Tip 3 Teaching People Facts, Skills, Goals - & When To Speak Up For Themselves

Tip 2 Teaching Life Skills - Facts, Organizing, Skills, Goals, Speaking Up

What is the role of a teacher?
1 To educate - impart useful information.
Often if you have the facts, you have the skills, or can teach yourself the skills, choose your goals and speak up for yourself.

2 To teach skills. The policy of teaching a man to fish, not giving him a fish.

This is where so many parents go wrong.

Mother cooks and cleans. She should teach her children, male and female, to cook and clean. Then when she is entertaining or has guests to stay, they can help. When she is iill or old they can help. When she is dead, they can look after themselves.

My mother cooked. She should have taught me to cook.

Making Money & Saving It
My father looked after my money. He should have taught me to look after my money.

So many parents think they should give children financial handouts. Then children live on the dole. Run out of money. Can't manage finances.

Children and teenagers should be taught the essential rules which apply to family life, marketing and citizenship. Find out what the other person needs and give it to them.

3 Goal Setting
Unless you have a goal (such as passing O level English), you can't see the point of the steps (doing tonight's spelling test or essay).

Looking At The Mountain
The Gotta Have A Dream theory.
If you look at the mountaintop, it might encourage you to take the next flight of stairs.

The One Step At A Time Theory
But if the whole journey seems too great and distant, maybe you have to encourage the pupil or yourself to look at the project 'one step at a time'. The teachers and pupils have to know themselves.

Life coaching is about thinking of the big goals and then selecting the small achievable steps and doing them.

Goal-setting - Fulfilling Expections
Some of us spend our whole lives waiting to be told what part to play (pupils, customers).

Others tell others what part to play (teachers, doctors, authors).

Resisters
Some people are Resisters. Tell them to do one thing, they do the opposite. Lazy. Contrary. Procrastinators.

One method in NLP Neuro- Linguistic Programming - using positive language to set actions and goals - is to tell a resister to do the opposite. The person who persists in eating is told he must eat more - until he stops and says to the teacher and himself: 'No - I've had enough!'

Pleasers
Others are pleasers. Easily led. Easily encouraged.

Resisters Creating Role Confusion
If you don't play the part you were given (boy with girlfriend, man with wife, drunk on barstool), but you are homosexual with heterosexuals, sober with drunks, drunk with people who are sober, they are confused abut what role you are playing and what role they are playing. This is what makes them upset.

Control Freaks
In the UK adults are free to do what they want and marry who they want. It is illegal to force somebody to marry against their will.

In other societies the individual is part of the group and is expected to conform to the good of the group. To resist the will of the group shows the group is out of control of its members and brings disrepute, shame, attack on the honour and the control exerted by the elders or leaders.

Conforming to Family & Society
Honour killings - expecting children, even when they are adults, to play the roles their parents give them. But the government expects each person to be born, get married and die, to live three score years and ten.

Only the law courts can decide whether you should be put to death. In this country we don't have the death penalty. So honour killings are not allowed because:

a) Adults have a right to choose who to marry.

b) Law courts of independent persons must decide disputes. The judge and jury are separate.

c) Killing citizens is not allowed.

Speakers
Speakers are confident. Audiences clap on cue.

Theatre Critics & Review
Maybe theatre critics should follow the rule recommended in Toastmasters International which trains speakers. CRC - commend, recommend, commend - or praise, criticise contructively, praise. All critics should CRC. Teachers should CRC.

Teachers and Teaching
What's wrong with the new idea that children should not put up their hands? Simple. Those who fail must be taught to persist until they succeed.

The shy should be given confidence. You don't prevent people succeeding in case others are jealous.

If giving prizes to one makes others a failure, you give prizes to everybody.

At a party you give goody bags so that not only the birthday boy or girl but every child receives a gift. You don't ban presents in case others are jealous.

Don't spread misery. Spread happiness.

Speaking Up - For Children
Teachers should be encouraging the shy to put up their hands.

Start every lesson by making every child put up its hand and answer with its name when asked. The physical act of raising the arm. The mental effort of answering the teacher. The social effort of answering a question without hesitation. Knowing an answer which not everybody else knows.
Speaking Up - For Shy Adults
Join a speakers club which trains speakers. Toastmasters International is worldwide.

Obviously, if you think you have a great system, you should try to spread the word.

Civilization and organiation may be better than anarchy.

But if spreading your system means killing others, it is time to consider whether you have lost sight of the end and defeated the aim of happiness of many with the unhappiness of the few. This is where religions and wars can fail or succeed.