Status quo. The idea that “this is just the way things are” has never sat well with me. Not when I was passionate about health, fitness and nutrition (still am…just don’t do it for a living anymore) and certainly not while I’ve been passionate about teaching people about money.

One of the philosophies I passionately  instill in the teens who attend our programs is the necessity to “question everything.”

From the time our children enter school to the time they leave, they are, for the most part, filled with facts, statistics, dates, names, places, etc. They are forced to learn these things so that they can regurgitate the ANSWERS on a test after which, they are then graded as if their ability to know those particular answers prepares them for life.

You see, I don’t believe our traditional schools are working. I know I’m not alone in this belief and this is just one of the many reasons why I don’t believe they are working.

Here are some questions for you to illustrate my point.

Has the date Christopher Columbus set foot in America ever come up when you were buying a piece of rental property as an asset?

Was the capital of Spain important when you were researching stocks or mutual funds?

When was the last time you used the War of 1812 to develop a marketing plan to launch a new website that would help you build financial freedom? (OK, so this may actually be relevant if the website is a history blog that sells DVDs of history lectures or something.)

Now don’t get me wrong. Knowing “stuff” is important. But why do we send our children to school in the first place? Because we’re supposed to? Because someone said we had to? Because it’s a law? WHY?

I want to say we send them to school to prepare them to live happy, successful lives. But the part of me that knows the origin of Kindergarten (look it up) has a hard time believing that. Especially with our current success rate of getting kids from Kindergarten to graduation in 18 years. Why 18 years? Who decided that was enough? Or is it too much? You can see how the question thing works!

From what I’ve gathered, the reason we send kids to school is to get them into college. Are you aware that this is the criteria most high schools use when evaluating their success? Not the kids’ success, the schools’!

I personally believe that schools really produce employees and soldiers, both of which we need, but at whose expense?

Next question for you – and I might add that when I ask a group of relatively intelligent adults this question, they are at a loss for answers – Where are our next leaders? And I mean leaders leaders we can look up to, believe, and follow! Leaders like JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr., Ghandi…those types of leaders.

Why ARE leaders leaders in the first place? Not because they know a bunch of irrelevant information. They are leaders because they QUESTION EVERYTHING and aren’t afraid to speak out to the world that there’s a different way, and perhaps a better way to do things.

I don’t begin to assume that we can change the course of our schools overnight, though I’ll suggest how we might in a later article (or you can email me now and ask), but we can begin to instill in our children, the desire to question everything, regardless of their ages.

Your next question: Why DON’T we want them to question everything? What would happen if they did?

I believe it’s the last question that might have fired up your brain. Oh no, we’ll have anarchy on our hands, no one would follow the rules (not a bad idea, really, because many of them need changing anyway), they wouldn’t do their homework. Maybe they’d learn something else that was more important; something they were actually interested in and that was relevant to their lives at the time.

Our kids must be empowered with the ability and desire to question what is happening to themselves, their communities and their world so these kids will grow up to be leaders that can, and will, make a difference in all areas of life – and the time to start growing them is now!

Just something to think about.