Most people in the United States would agree that our public K-12 education system is broken and needs to be completely revamped. Changing education paradigms are something we as a country and as an interconnected world need to examine. Consider that most teachers are paid hardly anything and live close to the poverty level. Consider that most public schools are vastly underfunded and lack basic educational, nutritional, and technological resources to provide an appropriate learning environment for our children. Consider that most students in the United States rank much lower than the rest of the developed world when it comes to math, science, and reading. The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA), which measures reading ability, math, science, literacy, and other key skills among 15-year-olds from developing countries around the world, found in 2015 that U.S. students ranked 38th out of 71 countries in math and 24th in science. Among the 35 more economically developed countries on the list, U.S. students ranked 30th in math and 19th in science. With all that in mind, it isn’t hard to see we can do much better. Our children and our future deserve it.

We could dramatically improve our education system if our Federal Government contributed more than 6% of its budget, or $70 billion, toward education–instead of spending 54% of its budget, or $600 billion, on the military each year. Imagine how things would change if we took a similar approach to Finland, which has one of the best K-12 educational systems in the world. Finland’s education system recruits the top 10% of undergraduate students, offering them free graduate training for three years with a living stipend. Upon graduation, the students receive about $150,000 — a salary that’s easily on par with doctors, lawyers, and engineers — to teach full-time. The result is that all teachers there come out of school with no debt, a great salary, and a meaningful job they can be passionate about. Exporting this system to the United States would drastically improve the quality of our teachers and their ability to prepare our children for the future. I cannot think of a more important investment than in our teachers, schools, and children. However, we must not be so simplistic to assume that simply throwing money at our teachers and schools would boost our children’s educational abilities and our system’s international standings. I believe we have reached a point, in our evolution as a species, where we must reexamine and redefine what a “modern education” really means.

Whether we like it or not the world is changing at a blistering pace. Science and technology act as a double-edged sword. On the one hand, they make our lives easier and more efficient. Never before have children grown up with so much information and technology at their fingertips. While this might sound like a good thing, technology can overwhelm us. It can bring feelings of uncertainty, an unhealthy desire for perfection, heightened levels of competition, and a dangerous dependence. As a result, our children and teenagers are exhausted, stressed, and strung out, trying to learn and experience everything about life, often vicariously through others. By the time they are 16 years old, most of them have experienced what would have once taken 25–30 years. I would argue that what we’ve called “midlife-crises” in the past are being fast-forwarded to the early 20s because of this information overload and experience on our young people. We need to reconsider how to give our children the psychological tools and resources to ground them. Only then will they be able to wield the power available to them through technology.

For too long we have narrowly defined what it means to be “smart” or “intelligent.” We have allowed western values of independence, materialism, competition, power, and greed to shape our educational system, funneling “special” or “gifted” children into areas like math and science while the majority are left behind. For too long this process has been biased toward cognitive and rational intelligence, neglecting the equally important values of emotional and social intelligence.

Ways to start reclaiming our true power and potential through education

We need our modern education system to recognize, value, and cultivate the various forms of human intelligence equally. What good is it to have someone who is vastly superior in one area, such as cognitive intelligence, but completely devoid of emotional and social intelligence skills? One could argue that this unbalanced system is what resulted in how Wall Street banks and big corporations too often conduct themselves. They have bred their top executives to be intelligent, unemotional, rational, self-interested leaders who are willing to engage in whatever cutthroat, unethical and, at times, illegal practices necessary to enhance profit. Maybe if we started to educate our future generations more broadly and in a more humanistic manner, we would see a major shift in the way businesses conduct themselves.

Not too long ago the term “Renaissance Man” was given to individuals who showed expertise across a number of disciplines and domains of knowledge. In our modern world, however, we have traded this concept of a broad knowledge base for a highly specialized knowledge area. This is not healthy for the individual or the masses; the more narrowly focused we become in our perspective, the less we can see the “big picture.” We need a balance of both the micro and macro perspectives in our modern educational systems to contextualize life and truth in a meaningful way.

Modern Education

What if we used the most important things in life — mental and physical health, happiness, love, relationships, emotional self-regulation, healthy communication, community involvement, self-care — as a mold for our educational system? What if, in addition to teaching math, science and history, we included classes on meditation, mind-body healing, martial arts, yoga, energy work, psychology, communication, philosophy, and spirituality? What if we combined cutting-edge research in the fields of quantum physics, neuropsychology, psychoneuroimmunology, epigenetics, and mind-body medicine with the teachings of ancient mythology and mysticism from the wisest cultures of the past?

We would bring together new and old, East and West, science and spirituality, mind and body, in a way never before done. Our knowledge would be accompanied by a core set of guiding principles and values such as love, compassion, cooperation, community, and celebration of individual uniqueness in the context of interconnectedness. Forget about just giving our children the emotional and psychological advantages they need to live happy, healthy, and successful lives in our new technology-driven world. We must also remind them of what it means to be human — and of their infinite power and potential to heal or harm, thrive or die, and create or destroy. Wouldn’t you want your child to attend this type of school for creating superhumans, similar to the X-Men training academy? I know I would…

I would thus like to propose the formation of “Superhuman Schools” in which modern education curricula would be based on the latest scientific research, combined with experiential learning from great masters of mysticism, yoga, chi gong, martial arts, and shamanism. Early on, students would learn traditional concepts such as meditation, energy work, healthy communication, self-regulation, reading and writing, along with the tools to connect with their bodies, their hearts, and the quantum field around them. The development of heart-brain coherence and heart awareness would be reintroduced to our youth in a major way.

Imagine what would happen to the current dysfunctional economic, political, and social structures of society if we started teaching our children to consider themselves all-powerful beings, capable of incredible feats of creativity, ingenuity, love, and healing? Where everyone is made to feel good enough as they are, but also responsible and accountable for their own health, happiness, and direction in life? Where people are honored and respected as monumental, powerful beings with the potential to make change in the universe? In addition to teaching this empowering approach to our youth, we need to provide them with the skills and tools to become masters of their own destiny. As more and more jobs are being automated by advances in technology, wouldn’t it make sense to invest in our youth’s creative, artistic, innovative, and passionate pursuits? Doing so would advance society while bringing joy, beauty, and entertainment to the masses. As it is, only 27% of college students actually end up working in fields related to their college major or degree. Why don’t we actually teach our children how to think critically; to constantly challenge the status quo and empower them to study what they are passionate about and good at? Our children should learn how to start and run organizations, use cooperation as a framework for growth, and turn their dreams into realities. If we can accomplish this, all work will feel like an act of love and service.