I HAVE A DREAM!!!

The very iconic words of Martin Luther King Jr. on the 28th of August 1963 during the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. This very inspiring speech revolutionized the civil rights movement in America and I believe it also influenced the civil rights movement in the world at large.

But many years later, I believe there's another type of subtle discrimination that has found it's way into our social systems, especially our schools and organized systems of education around the world.

In response to this, I also do have a dream!

Not the one were you see yourself fighting along side the Expendables because of the movie you watched the night before or the one where you were eating that bread and ewa agaoyin laced with snails, ponmo, plantain and dark red spicy sauce.

I mean the visionary type of dream, the type that envisions a wide range of possibilities that enhance both the life of the individual and the collective. The type that hibernates deep within our hearts and minds and is constantly causing a strong sense of dissatisfaction with the status quo. That compelling vision of the way things should be.

This kind of dream is what I have and I want to share it with you. Since when I heard what you're about to read next, I haven't been the same.

The future of humanity is found in the dreams inside of people.
- Poju Oyemade.

Just pause for a minute and think about this.

All you see around you now and all that you would see in the future is a product of the dreams inside of people. The case of Dr King's dream is a classic example. This led me to this thought.

What would change for you, if you were brought up in a system that was designed to provide the basic and necessary support to help you recognize and pursue what you felt or knew to be your life's dream and things that genuinely made you feel like you were contributing to society?

This is not suggestive of a state of lawlessness, where people cast of restraints and act without considering the negative effects their pursuit might have on others. Not at all, we don't exist in a void and our actions have consequences.

But I believe by God's design we are interdependent as a race. Therefore if a dream, ability, aptitude exists in a demography, it's for the collective use and benefit of that demography and should be nurtured to blossom.

Our skill set, abilities and intelligence are all interwoven parts of any dream we might have and are also influenced by our environment such that they are nuanced to the context of our immediate environment.

I do not believe this impedes the global relevance of our intelligence or skill set. But it does have relevance first and foremost to the immediate environment in which it is situated.

This means that the solutions to the increasingly complex challenges we're constantly face to face with are within the diversity of abilities present in that demography. In many cases they need to be either awakened to it or given room for expression.

It's similar to supply and demand.

The strongest any society can be is when they learn to help people master their individual strengths and not when they try to make everyone into a particular mould of what they think strength is like. An army can't consist of only archers or snipers. They'll fail woefully.

This makes society better positioned to face the very complex problems we face in the world today.

At this point, it's important to note that dreams are deeply personal. Never forget this. They might be similar and in many cases complementary but they remain peculiar to the individual and cannot be doctored.

These type of dreams originate from deep within the individuals unique and distinctive pattern of thought, experiences, their visionary capacity and is accompanied by a deep sense of responsibility that compels them to act and great satisfaction at the pursuit or actualization of that dream.

I have a dream where our schools and organized systems of education have an unwavering commitment to opening people up to the genius inside of themselves, to their genuine selves and not to make them into an external measure of genius.

I have a dream where the critical mass of school attendees are empowered beyond the busyness of activities like rote learning, standardized testing etc to an emphasis on becoming the possibilities that exist within them.

If you read to the end then this article is speaking to depths within you and I dare you to DREAM!