Formalized Curiosity

Colourful mobiles lazily spinning above cradles and cribs.

Toy boxes full of tractors and dolls and plastic superheroes.

Piles of clean, maybe dirty, clothes spilling on beds and floors.

Curiosity about walking, talking, and discovering the world.

Growing up with construction paper, scissors and modeling clay,
books and movies, cellphones and social media. 

Formal education shapes, designs and rearranges
all those lessons into careers, jobs and employment.

Whatever we have given our children ~
packed and stored, brought with them into adulthood ~
memories of toys, lessons and games.

“It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education.”

~ Albert Einstein

Crystal Gazing

An educated guess with

facts, figures, and variables
time, temperature and attitude
intuition and education
experience and creativity ~
as close as possible to seeing into a crystal ball that shimmers with the glow of the future.

“Forecasting future events is often like searching for

a black cat in an unlit room, that may not even be there.”

~ Steve Davidson in The Crystal Ball

Incidental Education

An old typewriter in Grandpa’s Main Street office with a less than standard keyboard.

A fascinating bit of magic seeing black letters appear on white paper from tap-tapping of tiny fingers.

Curious grandchildren treated to multicoloured Lifesaver’s hidden in the pigeonholes of the old oaken roll-top desk.

Hop, skip and jive into the future, 

through elementary and past high school years, 

textbooks and notebooks, pens and pencils traded for

secretarial school with ‘real’ QWERTY typed in classes 

lined up with good spelling and gathering speed, 

squeezed in before a ‘real’ career in nursing.

Fast forward twenty seven years, 

A grand leap to Texas Tech University to expand nursing education with the only available pre-requisite

a newly formed computer based English class

complete with keyboard and new technology ~

e-mails passed back and forth between arborite university desks ~ 

A fascinating bit of magic seeing black letters appear on silver screens. 

Oaken roll-top desk replaced by black desk-top computers or shiny lap-tops, key boards easy and standard for adult fingers.

No room for pigeonholes and Lifesavers, but a culmination of

incidental education about key boards and magic lettering.

“Nothing is incidental.”

~ Pocan Ioan Valentin

Childhood Education

Wooden ABC blocks stacked and rearranged

Blankets and upended chairs

Forts and fences designed from a child’s mind

Leading grandma or grandpa into a fanciful foreign land

peopled with evil characters, action and stories with many roads

School days start

Education in earnest begins

With blocks on the calendar 

Days and weeks designed from adult minds

To be filled, shaped and directed

School days with tests, quizzes and exams behind, ahead and around

creativity squeezed into skinny empty spaces beneath and between blocks of time.

“You cannot predict the outcome of human development. All you can do is,

like a farmer, create the conditions under which it will begin to flourish.”

~ Ken Robinson

Book Review - '419' by Will Ferguson

419: The section of the Nigerian criminal code dealing with obtaining funds illegally. This author has taken the thread of these notorious scams and storied the lives of the people involved, as well as the families and cultures that are affected by them. A very convoluted novel, detailing not just the 419 scam, but the living conditions in the Nigerian Delta where oil companies have taken hold. I found the extent of that part of the novel overwhelming. What I did take away from the novel, is that our computer screens are only peopled with images. The actual lives ~ education, economic status, family and community structures are invisible and only in the imagination. Winston, in Lagos, Nigeria is the scammer who wove stories for his targets to buy. Winston’s goal was to get money. Laura, in Calgary, Alberta, whose father committed suicide because of being scammed, wove her own stories to contact the scammer and get money - and more - back. Two other central characters, Amini and then Nmandi, lend fabric and detail to the broader, and very intriguing, story.

“And why only one life? Why not the web of other lives 

that define us? What of their indexes, their moments?”

~ Will Ferguson, 419

Title: 419
Author: Will Ferguson
Publisher: the Penguin Group
Publication Date: 2012

Type: Fiction 
Format:  Available in Hard Cover and Soft Cover
ISBN: 978-0-670-06471-7
Type:  Fiction

Education through Heavy Fog

A serious face
Eye contact uneasy
Arms tightly folded
Listening….listening
Trying to pull bits and pieces
of new solutions through the tangle of angry emotion chained to the past
preventing change to old habits, dangerous and destructive.

Education comes with a high price
to pride, to safety with fear for the future
and with gratitude for the present and another chance.

“Since we cannot change reality, let us 

change the eyes which see reality.”

~ Nikos Kazantzakis

Something to be Grateful For

There is much to be grateful for each day, yet Thanksgiving Day has given me pause once more.

Education is my theme this month and thus my focus of gratitude today ~

Gratitude for all the schools, colleges and universities,
workshops, classes and seminars, 
group discussions, libraries full of books and librarians
teachers, mentors and role models ~
the very availability and accessibility to learn ~
to learn whatever we choose and 
whenever one desires.

“Take full account of what Excellencies you possess, and in gratitude

remember how you would hanker after them, if you had them not.”

~ Marcus Aurelius, Meditations

Author's Note: Edited December 29, 2023