Math

I have wondered since the day, far too late in life, that I started pounding nails, why is it that we don't start teaching carpentry the day we start teaching math.  Other skills would work as well.  It's just that wood is so solid and so real.  We could start with balsa wood for children not ready for the challenge of sawing spruce or pine.  Or let the actual cutting be the teacher's job after the measurement has been checked.

Measuring, addition, multiplication, division, fractions, decimals, geometry.

Why does school need to be so theoretical.  We are training our children to take their place in the world.  Can we not teach skills that will not only give them their math but teach them real world skills?

Conviction

We keep our gig safe from the dock with large mooring balls which we use as fenders.  The beauty of this system is that the gig is safe from pounding and scratching in any weather.  The down side is that it's a long step or leap for the crew to actually get in the boat.

This, too, becomes a skill.  If you take a timid step on the boat with one foot still safely secured on the dock the boat will move away, leaving you to strattle the icy North Atlantic.  You must make the step to with boldness.  Anything less will fail.

The simple act of getting on the gig becomes a moment of empowerment for the kids.  A moment of courage when they learn that sometimes you just have to go for it.

Technology

Check it out.  A study, or collection of studies that admits that technology does NOT improve learning or test scores.

http://brightfutures4me.wordpress.com/2012/05/13/does-technology-improve-learning-no/

I don't damn technology.  The article emphasizes, as many of us have known for years, that technology, rather like a good library, is a remarkably useful tool in teaching.  Ultimately it is good teachers and motivated students that will improve our country's education.  I think that teachers and students should have the advantage of technology as a part of an educational whole that includes both academics and experiential learning.  It all comes down to being a whole human being.

College

The average college student today graduates with a $25,000 debt.  That's obscene, to saddle a young person with that sort of handicap when they're just starting out in life.  I wonder what that sort of investment gives in return.  Do most of these students actually land jobs worthy of their expensive education?  I wonder, really, the value of force feeding great literature or higher mathematics on kids who retain these lessons only until they can vomit the answers out on a standardized test.  Most of America, even college educated America, gets its conversation material or clever witticisms from pop culture, not Julius Caesar.

Wouldn't a young person's time be better spent learning the skills to further his or her career?  Or useful skills and abilities that would serve to form him or her as a whole human being?

Life

Life rewards action.

Adults

Can we think of any reason why kids should get all the fun?  The adult crew of Station Maine is forming.  It is mostly older adults, some of whom are good organizers, many of whom are anxious to push their comfort zone and learn to cox, all of whom realize that we live on the coast of Maine and that this is a wonderful opportunity to get out on the water and appreciate that coast with friends.

Some, even many, people stop growing as human beings after a certain age.  But a cheerfully growing number have decided to live their years out with joy in all that they can still learn and accomplish.  They cost the program nothing, organize themselves, and come with prudence already learned from a life well spent.  We need more opportunities for adults as well as kids to live in the physical world.

The Hawser

Getting out of our slip is made more challenging in some tides by the presence of a larger boat's dock lines crossing our path.  The seamanship to be learned from this challenge is wonderful, but some days they're just a pain.  Like today.

The tide was so low and the area so confined that I found myself standing, poling through the mud with an oar facing aft.  My cox sort of giggled and pointed, nowhere near in time, to the hawser that was about to knock me over as we went under it.

She was not a bad kid, nor was she not mindful of the danger.  She had bought into the "teacher ideal"wherein teachers are the smart ones, the ones who always know what's going on, the ones who are always in control.

This, on the other hand, is a boat.  Everyone is responsible for safety.  Nobody, not even me, can see every rock, every gust of wind, every possible thing that can go wrong.  Kids who have no real experience in the physical world have no bench mark for teachers getting something wrong.  They always feel themselves inferior.  Or useless.

As we came back to the dock that same cox again had the opportunity to remind me about the hawser.  She did it seriously, and in plenty of time for me to duck under and be safe.

Lesson learned.