice regular yoga grounded into their education. No more heavily medicated children unable to learn without extreme doses of unnatural chemicals. This current age of education through chemistry must end. We are creating a zombie population unable to operate without chemical stimulation. Not good.

Yoga is a manual for healthy bodies, minds, and spirits and will be a regular part of all education across the planet. Culture specific religious education and ceremonies will still be taught in places of worship, but it will not be to learn about spirit and God because that will be integrated into all education. The schism between science and spirituality will finally end, and we can educate our children properly. Places of religious ceremony will still be places of worship and communion, but everyone will be connected to Divine Spirit at all times.

Equity

This topic will remain controversial for a long while yet, but perhaps we can begin the process of changing the narrative. First, anyone who is a skilled worker working full time should have a comfortable living wage. That does not mean struggling to pay bills and worrying about money as their primary concern. The time of the forgotten worker must end if this world is to evolve beyond gorillas.

Yes, we know who the gorillas are, they are the billionaires who are obscenely rich with no shame for their exorbitant wealth while others suffer. They have destroyed Unions, rolled back worker rights, and have held wages stagnant for nearly fifty years while rigging the political system to serve only their interests. I will let you read Elizabeth Warren’s amazing work on this subject.

The median mortgage payment for a home in the USA is $2,225. The cost of moderate monthly groceries for a family of 4 in the USA is about $1,300. The average cost of a new car payment is $737 but multiply that by 2 since both parents typically work, yielding $1,474. With nothing more than housing, transportation and food, your monthly costs for a family of four is $5,000 which equates to $60,000 per year for just those three basics. Yes, I have been working in my job for twenty-one years and make only slightly more than that.

This is why 50% of households have both parents working. For some, the cost of working is offset by the cost of childcare, make it a zero-sum game, thus why so many struggle. It isn’t that these people aren’t skilled and working hard, they simply don’t make enough for the incredibly high cost of living in this country. That comes down to the billionaires who run our economy. Yes, not politicians, billionaires. They pay the politicians to do their bidding.

The problem with a completely free market economy is that you are dependent on market forces to cause rising wages. Unfortunately, with these powerful men (yes, mostly men) in charge, they have their fingers on the scales so you never actually see wages move as the market forces would normally dictate. Wages are a lagging indicator, which means by the time they start to creep up, something happens, and the economy cools off, stalling wages which never reach the inflation you just experienced.

I don’t have to tell you these things, you feel it every day in your budget and when you go to the store. When I started working in the tech industry, corporations had profit sharing, stock options, pensions, great wages and free medical. Granted, these were large corporations, considered the gold standard. Today, all of these things are reserved for corporate elite while regular workers go without anything but maybe an okay wage. That is equity when the workers are the ones who produce?

The loss of all these benefits, including union benefits, were all caused by the powerful and very wealthy men who control our economy. They have placed their finger on the scales of a free market and manipulated it to screw the workers and enrich themselves. You think I am wrong, then read Elizabeth Warren’s books and learn how the Koch brothers started this whole conspiracy to rob the workers of this country to enrich only the most powerful. It is very real, and you are feeling the effects of it today!

All of this is to say, if they can place their fingers on the scales, then so can we. Don’t believe their sob stories about economic difficulties and the unbelievable cost of wages to their bottom line. Without workers, there is no bottom line, and somehow all the workers forgot that. Time to rise up again and demand living wages. You have the power, use it!

If $60,000 only pays for three of the dozen things we need to live the American dream, then $60,000 should be considered minimum wage. As you know, that is not minimum wage in this country. So, what can be done? There are a lot of things, and no, communism is not one of them. Don’t tax the middle class to subsidize the middle class, tax the wealthy to subsidize the middle class. If billionaires aren’t willing to pay their workers, then make them pay!

If these elites cannot pay living wages, then they should not be billionaires. That is exploiting the workers for the benefit of only a tiny percentage of our population. Sound familiar? It should, it is how Kings, Queens, and Emperors ruled. Our free-market model has been subverted to support another royal class. Unfortunately, it is hard to suppress greed.

This is why education is failing. If they won’t pay a living wage, then why would they pay for your children to go to school and learn a trade? Better to make your children go into incredible debt, then beg for a job they may not want and will be paid a sub-standard wage with the constant threat of being fired. That is what America has become. Very reminiscent of the Robber Baron days of ol’ England. Rack them with debt, then they are your slave for life. Ask Dave Ramsey about that and he will tell you.

Change education and you change the whole economy, eliminating the “scarcity” model the rich thrive under. They know this and certainly don’t want to change education. In fact, they want it destroyed, thus why they are eliminating the Department of Education. Yes, a billionaire has been tasked to dismantle the department.

After that, they will eliminate all funding for public education, pushing it back to the states and we will rewind the clock a hundred years to when each state had varying degrees of education based on their GDP. Sorry, looks like the South will not rise again. Ready for an epidemic of illiteracy? Welcome back to the “Golden Age” of the past.

Trust me, China isn’t doing that with their education, they are doubling down. They will soon outstrip us in education, innovation, and adaptation. We will become a third world country in comparison to their burgeoning society. No, I don’t admire them, I am afraid of them, and you should be too. We have 300,000,000 people they have 2,000,000,000. Imagine them all smarter and more skilled than us.

Education is a lynchpin of a civilized society, and when rich people like Elon Musk and Donald Trump start destroying it, you can bet the average family is going to pay the price. In the end, only the rich will be educated and the rest will be their slaves. The past is repeating itself again. No equity.

How do we change this?

While we still have a democracy, we must push hard to eliminate the corruption of the billionaires. Once they fully control all political parties, the workers will be completely set back to the 1800s. Stop voting for rich people and start listening to commonsense people. No, Donald Trump has no common sense! He only believes in himself and rich people. I was raised around people like him, and I can tell you they do not care about middle class, lower class, and certainly not immigrants.

By the time the common worker realizes they have been duped, it may be too late. Though I am not a politician, I do have an idea. Start advertising how we are getting our asses wiped by China and other countries on education and demand more funding for schools. These rich people point to our low-test scores and then use that as a reason to cut funding. Nothing positive will ever come from defunding education, just like nothing positive came from defunding police. It will only result in lower test scores and poorer people.

Our education priorities are all wrong. Instead of asking for equity in a college education, we should demand equity in skilled labor. Why are we paying for high school students to go through four years and learn nothing? We should be sending them to trade schools, tech schools, and design schools to get them working right after they graduate. The college factory model no longer works, and we will soon have a major problem when the only skilled labor we have is imported from other countries.

But how do you get college educated politicians (mostly lawyers) to see this bigger picture? It is like the old saying. “Everything looks like a nail to a carpenter.” To college educated politicians, everything looks like college. Stop it!

While 60% of high school graduates go on to college, only about 30% of them get a degree. Very expensive, no skills acquired, and terribly ineffective. We have more than half our population as unskilled laborers. WTF?! That is the American dream? Stop the charade. Not everyone is going to college, so what are we going to do with them? I say train them to be the happiest and most highly skilled workers we can.

Our industries are just as culpable for this miscarriage of justice. If they need skilled workers, which they claim they do, then why aren’t they pushing politicians to create them? Instead, they push for us to import them. Why are they waiting for market forces to create them when the uber-wealthy have their fingers on the scales of those market forces. If you want skilled workers, get off your ass and get involved in creating them. Yes, put some skin in the game.

Stop making underpaid workers of this country pay for their own education to learn the skills corporations need and want. If we want to maintain our dominance in this world then we must educate our workers and pay them good wages, so they pay good taxes to support the whole system. The Federal government is the great equalizer not the enemy! Yes, make them more efficient but don’t get rid of them. That is so foolish that only a billionaire who doesn’t want things equalized would want that. Oh, yeah, that is who is in charge now.

All the obstacles in front of the new Atlantis are very real and very formidable. The current power hierarchy wants to roll back the clock 100 years or more, placing them in the role of the Ceasars of the past. The workers are so desperate, they will vote for anyone who lies to them about their problems. Unfortunately, that would be the liars who put you in this position in the first place. So, they won’t be your savior, they will be your master, and you will be their slave.

Education needs a major overhaul not a major haircut if we are to be competitive on the world stage. The communists will soon surpass us in education, creating a larger, more educated workforce than we can bring to bear. Once that tipping point is reached, we will have to import Chinese workers to fill positions. From there, a takeover of our country will be quite simple. It is what happened to the Kings, Queens, and Emperors of the past, and it will repeat again. Stalin 2.0 coming soon to an autocracy near you. Get off the merry go round.

Unfortunately, freedom, democracy, and the American dream will all be destroyed in the process, leaving this country a hollow shell of its former glory. Stop this destruction of education in this country and get our politicians to start seriously investing in it before it is too late. We can do this because we are Americans, and we can do anything better than anyone else when we put our collective will towards it.

We fought and won two world wars! We harnessed the atom and put men on the moon! We invented the microchip, laser, automation, assembly lines, electrical power grids, flight, etc. We invented the damned Internet for God’s sake! We have the greatest country ever created, but we are turning it all over to the very Kings, Queens and Emperors we fought our revolutionary war to overthrow. What happened to us?

If you think a rich billionaire like Donald Trump and a South African billionaire like Elon Musk will save you, then I have some prime real-estate in Louisiana to sell you. The time is now to double our education efforts, not cut them. Our country is under threat by a country far larger and hungrier than we are. By numbers alone, they can overrun us without difficulty. Are we really going to let them outpace us in education, innovation, and adaptation? Hell no, better dead than red!

Let’s start with an education slogan: “Every 18 year-old skilled, experienced, and ready to work on day one!”

Stop producing Starbuck’s workers and produce real workers with real skills. All of this takes collaboration between society, business, and government. Everyone has a stake in the game therefore, everyone should be involved in how it happens and how it is funded. That is true democracy. America should be exporting the best workers the world has ever seen rather than importing them. That is my American dream, and how we will make America great again!

Peace Profound