As owner of DUI schools in Glendale and Burbank, I have seen the results of the increasing failures of our schools with thousands of people over the past 30 years. Faces in our drunk-driving classes are younger and younger with heavier and heavier patterns of substance abuse.
The administrators who developed traditional curricula unknowingly created a closed-circuit system of left-brain intellectual trivia that ignores the right-brain nature and needs of the students.
Students are forced to sit for hours with no compensating release of physical or emotional energy. They are expected to learn unusable left-brain information with no right-brain context that applies to their lives, interests, talents or skills.
It is a one-size-fits-all, outdated, out-of-balance system measuring only left-brain achievement with standardized testing.
The only thing that holds it together is wonderful, dedicated teachers who reach both the hearts and the heads of their students.
Excessive demand on students’ left brains suppresses right-brain talents, uniqueness, creativity, inspiration, human spirit and a sense of self. Art, music, athletics, manual training, if available, may serve and save some. But the academic emphasis to succeed creates an undercurrent of stress for all.
Endless boredom, constant stress, blocked physical/emotional energy and pressure from parents to succeed in a left-brain system are the cornerstones for substance abuse.
Bright, young, creative minds are bored without whole-brain stimulation and experiences. When a child or anyone feels trapped and cornered in a hopeless situation, the fight-or-flight stress response kicks in for survival.
