a thought

Please allow me to deviate for a moment... Something occurred to me today that I think is worth sharing - if  for no other reason but to serve as a reminder to myself. A few things have culminated recently and out of them a theme emerged. A few of those things are the video I posted here by Ken Robinson, a book I’ve been reading recently by Daniel Pink titled A Whole New Mind (about cultivating marketable, creative skills), and an event that I witnessed today in the classroom. I’ll describe the last one I mentioned.

I brought the mandolin to the 1st grade today to teach my kids a new song. Most of them had no idea what it was and were thrilled get to play it with me. Afterwords, there was one boy who seemed particularly fascinated with my instrument. Now, let me break to give you a bit of back-story here and introduce you to this young fella. He struggles in practically every subject, would easily be considered a “behavior problem” by some, and no doubt would be put on a plethora of various medications to “fix” his issues. I let him hold the mandolin by himself. He touched it and examined it a bit then started strumming. I don’t mean just up and down this-is-the-first-time-I’ve-had-my-hands-on-a-stringed-instrument-strumming, I mean he had a strum pattern going. All his fingers were in the right places, all his movements were deliberate. He has never taken lessons. He is 7. I have never seen this side of this little guy before. He was absolutely beaming. To cut a long story short, I don’t think the mandolin will save this little guys life or anything, but it may have revealed something really true about him and what we do to people in general.

As a culture, I think we market people, we market ourselves. We throw around these money terms referring to people all the time like “value” and “worth.” We spend nearly a quarter of our lives in school building our skills so that hopefully, someone will see us an “asset” to their company. As someone who works in education, I fully support the idea that knowledge can open doors and give power to those would have otherwise had little chance. However, I think that people want to know that they have purpose. Like, a real meaning for being placed here on this planet - not just some accident that the world is trying to alter and correct. I think pretty much everyone - myself included - have been pushing this idea that you need to make yourself valuable and create your own worth by what you accomplish.

Our job is not to correct, fix, and mend each other, but rather to uncover what has already been made. To discover what had already been created in us. To know that a hyper, 7 year old, who is failing school has the same “value" as a Harvard professor.

My job is not to create something of worth in children, it is merely to help them discover what has already been artfully crafted within themselves.