On the Road Again

It's funny how time has a way of escaping your notice and one day you turn around and realize life has changed in so many subtle and not so subtle ways. Since I last turned around, a lot of my friends have gotten married, had children, changed careers, moved abroad, acquired pets, bought a house or two, travelled the world, and generally have kept very busy with life and living. And it makes me wonder, what I have done in the last couple of years?

And along with the reflection comes an even more important question - where am I headed in the future? A lot of times life seems to "happen" to us. We move because we found a new job. We get married because we found someone we couldn't imagine living without. We change careers because we need a change or because we moved. We buy houses because we found a place we wanted to settle down in.

Life is a mixture of chance and choosing. Some opportunities seem to come to us, and others we need to go and find. Where will your life lead next, and is it something you are consciously choosing, or are you waiting for something to happen to you before you make a move? Either way, just be sure the next move you make is one you are 100% sure God wants you to make.

Happy Travels!

Questions

What would you say is the main objective of learning? As an educator, I ask myself every day, what is my objective for teaching? Am I truly focused on training my kids for life outside of school, or am I just feeding them information they will forget next year? Am I inspiring them to enjoy learning and to continue learning by themselves, or am I teaching them to find the correct answer for their assignment? Am I training them to be independent thinkers, to make smart choices, to think through from cause to effect, to manage their time, to handle conflicts with peers, to communicate effectively instead of bottling everything up inside? Or am I training little robots to quietly sit and listen, to fill in the correct answers on assignments, and to remember enough of the information so they can get a good score on a test? Am I training them to respect elders, or am I teaching them that they must do what I tell them to when I tell them to because I told them to? Why aren't things like "emotion management" or "peer pressure 101" subjects in the curriculum? Could it be that it's more important for them to memorize state capitals before they understand how to manage stress in their lives? If our objective for education is to teach information, then we are meeting that. But if it is to truly educate the next generation to "make the world a better place", then let's take a look at the current curriculum and see how much of it is dedicated to meeting our objective. Again, I ask, what is the object of "true education" and are we meeting it?