Episode 53: Children's Education That Will Last a Lifetime with Komal Shah, Educational Consultant

We live in a society that is reactionary. We live in a society where we're not necessarily talking about, for example, working out or nutrition. We wait until someone has health problems, and then we talk about going to the doctor or the hospital. We are constantly in a society where preventative measures tend to not be spoken about, and as we can see nowadays, there's a major mental health crisis, the likes of which we have never seen. We talk a lot more openly about going to therapy and all these different places to get help, but we're not necessarily talking about why kids and adults are going there in the first place.

Educational consultant Komal Shah leverages her passion for education with her business expertise and her personal conscious living practices. Her plan is to shift outdated educational paradigms and transform the education system for the betterment of all children. Why? So that preventative measures to common issues can be more normalized during their educational journeys.

Are we equipping young people with the tools that they need to navigate life, and this, from a young age? When the topic of mental health crisis is discussed, you can hear a lot about kids saying that they have a lot of pressure to succeed. They feel the pressure to get good grades and test scores, because their parents want them to go to that one college, and they really need to get accepted. There are a myriad of expectations that are constantly being pushed on young people. As a result, people are left wondering why they are not fulfilled.  The real question we need to ask is this: Is our education system actually supporting our young people to understand what it means to find their purpose and navigate their lives in fulfillment?

The problem is the general messaging coming from our education systems. What these systems are doing is inadvertently conveying to students that their value and worth are based on how they perform on academic benchmarks, because how they do on those benchmarks will ultimately lead to their future success. A lot of this messaging is implicit. Obviously, teachers aren't standing in a classroom telling students they're failures, but they are applauding the ones who are doing well and getting good grades. The thing is, if we cultivate the love of learning in our children early on, then they will automatically do well on the assessments they're required to take, but when we just teach the test, and only talk about the SAT and other tests that need to be taken, we come to the realization that this current generation of students are being tested far more than their predecessors. The system itself has become worse and worse over the years, and the message being put into the world should be teaching young people to internalize that their value extends beyond tests, because they have real gifts and intelligent contributions to add to the world.

In the western world, mindfulness has typically been marketed by saying that it will make you more productive, less stressed, and more present. In the eastern world, it's all about doing this practice of mindfulness for life. It's not so you can become more productive, it's so you can actually connect with yourself on a deeper level. That was exactly what Komal was doing as she gained more of an understanding and connection with her students. As a result, she was showing up very differently in her classroom.

Systems are made up of people, and if you want to change the system, you have to change the people first. Otherwise, the system will not change if everybody is okay with the grading systems, test scores, and colleges, especially if it works for students. Education has simply been one of those industries that have been the slowest to change. Unfortunately, it takes forever for policies to change, because most people in the education industry operate with a mindset of "this is the way we've always done it." Furthermore, most people aren't in a position to even be at the top where decisions are made, such as government positions. What Komal can say is that she's trying to do a bottom-up approach, which is to actually start having the appropriate conversations with parents, teachers, and people on the ground. Of course there will be roadblocks, but Komal believes that it starts with yourself first. You'd be surprised that when people do this type of more conscious work themselves, things do shift, and change is gradually made over time in a tangible way that young people can see for themselves.

Young people are some of the most mindful people in the world. They are very deeply connected, and this can be observed over time simply by, for example, watching a baby play in the dirt, pick up a bug, or gaze at the skies. In many ways, they gradually get disconnected as they get older. The goal is to keep cultivating that connectivity that already exists. Not much needs to be done other than an expansion of general awareness. Many families end up continuing the same generational cycles without stopping to question any of them in the context of how much sense they make for themselves.

Unfortunately, the consciousness journey isn't an easy one. For most people, they find it when they hit rock bottom, whether it's a divorce or the death of someone, that pushes people to really stop, reflect, and ask themselves really difficult questions. Society has conditioned people to get stuck on specific parts of their identities. Like Komal always says,  "Yes, I'm a woman, but that's just a part of who I am. That is not who I am. " So the reality is, people will want to put other people in boxes based on what they look like, and in our society it usually tends to be gender, race, and sexuality. But people are so many other things. Too many kids have been robbed of who they are just to please others, and it's time that we start realizing that they already have a lot to offer.

Connect with Komal Shah: https://www.linkedin.com/in/consultkomal/

Buy your copy of Raise Your Hand: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09FNT6B45/ref

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