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Abstract

eone who is “struggling”, who has “special needs”, who just isn’t measuring up.</p><p id="e8d2">The “winners” on the other hand, learn to fear falling into the loser’s circle so they stop taking risks that might make them look “stupid”. They stay well within what they know they can do, because learning has suddenly become a high-stakes game.</p><h2 id="1368">How is this making you miserable right now as an adult?</h2><p id="0dc4">If you have really learned this lesson well, it is impossible to be happy about anything in your life because you are always comparing yourself to other people.</p><p id="0981">Very few of us are the very best, number one in the world at anything, so we are always disappointed in ourselves. You are rich, but not as rich as that other guy. You are a great teacher, but someone else won teacher of the year. You are smart, but not as smart as your best friend.</p><h2 id="4724">How to unlearn this:</h2><p id="da19">Talk to someone, anyone, about their successes. Celebrate their success as you would their birthday, knowing that your birthday is coming too. You might not celebrate your birthday the same way they celebrate theirs and that is OK. Your success might not look the same as theirs, and that is OK.</p><h1 id="f5f9">3. Everything is disconnected</h1><p id="6a33">The next thing we learn is also completely false. We learn that math is math, language is language, history is history, biology is biology, art is art and they are separate subjects that have nothing to with each other. Nothing could be further from the truth but you wouldn’t know it to look at most curriculum in schools.</p><p id="bd07">Students learn to think of themselves as being “good” at math but terrible at languages or visa versa. They take on labels like “artistic, logical, or good with their hands.” I had a teacher once pull me aside after class and tell me that I “didn’t have the mind to learn Spanish”. I believed her, and didn’t even try for years, until one day I found myself really wanting to speak Spanish and travel the world. I am fluent now and even teach it but it took an act of courage and rebellion to challenge the label that had become a part of my identity (not a language person).</p><h2 id="53d7">How is this making you miserable right now as an adult?</h2><p id="2dc8">If you can’t see the interconnectedness of everything, it is easy to feel isolated. Everything is in it’s own neat little box, and so are you. Your box might be an amazing box, but if you can’t see how you are connected to other people, animals, that rock over there and that complex physics theory, you will not take care of them as you should. You won’t be able to see how they are taking care of you.</p><p id="9dcf">This leads to environmental atrocities, unimaginable human rights abuses, and a staggering gap between the rich and the poor. All of this makes us more miserable every day.</p><h2 id="c8c0">How to unlearn this:</h2><p id="d43f">Take your shoes off and put your feet i

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n the grass. Remove the barriers between you and other things. You don’t have to do this all of the time. For sure there are times when I love to shut my bedroom door and be completely removed from everything, but for at least a few minutes every day, connect your body, mind, and emotions with something you don’t usually connect with.</p><h1 id="a370">4. What you already know has no value, we will tell you what is important.</h1><p id="38d3">No one arrives to school the first day knowing nothing, but what they do know is often of no value to them in this new place. The teacher tells you what is important and then tests you on it. The fact that you may know a whole bunch of other stuff that might objectively be more useful in your life, is irrelevant.</p><p id="3e2a">My daughter arrived at first grade already fluent in 2 languages, English and Turkish but her new school was in Japan. Suddenly all of her linguistic abilities were rendered useless because she couldn’t speak Japanese yet. She learned fast but was still labeled “slow”.</p><p id="58e8">In English class she was labeled a nuisance because she spoke English better than the teacher and now she was dangerous because that secret might come to light. The teacher is the authority in the classroom and knowledge comes from there, not from the students.</p><h2 id="ff06">How is this making your miserable right now as an adult?</h2><p id="1927">You lead a life full of things that other people have told you is important. You are constantly trying to fit yourself into someone else’s mold. You hate your body because it isn’t what other people want it to be. You go to a job you hate because someone somewhere told you that is what you should be. You live somewhere that stresses you out because you are supposed to love it there.</p><h2 id="2eb0">How to unlearn this:</h2><p id="5960">Start to ask yourself what you want. You know what is best for you. I was devastated when, at the age of 50, my marriage fell apart, so I went to a therapist. He asked me what I wanted and I was shocked to discover that I could not answer that question.</p><p id="79d5">How could I not know what I wanted? Well, I had spent so much of my life trying to be a good wife, a good mother, a good teacher, a good friend that I hadn’t really considered what I wanted since I was a child. When I was a child I definitely knew what I wanted. I am in the process of relearning what I want. So now, before I do something I “should” do, I ask myself if I want to do it, if it will help me to get to where I want to be.</p><p id="db5d"><b><i>If you want to <a href="/@kiadecou/membership">sign up for Medium</a> so you can read all of the stories and write them too, consider using <a href="/@kiadecou/membership">my link</a>. Part of your $5 monthly fee will go to me but it won’t cost you any more, yippee, we both win. Then you can get started writing and I can read your articles too! I can’t wait to see what you have to say.</i></b></p></article></body>

4 Things you Learned in 1st Grade that are Still Making your Life Miserable

And How to Unlearn them

The way to a better life is through education, or so they would have you believe. As a teacher I am supposed to be encouraging you to send your kids to school so they can excel, so why am I encouraging you to unlearn most of what you learned there? Because the lessons you learn in school go way beyond the capitol cities and rivers you memorized. You probably forgot all of those anyway. No, the real lessons are more subtle and they lodge themselves in your subconscious and erode the love of discovery you were born with. So, what are those lessons that are so damaging?

1. Learning can be measured and your value as a human being depends on how you measure up.

When I was little I couldn’t stop asking “Why?” It was my favorite word! I was gathering information just for the sheer joy of it. Every little piece of knowledge helped me understand the world better and it was glorious. Then I went to school and learned that knowledge was not glorious, it was something that I was supposed to be able to produce on demand on something called a test. It could be reduced to a number and that number was attached to me.

How is this making your life miserable now that you are an adult?

It stops you from learning just for the joy of it. When was the last time you embarked on a learning adventure free from any thought that you might be judged for how much you know or don’t know?

How to unlearn this:

Take 10 minutes every day to look around you and ask questions about what you see, hear, smell, taste and smell. Then look for the answers just because you want to know more about the world around you. Glory in the knowledge and then ask another question, just like you did when you were small. Remember, knowledge is just knowledge, it doesn’t make you a better or worse person.

2. Life is a competition and if you are not winning, you are losing.

It was only a matter of seconds before we all figured out that everyone had a number attached to them too and the higher the number, the “smarter” we were. These were our friends and it had probably never even occurred to us to value or devalue each other in this way. Suddenly our friends were our competition.

Sometimes our numbers were plastered onto a wall for everyone to see but more often they were shared in whispers. If we had a high number and shared, we were at risk of showing off. If we had a low number, it was shameful. Those with low numbers tried to say they didn’t care, but it was impossible not to care when you have suddenly gone from being a kid, to someone who is “struggling”, who has “special needs”, who just isn’t measuring up.

The “winners” on the other hand, learn to fear falling into the loser’s circle so they stop taking risks that might make them look “stupid”. They stay well within what they know they can do, because learning has suddenly become a high-stakes game.

How is this making you miserable right now as an adult?

If you have really learned this lesson well, it is impossible to be happy about anything in your life because you are always comparing yourself to other people.

Very few of us are the very best, number one in the world at anything, so we are always disappointed in ourselves. You are rich, but not as rich as that other guy. You are a great teacher, but someone else won teacher of the year. You are smart, but not as smart as your best friend.

How to unlearn this:

Talk to someone, anyone, about their successes. Celebrate their success as you would their birthday, knowing that your birthday is coming too. You might not celebrate your birthday the same way they celebrate theirs and that is OK. Your success might not look the same as theirs, and that is OK.

3. Everything is disconnected

The next thing we learn is also completely false. We learn that math is math, language is language, history is history, biology is biology, art is art and they are separate subjects that have nothing to with each other. Nothing could be further from the truth but you wouldn’t know it to look at most curriculum in schools.

Students learn to think of themselves as being “good” at math but terrible at languages or visa versa. They take on labels like “artistic, logical, or good with their hands.” I had a teacher once pull me aside after class and tell me that I “didn’t have the mind to learn Spanish”. I believed her, and didn’t even try for years, until one day I found myself really wanting to speak Spanish and travel the world. I am fluent now and even teach it but it took an act of courage and rebellion to challenge the label that had become a part of my identity (not a language person).

How is this making you miserable right now as an adult?

If you can’t see the interconnectedness of everything, it is easy to feel isolated. Everything is in it’s own neat little box, and so are you. Your box might be an amazing box, but if you can’t see how you are connected to other people, animals, that rock over there and that complex physics theory, you will not take care of them as you should. You won’t be able to see how they are taking care of you.

This leads to environmental atrocities, unimaginable human rights abuses, and a staggering gap between the rich and the poor. All of this makes us more miserable every day.

How to unlearn this:

Take your shoes off and put your feet in the grass. Remove the barriers between you and other things. You don’t have to do this all of the time. For sure there are times when I love to shut my bedroom door and be completely removed from everything, but for at least a few minutes every day, connect your body, mind, and emotions with something you don’t usually connect with.

4. What you already know has no value, we will tell you what is important.

No one arrives to school the first day knowing nothing, but what they do know is often of no value to them in this new place. The teacher tells you what is important and then tests you on it. The fact that you may know a whole bunch of other stuff that might objectively be more useful in your life, is irrelevant.

My daughter arrived at first grade already fluent in 2 languages, English and Turkish but her new school was in Japan. Suddenly all of her linguistic abilities were rendered useless because she couldn’t speak Japanese yet. She learned fast but was still labeled “slow”.

In English class she was labeled a nuisance because she spoke English better than the teacher and now she was dangerous because that secret might come to light. The teacher is the authority in the classroom and knowledge comes from there, not from the students.

How is this making your miserable right now as an adult?

You lead a life full of things that other people have told you is important. You are constantly trying to fit yourself into someone else’s mold. You hate your body because it isn’t what other people want it to be. You go to a job you hate because someone somewhere told you that is what you should be. You live somewhere that stresses you out because you are supposed to love it there.

How to unlearn this:

Start to ask yourself what you want. You know what is best for you. I was devastated when, at the age of 50, my marriage fell apart, so I went to a therapist. He asked me what I wanted and I was shocked to discover that I could not answer that question.

How could I not know what I wanted? Well, I had spent so much of my life trying to be a good wife, a good mother, a good teacher, a good friend that I hadn’t really considered what I wanted since I was a child. When I was a child I definitely knew what I wanted. I am in the process of relearning what I want. So now, before I do something I “should” do, I ask myself if I want to do it, if it will help me to get to where I want to be.

If you want to sign up for Medium so you can read all of the stories and write them too, consider using my link. Part of your $5 monthly fee will go to me but it won’t cost you any more, yippee, we both win. Then you can get started writing and I can read your articles too! I can’t wait to see what you have to say.