Is the education we offer our young people equipping them for a fulfilling life? There is too much knowledge available to impart it all. How do those who set the curriculum choose what should be taught? The pool of knowledge is growing exponentially; however, the pool of useful questions is much more manageable.
There are some very worrying indications that most people have given up thinking. Andy Bilchbaum and Mike Bonanno, who some years ago made up ‘the Yes Men’1, gave addresses to august bodies, including the WTO (World Trade Organisation). In their presentations they made outrageous suggestions and claims, and those in the audience responded with nodding heads and even acclaim. No-one in the audience was thinking – no-one asked questions or challenged the impersonators.
In my blogging, my essays and much of my other writing I urge the reader to think.
Thinking can be scary, as can answers we come up with. What is the use of thinking, anyway? Haven’t all the important questions been asked? Haven’t most of them been answered? How can we come up with anything new or important?
It is easy to imagine that we are self-sufficient in our adult lives, making our choices independently of others and believing that we don’t need anyone else for our survival. However, very few people actually are self-sufficient.
I have been reading a number of books recently, in order to write reviews (one review has already been posted1). All four of these books deal with issues of public importance in the area of health. They deal with electromagnetic radiation1, mobile phones2, vaccination3 and milk4.
I came across an artefact some months back – a book. I haven’t seen one of these, outside a museum, for more than thirty years. I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw it at a recovery sale. It was very old – mid-twentieth century – with a hard cover. It took me back to my school days when we still learned to read. I must say I struggled somewhat to make sense of it. I have had no need to read for many years. However, persevering has paid off and I started to enjoy the experience.
I see him shuffling past the café window from time to time. Long, grey hair, a flannel shirt with buttons missing (summer or winter), corduroy trousers with the cuffs partly unravelled and hanging unevenly over his clean, black boots. I notice they are boots, not shoes, and that they are always clean and shining.
In human societies we make laws based on a set of principles which express how we feel about personal autonomy, freedom, power, individual rights and responsibilities, honesty, integrity, access to food and shelter, health and wellbeing and about the value of life itself. Why do we do this?
I was probably around fifteen years old when I experienced the death of the first relative I knew. He was my mother’s father – a grandfather I knew only for the less than two years we lived with my grandparents in the south of Nederland when I was around four. Even then I only knew him distantly. When he died, I had been in Australia for about seven years.
“ ‘Grandpa, get a life!’ That’s what Jed said to me the other day.”
“They’re all the same, these youngsters. They forget we have navigated our way through decades while they have less than two and they think they know it all.”