Passion University is leading an education reform that corresponds to a general global transformation. The basic format and objectives of mainstream education have not been changed for hundreds of years. However, our generation experiences drastic economic, environmental and social changes, presenting new challenges that cannot be adequately addressed by the current education system.
Passion University has studied these transformations and developed educational methodologies and technology to address these essential needs.
Mind-Body Integration
Passion Age Trend
Through millions of years of evolution, the human mind and body evolved together, reflecting our environmental needs. During our generation there have been drastic changes in the ways we interact with our environment. We no longer need the full functionality of our body, and instead use technology, which requires minimal use of the body, and relies heavily on the mind. We no longer listen to subtle sounds in nature, trying to locate a running fox between the bushes, directing our arrow towards it, and shoot quickly and accurately to get him. Instead, we sit most of the day in front of computer monitors, our fingers tap on a keyboard, and our main activities are mental processing. The mind and the body lose their essential coordination, and they no longer function in tandem to facilitate a healthy mind-body system.
Traditional Education
Most Universities and academic programs do not recognize the body as part of the individual that’s essential for successful life. In their perspective, all knowledge is mental, and education is basically a cerebral process.
Passion-Based Education
Passion-based education recognizes that education is a mind/body process. Our emphasis is not just on acquiring knowledge but connecting it with direct experience, which includes physical feelings and sensations. Coordination among our mind/body faculties, and communications between them, enriches both and brings depth and additional dimensions to our human expressions.
Emotional Intelligence Over Intellectual Ability
Passion Age Trend
There is a growing realization that emotional intelligence is more important for a happy and successful life than intellectual capacity. In the past, people valued those who were academically smart and had high IQs. Recent studies show that happy, successful people in general are those who have abilities to recognize their emotions, manage them, and use them to their benefit.
Traditional Education
One of education’s main goals was to teach students how to memorize and process information. Very little focus was given to students with differing learning styles. As a result, the only option for an education was to fit or adapt to a precise academic structure
Passion-Based Education
Passion-based education emphasizes emotional skills at all levels of our professional and academic programs. Students are encouraged to become aware of their emotions and recognize them. Students are given tools to manage their emotions. Passion Training workshops create a safe and supportive setting for students to express and release difficult emotions, and we create specific processes where students can learn how to integrate their emotions with their other faculties. Emotions are our best allies, and we can use them to gain intuition, inspire us, fill us with happiness, make life choices, and strengthen our immune system.
Flexible Definition of Professions
Passion Age Trend
Shorter term, multiple professions and skills. In 1940 people held on average 2 jobs during their entire lifetime, and very few had more than one job at a time. In 2000, that number rose to 14, and a growing number of people have more than one source of income.
In today’s fast-changing technological world and economic structure, professions are coming and going quickly. In 1990, how many web designers, social network marketers, and on-line travel agencies were there? None. On the other hand, today there are many unemployed Cobol programmers and travel agents. New computer languages and internet-based travel sites have put them out of business.
Also, in the past an occupation was associated with a specific physical location, limiting the typical worker. Telecommuting, and the fact that most jobs in the future would be done through wireless Internet connections, will allow individuals to enjoy and utilize their various talents through several occupations concurrently
Traditional Education
Most universities and academic programs prepare students for a life-long profession within fairly static parameters.
Passion-Based Education
Passion-based education’s programs give students the foundations for successful careers, developing the student’s learning abilities, adaptability, emotional intelligence, inter-personal communications, personal and career management, and working with the basic elements of life in any environment.
Passion University’s graduates have the experience and skills to better adapt to career and life changes, and to take advantage of economic and technological changes.
Educational Collaboration
Passion Age Trend
Knowledge, experience, and life perspectives are strongly related. To promote global understanding and cooperation, there’s a growing need today for educational collaboration worldwide.
Traditional Education
Most universities and institutes require students to take the major part of their course work at a single academic institution.
Passion-Based Education
Passion-based education encourages academic collaboration and cooperation, and allows students to take some of their course work at other approved academic institutes, as long as they meet Passion’s program and degree requirements. Thus, Passion University’s programs span an educational network that promotes passionate living and holistic education.
Accessibility Of Information
Passion Age Trend
Information had been a premium asset. In order to succeed in life, you needed to know many things and have many skills. Not anymore. Most information today is becoming digitized and stored on numerous interconnected databases.
Many people already have immediate, direct access to these databases through affordable personal wireless devices. Practically anything you want to know you may find on these databases. Soon you will interact with them using voice, body gestures, video, and natural language. It is like having a full-time personal assistant who knows everything and helps you every moment wherever you are.
Traditional Education
The role of education was to teach information, knowledge, and skills. The goals of most educational curriculums was student exposure to information in class or through textbooks, requesting them to memorize it, and testing them for accurate regurgitation of the material. Most education stressed uniformity of material and learning style, and institutional structure over applicable, experiential content.
Passion-Based Education
Preparing students for successful living requires coping with the vast information around us. The art of life is not how to find information, but how to not be overwhelmed and desensitized by the information that we are bombarded with. Passion-based education provides training and tools to enhance relaxation, mental clarity, focus, and intuitive approaches. It teaches students how to draw wisdom within the infinite information at their disposal.
Adaptable Educational Formats
Passion Age Trend
Technology enables customized education for content, format, time, location, and curriculum
Traditional Education
In the past, the educational process usually involved a full-time status at an educational institute, structured class format that students were required to attend at specific time and location, and homogeneous material to all students for a specific course. Instructors used tests to evaluate students based on a specific set of questions and expected answers.
Passion-Based Education
Passion-based education offers most of its courses through the Internet. Students can learn any material, any time, anywhere, at their own pace, using a format that suits their needs, interests, and abilities. Using interactive multimedia and personal consulting sessions, students worldwide can connect directly with their instructors during the course offerings. Student’s progress can be evaluated through intelligent software tools. Students are required to physically attend only the experiential parts of their courses, and these hands-on workshops can be concise, enabling students to use their time more effectively.
Global Cooperation
Passion Age Trend
Social, political, and economic structures have been hierarchical. A leader or a president managed organizations and societies top-down. People used to belong to a specific organization or society. They learned to receive instructions from their supervisor, and instructed their constituents. Due to technology, most people can communicate with each other directly, thus creating a network of many individuals. Each individual shares, gives, and receives as much as they want from anyone else, fostering cooperation, cross pollination, and effective resource sharing.
Traditional Education
Education has prepared individuals for goal-oriented, top-down management. Academic learning structures were designed to wire students to be successful and content in this type of hierarchy the rest of their lives.
Passion-Based Education
Passion-based education prepares students to interact with others as peers in a global network of people who support and cooperate with each other. Linear thinking and focus on operations are replaced by the flexible dynamic flow of human interaction.
Cultural Integration
Passion Age Trend
People were accustomed to work and interact in their communities with those who are similar to themselves. Thanks to technology and internet-based conferencing tools, we can now interact with many people around the globe. Even language is no longer a barrier with free, quality translation tools.
Traditional Education
Education has prepared people for results-oriented achievements based on focused efforts directed to specific goals. People tended to look for others similar to themselves, with whom they had common language, cultural background, and similar perspectives on life.
Passion-Based Education
Passion Training encourages students to leverage the differences that we see around us. People from different backgrounds can enrich each other with fresh perspectives. Cooperation among people from different cultural backgrounds adds new dimensions and creates synergy among its communities.
Environmental Impact
Passion Age Trend
Earth seemed to be an infinite well of resources. Especially in the past 100 years, humanity took from it whatever we needed, and destroyed what we didn’t immediately need. Today’s crowded planet, heavy industry, and already crumbling natural resources, cannot withstand the fast pace of additional contamination and pollution.
Traditional Education
People are superior beings and deserve to use and have whatever they want. Use Earth’s resources as much as and whenever we can. Treat each problematic area individually, and do the minimum required to restore and preserve it, assuming no other economic or political issues are at stake.
Passion-Based Education
Passion-based education’s approach is that all creation is a living, interdependent organism. Earth, its surrounding atmosphere, other planets, animals, people, minerals, air, water, mountains, seas, deserts, and forests all relate to each other. They are part of a bigger organism, Gaia, whose parts need to be well balanced for the whole to function.