Education Matters

It is a commonly known fact that the lessons learned in childhood often stick with us into adulthood. 

Like a new phone or a new laptop, children reaching adulthood come with factory settings learnt in childhood that pretty much see them through the rest of their lives and like a new phone or laptop, no matter what you add in, all can be taken away when the factory settings are reactivated.

What we teach our children about themselves or how to function in the world around them comes from two principal sources, conscious influences and unconscious influences. 

The first and by far the most potentially useful or damaging are the conscious influences such as the things that are said to you by the other people around you and the impression this then gives. 

Remember, the more you say something to somebody, the more likely they are to believe it and in childhood, it’s easier for the positive and negative things to stick, become self-belief and ultimately become our factory settings in adulthood.

For example, when I was at school I hated maths. This was because my brother and my dad were both really good at it and the assumption was that I would be too. Needless to say, maths didn’t come naturally to me and when they began to tell me how bad I was at it, eventually I believed them and, therefore, it became one of my ‘factory settings’. 

When I was faced with maths classes or maths exams I would do anything I could to avoid doing them because I believed I was really bad at it and would never succeed. The behaviour that ensued as a result of this led me to act up against my maths teacher who perpetuated the factory setting by telling me I would never succeed in maths. I didn’t. I failed my maths exam three times in a row because I believed I couldn’t do it. 

I continued to believe that I couldn’t do maths until applying to university. I almost didn’t apply because I needed to have a maths pass and my factory settings were so well programmed, I concretely believed that I couldn’t achieve it.

I wanted to go to university so badly, however, that I was forced to step up and try and change my settings. So, I found a tutor to help me and such was her patient manner in deconstructing my mind set and finding out the gaps in my learning, that I passed my maths exam and realised my ambition of going to university. 

Parents and teachers are very good at telling children what they can’t do and focusing on what needs to improve as if it is the only thing that is important.

 We have a responsibility to ensure that our focus on these areas is done in a positive spirit of self-improvement and doesn’t trigger a self-doubting cycle in which children believe they are falling short of expectations.

If doubts and criticisms are heard often enough, they can ultimately become self-belief or a factory setting which can set the pace both positively and negatively for what we believe we can achieve in the future.