"The greatest thing, you’ll ever learn, is just to love, and be loved in return." ~ eben ahbez
I want to challenge the notion that the best things we learn in schools are the academic and job preparation skills, but instead the "soft" skills, all of those skills we supposedly learned in kindergarten.
There are areas where our society is in turmoil because these lessons have not been learned by everyone. Love each other is a very important concept, and one where we, as a society, need a lot of work. From Tea Partiers who believe that we should not fund education for everyone, to Internet trolls who post cruel and disgusting things on a 13 year old’s work, we see a lot of evidence of a lack of love in the world. We see it in how we distribute our "wealth" amongst our citizens, and how we prioritize funding for different programs, both in the Western world, and for aid programs abroad. If we lived in a world where "love thy neighbour" was actually followed by everyone, would we even need aid programs for the "under-developed" world?
While I am grateful for all of the scientific knowledge that we have, it seems that our ability to solve scientific (requiring academic skills) is vastly superior to our ability to solve even the simplest of social problems. Perhaps it is time for our society to focus on solving the social problems for a while? Maybe one of the roles of school should be to develop "good" citizens?
Cindy says:
David, Somedays, it seems like we are buried in so much information and detail that we lose sight of the big picture. Somedays, it seems more energy is spent on identifying all the things that separate us from each other than on the things that bring us together. Your post was like stopping by a beautiful garden on the way to work. I love it when I can read something like this and feel different when I’m done. Thank you.
As we continue to chase the empty gods of content, achievement and accountability in our schools, we are likely to miss (or have no time for) helping our children become thriving global citizens. While we can’t change the system as fast as we need to, each of us could start by making this fundamental shift in how we approach teaching and learning. Wouldn’t it be great if a completion rate measured readiness to contribute to one’s local and global community? (I know, not mathematically sound. But I can dream.) Cindy
May 18, 2011 — 11:54 am