I am currently trying to force myself to finish an online diploma I started in ‘Clinical Herbalism’. It’s pretty tough going. I keep getting distracted by nearly anything, a bird outside, making some tea, my socks. Anything and everything distracts me. It’s not that the course is difficult. It’s very easy in fact. It is however quite quite ridiculous.
Now I’m a fairly open and easy going person. I welcome new ideas like I would an interesting stranger bringing me cake. I did, for example, pay money to learn about herbalism and gain a diploma in it. In my innocence I imagined re-training, happily growing herbs in a garden and possibly making soaps.
However this course is a perfect example of hippy bullshit!
Oh my gosh, I just used the word ‘hippy’ in a negative sense. Well, I was driven to it by the drivel I’ve had to endure on this course. It makes me want to vote conservative just to get someone to sort out course providers like this.
Now you may think I’m over-reacting. Ha.
The course started well with biology and the like, then it dipped a bit when it started talking about auras. However it then surpassed all levels of idiocy with talk of flower power and Atlantis and Humurians. Here are some choice quotes (stated as fact….FACT):
‘the inhabitants of Hemuria were completely self-contained, being in harmony with each other and with the harmonies of nature. All communication occurred on the level of the mind through telepathy, and only in the latter stages of Hemuria did the ability to form sounds and speech develop’
‘Hemurians had the ability to logically detect the bond between the human form and plant life.’
‘Because the Atlanteans were not properly in tune with nature, many diseases developed for the first time on the planet.’
‘ In early Atlantis according to various writings, a lifespan was approximately 800 years to have decreased to about 200 years about 12000 BC at the time of the collapse of Atlantis.’
Now I’ve nothing against people believing all kinds of crazy but I take offence when I start being taught myths as FACT and am not allowed to disagree or debate the issue.
Of course I complained to them. Apparently it’s not ‘against the law’ to teach myths as a teaching aid. Number one they were never referred to as myths and number two ‘not against the law’? What are they twelve? Many things are not against the law, for example getting an irish wolfhound tattooed on my face, that does not mean they’re a good idea.
I was going to paste the e-mails (with relevant names starred out) here – but they had some small print forbidding copying of their e-mails. I must abide by the law. I was also not going to mention the online college out of niceness but as I’ve used extracts from their lesson legally I think I have to.
So they are E-LEARN UK associated with STONEBRIDGE COLLEGES. This is their website. And the above quotes were taken from lesson 13 of their ‘Clinical Herbalism’ Diploma course.
The website link doesn’t work, I’m very disappointed. I was looking forward to all kinds of crazy courses that I could sign up to! I watched a “grow your own drugs” programme on bbc2 the other day (accidentally, I was also on the phone at the time), it was mainly concerned with varicose veins…
Fixed it. The link should work now. You can pick all the crazy courses you like.
x I love your picture by the way. Brilliant!
I’m inspired by their features! I had not until this moment considered a care in “foot health”.
…and thank you! I spent last night contemplating setting up a blog. I could update it for several hours each day at work…
I am now doing this course and have tried to find ANYTHING on the interwebs concerning exactly this (which is why I came across your blog), thing is I don’t have a lot of money and this course was quite a lot of money but a you say a lot of it is hippy crap, but I want to finish it.
How in the gods’ name can I take it seriously though when they spout this?
xx
/end rant!
Caroline – I know how you feel. It is massively frustrating to have paid for a course that you then can’t respect. I would advise finishing the course. I think they’ve probably done some kind of cut and paste affair with the information so the general information about the properties of the herbs is probably worth while.
Maybe we should start some kind of support group for people who thought they were going to become clincal herbalists and then got their spirits crushed by this course.
For what it’s worth I did finish the course and now have the certificate above my desk which if nothing else gives me a good story to tell others.