Further to my article “A-Level Results Day” that spoke about the fact that a change in our education systems is about to occur – hopefully in the way that young people seem to be hurriedly pushed straight out of secondary education into university without any opportunity for learning life skills, such as paying their own rent, paying for their own food – and indeed cooking it! – and generally trying out being an adult first.

Alternatively, they could be encouraged to grow up in the market place for a couple of years, rather than being removed from it as is the case at present. They could then go on to study something that really turns them on, instead of than gaining a degree in a subject that will never support them or even interest them long term. How many people really work in the subject that they are qualified in? And, yes, some young people take a Gap Year, which can fill this need to some extent. But such is the manufactured panic to gain a university place, many of them forgo this, in order to get ahead of the game….

Lucky the young people who know at a very early age what passions pull them into adulthood. It is usually those in the helping professions – the vocations, art and music, seem to score highly here. And yet, if we read Sir Ken Robinson, co-director of the Liverpool Institute for the Performing Arts (LIPA) on this very subject in his book “The Element – How finding your passion changes everything”, we soon learn how we need an education system that listens to infant passions carefully, lest we turn out people filled with disappointment in their lives. For a more academic approach, try James Hillman’s “The Soul’s Code” which suggests that we come here with an agenda already in place which so often gets thwarted by the systems that abound.

In 1979, my 13 year old son helped me to unpack my Commodore Pet computer – remember them with the little tape decks that downloaded the programs? I had bought it to aid my astrological computations. He said to me “This is what I want to do with my life.” He followed his passion into programming. His two younger brothers then followed their own fascination for computer networks – both hard and software. And they are happily and gainfully employed – not without struggles along the way.

However, I am really wanting to pursue this idea of the changes that are coming due to the massive planetary aspects that are moving across the planet. If I can lessen the fear that many of us feel when the winds of change blow across our faces, then I’m happy with that. I said in my last post that the last time they occurred was in the mid 60s, so let’s look back for a moment.

When I was young in the 60s it was OK for a man to nip my bottom, blow smoke in my face and call me a “girl”. Women couldn’t get a mortgage without either their husband’s or father’s signature. It was still acceptable for landlords to put signs up in their windows saying ‘No’ to people of different ethnic origins. It was the norm for young people to marry directly from the parental home – having one’s own apartment was considered ‘fast’ and who would want to marry a ‘fast girl’? Teenage mothers were still forced to give their babies up for adoption. Women gave up work to run the home the day they married.

We had the rock music revolution, clothes specifically designed for young people, rather than us wearing scaled down versions of what our mothers wore. Men still seem to be dressing as they always have for the last hundred years or so. Maybe women really are the true harbingers of change ….

Who on earth would want to return to such times?

People often point to the changes that have resulted from the Uranus Neptune conjunction in the early 90s and blame them on the 60s – different planets, different outcomes, folks, don’t let us confuse matters here. An article will follow on the culture shift of the 90s.

So, let’s see what the next few years bring us in terms of changed attitudes – because the moment an attitude changes, then new actions do follow.

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