What are we doing in our education system that we can come out so
ignorant? What are we doing here in the West and
in the first world when we have so many children that
have such a disparity of wealth and experience? What is
education if we are just doing the same thing year
after year? If we don't change what we do in
our education system, we're going to be creating the exact same
result. Welcome to Neuroeducation, where
we're exploring the neuroscience of how to switch on the brain to
supercharge learning. I'll be sharing with you innovative teaching techniques,
effective parenting strategies, and educational advocacy. I'm
your host, Angie Dee. Together, let's revolutionize children's
learning. Hi
everybody, thank you for tuning in to Neuroeducation Podcast
with Angie Dee. I had an interesting experience in
my final years of high school. I would say I
had what you would call a pretty typical year 12 experience.
I did move from Sydney to Brisbane, which was interesting. But
I got to do some cheerleading in high school, got to date
one of the footy boys, it was pretty exciting, he
was a hottie. But something happened
in the end of my year 12 journey
that really shook my world forever.
So I met a bunch of guys who I actually
thought were from South America, but it turns out they were
actually from Afghanistan. But one of them had asked me if
I wanted to go along to an awards night and he had
been nominated for international student of
the year. And I said, oh my gosh, yes,
I loved everything multicultural, anything about other
cultures, languages, dance, anything multicultural, I'm
in. So there I was on the awards night
watching my friend who
actually got the award. And lo and behold, when
the award was read out, it had a spiel about
his life. And so I found out,
no, he wasn't from South America. He indeed was actually
from Afghanistan and he was from a group in Afghanistan, an
ethnic group called the Hazaras. And what I
found out that he had been through so much in
his life. more than I could possibly imagine in
my entire life. He had been through a
war where the Taliban had come, had taken his
father for questioning. His father was never returned. He
came from a village where so many women died because they didn't
have any access to hospitals. There
was no running water and he had lost
so many members of his family to so many different tragedies.
And he had come to Australia as a refugee because
he didn't have any other choice. In
his village in Afghanistan, the Taliban were making the rounds, taking
the eldest son from every family. And
they were back for their second round. And I think it
was his uncle that actually helped him to come out
to Australia. Now here I was as a grade 12 student
at the end of grade 12, mind you, about to
go out into the world. And I tell you, I had
no idea about anything that was going on in Afghanistan. I
had no idea about the war. I didn't know it had been through a social war.
I didn't know that it had been through a civil war that Russia
had tried to take over. And now the Taliban, I had no idea. And
so I was dumbfounded that
I could go through all of my education and be
so ignorant about so many facets of the
world. I was desperate.
I was desperate to be able to make an impact for people like
my friend, who had gone through so much, who
had lost so many family members and literally
been thrown across the other side of the world because the
only other solution was death. And
here I was in my privileged little life,
doing some cheerleading, dating a little footy boy,
actually dating a very strong, strong footy boy. But
here I was with no idea what was going on in half of
the world. So what are we doing in
our education system that we can come out so ignorant? Like
as a global citizen that I now consider myself to be, I have
educated myself on the current situations in
the world. I have done the research. I
went on to volunteer with the Oak Tree Foundation, which
is Australia's very first youth run aid
organization. And what we did is we went into schools
to teach them. what was happening and what we
could advocate for for our government to make sure
that we had greater impact for our local aid
and for fair trade and making a positive impact in
our global community. When
you look at something like the eight millennium development
goals created by the United Nations, you
can see what a huge disparity we
have of wealth in our world. A huge disparity. There
was one story that I read on
a human rights watch when I was doing the work with the
Oak Tree Foundation and it had the story of a little
girl from Tamil Nadu in India and
this little girl said, I don't care about going
to school, all I want to do is bring my
sister home from the bonded labour man. Every
morning at six she has to go to work and
every night at nine she comes home and if she doesn't go to work he
comes and he beats her. All I want to do is
bring my sister home. I don't have 500 rupees
and I will never have 500 rupees so I cannot bring
my sister home. The sad fact is
in this human rights watch it shared that well not
only is only 500 rupees about 20 US dollars but
that this girl is among millions that
were working in bonded labor because they
had no other choice as a family when you're
living on less than a dollar a day than as millions of people do.
If absolutely anything happens, if somebody gets sick or somebody needs
medicine, the only way they can get money is by going to
the local factory and signing bonded labor contract. These
parents have never learned how to read and write, which is why they only getting
a dollar or less than a dollar a day in their
job. And they have to sign their children over in
bonded labor, which has mean they're working off whatever the debt is
for labor. Because they can't read and write. Half of these contracts have ridiculous
interest rates. And some of these children are working for
20, 30 years to pay off a debt of $20. I
was horrified when I read that story. And I thought, what
are we doing? What are we doing here in the West?
And in, I would say, the first world. When
we have so many children that have such
a disparity of wealth and experience. And it sent me
on and a quite interesting adventure to look at what
are the daily things that we can do that make an impact to
children in other countries. Recently, I
have been running my own homeschool group. Uh,
and what was so fun to research during
that homeschooling was the process that
our clothes go through. our coffee, our
chocolate? What processes that go through from
growing and production to getting it to where
it is today for us to actually to eat, to consume
or to wear? And looking at is
it a fair trade process or are these people actually
paid a decent wage? And not
only is it a fascinating way for children to be able to engage
and understand the world around them, what's happening in
different countries, the reality of how people are living, how
much money that they're being given and how much people are
being paid for, how much of the money that
we pay are actually getting back to these people. And
so when we look at these kinds
of things, I think it's important to look at We
live in an incredibly privileged society and
what is education if it's not a help to life?
What is education if we are just doing the
same thing year after year? If we don't
change what we do in our education system we're
going to be creating the exact same result. So
as global citizens helping to create global
citizens in our students, we want to be creating a
mindset that says, okay, what's a
problem that we have in this world? And how can
we change that? Adolescents have some of
the most outrageous hormones, but we know adolescents also
have passion and belief in themselves that they can make change.
So we can use these crazy
outrageous hormones, this incredible belief in themselves, to
be able to take the world's problems and to give
it to children because you can look after story
after story of children all around the world creating
solutions to problems in their local and global communities.
The young boy who created, it's called Harness the Wind, I
think, on Netflix. Amazing system of
electricity over in Africa. Children in Bali that
are creating amazing solutions for all
of the pollution that they have. But we here in
the West and in first world countries, especially here
in Australia, we can use our educational system to
empower children to make positive changes for
the world and for the future. So next
time you're getting children to read something
on a nursery rhyme, or you're getting children to read something
about a novel or a narrative, you
can think, what is a real world situation we can embed
into this subject or scenario so that we
open the children's eyes to the reality of the world and
give them the motivation to make a positive impact. Thank
you so much for listening to this episode. It would be in a massive
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