In the News (Barking Up the Wrong Tree): “A survey of 75,000 college students showed that, on average, if you want to know how often a student drinks, just ask them how often they think their peers are drinking. (Oh, and be careful about correcting their beliefs with data because this will cause the ones who drink less than average to start drinking more, as researchers trying to reduce student drinking sadly found out.) What is the single best predictor of whether teens will like a song? Whether or not it’s already popular – even if that perception of popularity was totally rigged by the experimenters.
“If you want to increase a student’s grades, just give them a roommate with a higher GPA. And for similar reasons, ‘Scared Straight’ doesn’t work. Programs for at-risk teens fail miserably, averaging a 13% increase in crimes committed. Why? You just took a group of teens who break the law and put them together where they can more effectively influence one another. …
“We’re all influenced by others, that’s obvious. But the degree to which others affect our behavior can be hard to accept – especially in very serious areas where we’d like to think we’re in charge. …
“As Eric Hoffer once said, “When people are free to do as they please, they usually imitate each other.” Sometimes it’s quite deliberate but more often it’s unconscious. We’re just wired for it. This is what it means when we say humans are a social species.”
Question: Why don’t we use this colossal discovery instead of doing things as usual? A child is held back for a second year instead of being advanced to the best class. A criminal is thrown into the most terrible jail instead of being transferred to a model enterprise.
Scientists have come to this. Why aren’t we doing this?
Answer: We don’t care about making them better. We are not thinking about correcting a person but about punishing him.
Question: Do we think that this will re-educate him, that he will become better?
Answer: Not at all! No one has ever been re-educated after being in a prison or a penal colony. Nobody!
Question: And bad students who were held back for a second year did not get better either?
Answer: Nothing like that. Our method is to rot a person to the end. This is the easiest. Look what is being done in every correctional institution, moreover, all over the world. This is a global trend.
Question: Why? What is there in a person that he wants so much to simply let another rot instead of making him better?
Answer: It’s hard.
Question: Hard work to really educate?
Answer: Of course. It is best to put him somewhere with criminals where he will be the same as them. Together they will all serve time, get out, and start committing crimes again, and then we will put them back in prison. And for all this we get money.
Question: So we just limit them? Do we want to keep them from ourselves?
Answer: Only this.
Question: Does it turn out that we only think about ourselves and we don’t think about others at all?
Answer: What’s there to think about? All the ministries of education and upbringing work the other way around, not to correct a person, but to somehow distance him and not put him in the right environment.
This is generally a big problem. After all, it is a great danger if you place a criminal among good children. A smart loner will make these pretty kids into someone who will do anything.
Question: Then is it right that we restrict all these children and criminals?
Answer: It’s not that we restrict them. The fact is that we are not engaged in their education. If you have restricted them, and these institutions are called correctional, where is the correction? What is it?
Question: Then what should be the correction if we don’t put them in a good environment, but just somewhere in a correction colony or hold them for a second year?
Answer: There is no correction. If you want there to be a correction, then they really need to be surrounded by a new society.
And the new society is lessons, books, movies, in general, everything that is only possible, and under great, great pressure. The pressure should be such that they will not have a minute of time, that they will study all the time.
Question: What kind of environment should they have? Can’t I get good people hooked up to them, kind, warm, warm-hearted people?
Answer: This is very difficult because today’s criminals are smart, quirky, and very, very cunning. And I do not know who will win here.
Question: Then who do you lay all your hopes on? The teachers?
Answer: On special teachers whom we have to educate for such institutions.
Question: This is for criminals, what about the bad students, the bad kids who behave badly? What should we do with them? Should we restrict them and also introduce them into some classes with special teachers?
Answer: This requires a huge amount of money and effort. We need to understand what a corrected person is, who an uncorrected person is, and where the bad students, lazy people, all kinds of “clowns” and so on come from. They should be divided into categories and a methodology prescribed specifically for each case. There is no such thing at all!
Question: Who will do such a job?!
Answer: Who will do it? And how many billions are spent to somehow contain crime, in Russia somewhere in medium-sized cities, in America in black communities, and so on? This is a huge problem in all countries!
This is a problem that must be solved together. Where is the UN and UNESCO? Where are all these organizations? They only sit on money and do nothing else. The main thing is that they are silent.
Comment: I do not know what conclusion to draw from this, except that it is almost impossible.
My Response: No, it’s all possible, but only when we really decide with the whole world that we need to raise a healthy generation.
Question: And if we really came to this with the whole world and also felt how hard it is, but we would really like it, would we get help from above?
Answer: We would definitely get help from above. The thing is, we don’t want to. We ourselves don’t want to!
Question: If we feel that it is very difficult, almost impossible, but if we decide that we will attempt it together with the whole world, we will take the best people and say “We will start this very difficult process of re-education with the whole world.” Then if we are stubborn and persistent, would we get help?
Answer: Absolutely!
Question: The whole task is to want it?
Answer: Yes, for the adults to want it, for the corrected ones to want it. Then yes, then it will work.
A corrected adult is one who takes care of the right environment so that everyone around is correctly oriented to the right values of the world. First of all, it is a connection for the sake of elevating a person to spiritual priorities over everything material.
Question: And what are the spiritual priorities?
Answer: For you to feel that there are good people around you who think about making everyone feel good. That’s all.
Question: But will it happen at all?
Answer: In the end, of course it will, but there is still a very long way of revelation of evil.
This is the task of the world; this is the program of the world, and of course, it will be translated into reality. But I personally can’t believe that it will be fast. Or it will be fast, but very hard. Either one or the other.
Question: So there will be people who will burn with passion to make this happen?
Answer: They will be made from above.
There will be people who will not be able to live differently and they will make this revolution.
[302040]
From KabTV’s “News with Dr. Michael Laitman” 8/11/22
Related Material:
Crime And Punishment
The Judicial System Needs To Be Destroyed
The Proper Education For A Person
Filed under: Children, Crisis, Education, Globalization, News | Add Comment / Ask Question →
Comment: In our world, no matter how hard Kabbalists tried to hide spiritual knowledge from the impure, wrong intentions of people, nothing helps; even the ancient Greeks spoke about this. Somehow all the same, knowledge reaches the egoists.
Michael Laitman, On Quora:
