What in the world are we doing anyhow?

Welcome to 2015. I want to start the year off by stepping back to take a look at what we’re doing with education.

As I reflect on my past year, I keep coming back to why I do what I do. I help kids because I believe deeply in the power in education to open doors. Not “school,” but education. By this, I mean to give learners what they need to have a great life now, while preparing them for a great future.

How well are we doing this?

Too often we miss the boat. Kids fall through the cracks as we push them to fit the mold rather than empowering them to build upon their inherent strengths, interests and talents. They often go “unseen” as we push them towards standardization. We rely heavily upon metrics that are concrete and easily measured, yet these can offer little more than a fuzzy snapshot. There is so much more to the picture – our kids are extraordinarily complex human beings equipped with gifts that can’t be measured using this data.

A great life isn’t defined by scores, grades, income or material wealth. Success is being able to intentionally craft a life of joy, peace and purpose. It is crafting a life full of experiences that are personally meaningful and valuable. This clip of Alan Watts reflects this sentiment beautifully and is one of my favorites. Enjoy.

Here’s the transcript:

What makes you itch? What sort of the situation would you like? Let’s suppose, I do this often in vocational guidance of students: they come to me and say well, we are getting out of college and we haven’t the faintest idea what we want to do. So I always ask the question: What would you like to do if money were no object? How would you really enjoy spending your life? Well it’s so amazing as the result of our kind of educational system, crowds of students say ‘Well, we’d like to be painters, we’d like to be poets, we’d like to be writers’ But as everybody knows you can’t earn any money that way! Another person says ‘Well I’d like to live an out-of-door’s life and ride horses.’ I said ‘You wanna teach in a riding school?’

Let’s go through with it. What do you want to do? When we finally got down to something which the individual says he really wants to do, I will say to him ‘You do that! And forget the money!’ Because if you say that getting the money is the most important thing you will spend your life completely wasting your time! You’ll be doing things you don’t like doing in order to go on living – that is to go on doing things you don’t like doing! Which is stupid! Better to have a short life that is full of what you like doing then a long life spent in a miserable way. And after all, if you do really like what you are doing – it doesn’t really matter what it is – you can eventually become a master of it. It’s the only way of becoming the master of something, to be really with it. And then you will be able to get a good fee for whatever it is. So don’t worry too much, somebody is interested in everything. Anything you can be interested in, you’ll find others who are.

But it’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like in order to go on spending things you don’t like, doing things you don’t like and to teach our children to follow the same track. See, what we are doing is we are bringing up children and educating to live the same sort of lives we are living. In order they may justify themselves and find satisfaction in life by bringing up their children to bring up their children to do the same thing. So it’s all retch and no vomit – it never gets there! And so therefore it’s so important to consider this question:

What do I desire?

-Alan Watts

With that, I want to wish you a tremendous 2015. I hope it is filled sharing great experiences with the people you love most, with people who raise you up, who bring you joy and who empower you to live authentically, manifesting your deepest desires.

Here’s to not losing sight of what we’re trying to do through education.

In gratitude and service,
Seth Perler