Oh Yes I Can...

Pablo: The Little Boy Who Didn’t Know He Couldn’t…Yet

When Pablo came into this world he had one big advantage, which was that he hadn’t yet learned that he couldn’t do certain things. As the result he tried doing all kinds of things and he discovered, much to his amusement, that some of the things he tried he could do, while others he couldn’t do…yet.

For example, he discovered that if he wanted to do so, he could stretch his arms, his legs, his fingers, and his toes out so they felt longer, or he could pull them back in so they felt shorter. He found that if he reached out and touched things he could find out what they felt like, hard, soft, cool, warm, smooth, rough, etc. He also found that if he could wrap his fingers and thumb around an object that he could kind of control it and bring it in closer. He could throw it on the floor, which is when he discovered that he could expect Mom and Dad to fetch and bring it back to him…a couple of times anyway.

He tried laying on his stomach, and rolling over to his back. Mom sat him up and he found that to be an interesting experience. He watched Mom and Dad do the things that they could do and Pablo wondered if he could do them too? The most interesting thing they did was to stand on their feet and legs, balance, and move around wherever they wanted to go. Mom helped Pablo to hang on to the high chair to help him to stand up and that worked out pretty good. But when he let go and tried to move across the room like Mom and Dad, Pablo fell right on his face. Dad picked him up, dusted Pablo off, and consoled him.

Mom And Dad Encouraged Pablo
But Mom and Dad kept encouraging Pablo to walk, the falls became easier, and one day several weeks after he began trying, he took his first four steps…and then he fell again. But four steps, that was something to celebrate, at least his Mom and Dad thought so. They kept encouraging him and Pablo kept walking and doing all kinds of new things all the time. Mom and Dad thought Pablo must be a very bright boy. And one of the other things Pablo learned was that if you keep trying to do the thing you want to do, the odds of doing it become better and better until you succeed.
In fact during his first four years of life, Pablo tried and learned to do all kinds of things all because he didn’t yet know that he couldn’t do them. And if he didn’t know that he couldn’t, then maybe he could. Not only that, but the only way Pablo could find out whether he could or couldn’t do something, was to try it. That way he knew for sure. In other words, if he didn’t try something, he’d never find out what he could do and what he couldn’t do. It was about that simple. And Pablo wanted to know. For all these reasons Mom and Dad always thought that Pablo must be a very bright young boy.

Then Pablo Turned Five And Went To Kindergarten
Then when he turned five years old, Mom and Dad enrolled Pablo in kindergarten along with lots of other five year olds, and instead of comparing what he could do yesterday to what he could do today or tomorrow, the teacher taught Pablo to compare himself to the other kids in class. The teacher was very good at this kind of thing and she saw all kinds of things like some kids were tall and some were short, some had blonde hair and some had brunette hair, some were skinny and some were stocky, some were fast runners and some were slow runners. And most importantly to the teacher, there were some kids who were smart, some who were average, and some who were below average and she placed them all in groups that reflected this assessment of them.

Pablo Was Labeled Average
As it turned out the teacher put Pablo in the middle group, but he had no idea why. Anyway he learned this new way of looking at himself from the teacher. Then he found out that when he tried stuff because he didn’t know that he couldn’t, the way he’d always done, some of the kids would laugh and make fun of him if he failed to do what he was trying to do. They thought less of him when he tried and failed, and the teacher seemed to think less of him too.

From this experience Pablo learned that it was embarrassing and painful to fail in front of the other kids and he never knew that before. But once he learned that lesson, he decided to avoid trying when other people were around and in doing so, Pablo would avoid having the other kids make fun of him, laugh at him, and make him think less and less of himself.

Pablo Learns To Stop Trying
By the time his kindergarten year was over, Pablo had switched gears when it came to trying new things. Prior to kindergarten, as you will recall, Pablo didn’t know that he couldn’t, so he would try it and find out whether he could or not. And back then when he failed nobody made fun of him, his Mom and Dad encouraged him to keep trying, and so he’d persist until he learned how to walk, how to talk, and how to do all kinds of very difficult things, because he just kept going until he finally learned to do what he wanted to learn to do.

But once in school Pablo learned that failing in front of the teacher and the other kids was embarrassing, painful, and that the simple solution was to stop trying in front of them. At least then he had an excuse. After all…he wasn’t trying, right? And when he stopped trying, he could no longer find out if he could or he couldn’t do things. But at least he wasn’t embarrassed, at least the other kids weren’t laughing at him and making him feel bad about himself, because they wouldn’t know if he could or couldn’t because he refused to try.

Pablo Learns To Shoot Himself In The Foot
Now the problem that developed over time was the more that Pablo refused to try, the less he learned about what he could and could not do. And the less he learned, the more his teachers and his peers just presumed that he couldn’t learn to do new things, otherwise he would. Nobody wants to be labeled a dummy.

By the time he’d reached junior high school Pablo was no longer in the middle group, he had been labeled a slow learner, and a low performer. Even Mom and Dad threw their hands up and bought into what the teachers said about Pablo. Apparently he was not bright like they’d originally thought. After all, all parents think their own kids are bright, but some of them have to be wrong, right?

Pablo Even Began To Believe His Teachers
Worst of all Pablo began to believe what the teachers and his peers said about him. He began to feel angry and frustrated when he was in school…which by now, he absolutely hated. He began getting in fights with other kids and giving teaches a hard time, so now he was also being labeled a behavior problem too. Pablo finally dropped out of school without graduating, without a high school diploma, and then he went looking for work.

He applied for job after job, but found that the market for young people who’d dropped out of school, and who were also considered behavior problems, was pretty bad. And the jobs he was offered paid so little that they guaranteed Pablo would stay on the bottom of the heap, no matter how hard he now tried.

Let’s Go Over How All This Happened…
Now you can use your imagination and finish this story any way you’d like, but the main thing to understand is that Pablo, like almost every other kid who comes into this world, was born with a gift of curiosity which he turned into knowledge of many amazing things. He knew he didn’t know that he couldn’t do something unless he tried it and failed. Then he discovered that if he kept trying, sooner or later he’d often succeed.

So Pablo explored his environment, watched Mom and Dad, and he tried to do the things that he saw them doing. And this entire time Mom and Dad always encouraged and even expected him to be able to learn and do all these wonderful things, if he persisted, which he usually did.

But when he was enrolled in school with a teacher and with other kids, they taught him that if he tried and failed, that they’d make fun of him, and think less of him. And in the long run, they convinced Pablo that he couldn’t do much of anything, and that it was no longer worth trying.

Pablo learned to hate school, his peers, and eventually to hate himself, all because he was systematically taught that he couldn’t do things, and for whatever reason, he and his parents thought the school system knew what it professed to know. After all, these people have college degrees and they are smart, right? But once Pablo himself bought into their suggestion that he couldn’t…his fate was sealed.

The First Really Good Question
Now, the first real question at this point is…who’s to blame? How would you answer this controversial question?
· Is it the overworked and underpaid teacher who’s given the task of sorting out the strengths and weaknesses of 25 to 30 kids each year in order to begin the selection and labeling process that we now call “education” in the 21st century?
· Is it the school administrators who are hired to oversee and operate the system?
· Is it local school board members who are elected to oversee and direct the administrators, and the school system?
· Is it the country, state, and federal educational administrators who concern themselves with marketing unfunded mandates like No Child Left Behind.
· Or is it Pablo’s parents who presumed that the people who made up the system knew what they were doing when it came to educating Pablo?
· Or Pablo himself who should have been stronger
· His peers who should have been more compassionate and understanding
· Or do each one of these parts kind of go along with, and feed on the others while under the hypnotic presumption that questioning the system that’s served this nation well so for over 200 years, is a sign of disrespect, disloyalty, is unpatriotic, and cannot be tolerated?
· And if you choose this last one, then who’s in charge of evaluating the bloody system and what it’s producing?

The Second Really Good Question
The second real question is, what can we do about this problem? What would you tell Pablo, his peers, his parents, his teachers, his school administrators, the school board who oversees the system? I know what I’d tell them. I’d say it’s the expressed goal of this school system to teach Pablo and all his peers that the only way to find out if you can or you can’t do something is to try doing it. And just because you can’t do it today doesn’t mean that you’ll be unable to do it tomorrow…so long as you keep on trying. No, there really is no substitute for persistence.

I would say that in order to succeed the system must convince Pablo and his peers that there is absolutely nothing wrong with failing to perform, and there is everything wrong with failing to try. After all, in the big picture, human life is all about exploring and testing our limits from day to day, plotting and planning how to push those limits back over weeks, months, and years.

Winning And Losing In Education
To the degree we achieve that goal, the system and everyone in it wins. To the degree we fail, everyone loses. As the old saying goes, a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. So the job of educational systems around the country is to do everything possible to produce strong links who know that if they only keep their eyes open, think for themselves, and relentlessly persist, persist, and persist, they can probably learn to do whatever they really need to do in life.

It’s the job of school systems to strengthen each and every one of those links, every day, every week, every month, and every year, and to make sure Pablo knows that if he keeps on trying, there’s very little that he can’t accomplish. On the other hand, Pablo needs to know that if and when you ever give up on yourself and stop trying, you are limiting yourself, you are shooting yourself in the foot, and you are dooming yourself to future failure after failure. For me this is the biggest lesson any child can learn during their formative years, and teaching kids to really believe, down deep in their gut, that they can do it as long as they persist…is what education in the best sense, is all about.

What Does This Have To Do With Joe And The American Revolutionary Party?
To be honest, I wrote this piece for a different book, but I’ve decided to include it in this one too because I think it applies so profoundly to what we are attempting to accomplish in the new American Revolutionary Party. I suggest it’s not only the school system that’s at fault here. I suggest the system at large is designed to eventually convince people that they should not, and indeed they cannot, challenge authority and win. It starts with parents, moves on to teachers, professors, supervisors, managers, business owners, and of course at the top of the list is the government.

I mean how many people do you know who don’t even bother to show up to the voting booth to vote for the President of the United States and his colleagues in Congress because they are thoroughly convinced that THEIR VOTE MEANS NOTHING. Or how many people do you know who show up to vote, but are convinced that they’re being asked to choose between the lesser of two corporately sponsored evils? And how many people do you know who are absolutely convinced that they are absolutely powerless in the face of the mega money, and the multinational corporations who own and control both mainstream parties (and to an extent the lives of the people) in America today?

The Disease…
When people are finally convinced of all those kinds of things, they are suffering from the same systematically generated disease as Pablo. The disease is called the I CAN’T DO IT SYNDROME, and it’s effectively a systematic domestication, a systematic neutering of the people in order to protect the status quo. Once the people believe that they can’t do it, guess what. They stop trying just like Pablo stopped trying. And when you stop trying, THE BIG BOYS AUTOMATICALLY WIN BY DEFAULT.

The Antidote…
The antidote is the I CAN DO IT IF I RELENTLESSLY PERSIST bacterium. Now the thing to understand about this antidote is that it won’t work by itself. That is to say if you sit in the lotus position and repeat to yourself over and over again I CAN DO IT, I CAN DO IT, I CAN DO IT like the little train who could, you will go absolutely nowhere at warp speed, and accomplish nothing.

On the other hand if you understand the central message of this book to the point that you are on fire, and you’re bubbling over with excitement over the fact that YOU JUST LEARNED THAT WE CAN DO IT, you will become contagious, and you will begin to infect all kinds of people around you…without even trying. They will see the excitement in your eyes, hear the enthusiasm in your voice, and they’ll become so curious about the changes they sense in you that they’ll start to ask questions.

Coming Back From The Dead, And Fully Embracing Life
And when you start filling in the answers to those questions, these people will actually start thinking and seeing for themselves that they’ve been sold a bill of goods by the system. They will come to realize that, just like Pablo, there was a point in their lives when they too didn’t know that they couldn’t. They were magical. They were adventurers who were discovering new things almost every minute of the day. Their lives were fun, exciting, and they were alive in a way that they have not been alive in the longest time because the system succeeded in convincing them that they couldn’t do it.

The ARP Challenge
This then is the challenge for the members of the American Revolutionary Party who have discovered the antidote to the I CAN’T DO IT SYNDROME. Once we’ve returned from the dead ourselves, we must then bring friends, relatives, neighbors, and other acquaintances back to life. That is to say, the first step of the journey is to clearly recognize that we can do it, but only if we try. If we don’t believe we can, there is no reason to try. And if we fail to try, the big boys win by default, while we the people, and generations of people to come, will lose because we the people of this generation swallowed the systematically produced kool aid, and we failed to try…just like Pablo.