aussiecorey

You are absolutely right with the clarification, and the more I look around my cohort of future colleagues, the more I see brilliant people lacking the interest to inform themselves and search for ideas and perspectives outside of what we are taught at university. And given the fact that once a teacher questions the system, cognitive dissonance in his/her brain gets activated, because biting the hand that feeds you goes against what the indoctrination we receive for the 4 years of our degree. i recently started reading and listening to John Taylor Gatto and he is unbelievably fascinating to listen to about this topic. So how did you cope with the crisis of conscience jpahmad? Were you surrounded by hostility? Because the rewarding experience for me was that at least with the students I built a good rapport, nowhere near what I know I can accomplish, but that will come the more I get near the 10.000 hours needed to master any profession/skill. The thing that surprised/angered/frustrated me the most is the disrespect and disinterest that teachers showed towards their students. After-school meetings where million technicalities and procedures were discussed ad nauseam, but almost no words on how to build a constructive and safe environment in and outside the classrooms. I know Stefan discussed few times in his podcasts about the issue, but I'm still a newbie on Freedomain Radio to have built a knowledgeable base to form a comprehensive and factual opinion. This is a good advice, cab21, and I just had a discussion yesterday with my course coordinator at university because the Australian school system is divided in Public, Independent and Private schools. The problem is that private schools more often than not are linked to some sort of religious identity (Anglican, Catholic, Protestant), so working in a private school might present another set of problems. And from what I've seen, there is no correlation between private schools and more enlightened colleagues/teachers, as teaching graduates come all from the same source (university). Thanks for the link, I started reading and listening to some of the articles/podcasts in that website, and it looks a potential good source of ideas. Thanks for your kind feedback xSocrates, I am actually planning on calling in a couple of months time. I just want to do enough research (e.g. reading each one of Stefan's books, and listening to his philosophy series) that I will be prepared to go into a fulfilling discussion with him, as I have noticed that many people don't really arrive prepared to the call, and they struggle to identify the important issues that they want to discuss. I am Italian and even though I have no problem to verbalize my thoughts, philosophy is really challenging my ability to communicate at such a deeper level and I welcome this struggle very happily. Thanks for the clarification about RTR's target (relationships with friends, family, romantic partners), it is the second book I read, after UPB, and I just felt pushed to take action by reading some passages that seemed tailored to my experience with my future colleagues even though probably they are more of a satellite target of the book.

Hello everybody, I am new to the forum and I have been listening to Stefan podcasts for the past 2 months, which has opened my eyes immensely on many issues that I never thought about before. I am currently reading his book 'Real-Time Relationships' and it makes so much sense on many levels, but I reached a chapter that is putting me in a tough spot. He states that ' Remaining in relationships with immoral people while complaining that they are immoral is one of the most subtle forms of abuse in the world. It is revoltingly hypocritical, insofar as it uses ethics to enable and justify corruption'. I totally agree with this statement, and because I'm finishing my degree in education (to become a high school teacher in Australia), I will surely end up in an environment where I will work with teachers that could be deemed 'immoral'. I actually already taught as a science and phys ed teacher in a public school last semester (before discovering Freedomain Radio), and I had a hard time adjusting to the values that were preached in that environment. Now, the problem is that I know I will make a difference as a role-model and mentor to the kids I will teach, and I will not accept any corruption in my teaching methods as soon as I will be alone in a classroom with my students (which I couldn't do during my internship, as I had a supervisor for the entire time giving me feedback and whom had the power to fail me as soon as I went outside of the expected practices preached at the school). But as Stefan explains in the book, would I be deemed immoral if I consciously decide to remain in a forced relationship with my colleagues? Staff room politics permeate any school and I will have to continuously juggle between principal, deputy principal and head of department in regard to 'what' and 'how' to teach the students. What could be a philosophical course of action in this case? We need excellent teachers in public schools, and changing career right now do not make sense to me, especially because I could see the change I was making especially in my science classes, where the kids got used to questioning everything we were studying, without taking it for granted. But at the same time I want to pursue a moral life, and it will have to include my career as well. Thanks for your help