EDUCATION AND PURPOSE

EDUCATION AND PURPOSE.

To educate is to give intellectual, moral, and social instruction to an individual or to train or give information about a particular subject.

Education, according history seems to have a different meaning from what we have now. From the Greek word educare, education meant “leading out”. In essence education was a means of driving an innate capability into activity from its long hibernation. The knowledge is therefore accepted as a latent skill that needs to be awakened for its use. Education therefore served as means of arising from unawareness to the awareness of ones innate capabilities known as talents in order to serve a purpose in social development.

As education was mainly evolving from the Greek society, there was a reason for its practice. According to history the Spartans educated their young men by leading out the fighting skill that was innate to its physical manifestation. Their purpose was to keep their town safe and strong from enemies… no need for walls but the strong young men who could rip out the hearts of three men at a time. So the Spartans had a social reason for educating their young men; they needed security. The purpose of education is therefore realized by finding the true sole aim of a society. Whether being security, economical improvement, cultural heritage and so forth… there is a purpose for every student and every teacher. A teacher and his student were always connected by this purpose, this aim, this idea.

THE PILOT OUTREACH

                                    

In preparation for the outreach; to educate the youth on the importance of self-education.
We sent out a few notes to the Junior Secondary School graduates, and held a short discourse on education and its purpose.

 
We tried discussing a couple of ideas that we believed were vital to the whole education subject.

What is the  meaning of education:

The original meaning of education , comes from the latin word ēducāre, which means to "bring out".
The closest word to that is educe; which means to bring out or lead out something latent or potential.

If this is the original meaning of education, then we've missed it. Because the educational system here, is doing something that is totally the opposite of what education is supposed to be.

                                                
We drew an example from the Spartans and how Lycargus
brought out the warrior-ship in the spartan young men.

 
The young men I believed were inspired. We asked them to take the fate of their education into their hands .We gave them a reason to pick up a book related to their passion.
Since all three were interested in becoming scientists, we offered them a couple of books on Richard Feyman's talks and life, to inspire them.

Pick up a passion, pick up a book

Reading, making a change in your community

For the past days, I have seen so many kids in my community.
Its not that I don't see kids in my community , but I have seen so many kids who daily remind of the need to reach out and make a difference.
I see all these kids who have no idea what to do with their lives, we are all inspired at certain point in our lives.
In our search for answers in this world , we are tempted everyday to settle for mediocrity , to go with the crowd.
Get fast money, and ride in cars. Throwing away all the potential one might have inside because he didn't just have the right answers.

This is one of the powers of reading. Reading has the power to inspire many of these growing kids to become creative potentials in this country.
There are countless stories of people who picked up a book and their lives changed forever.
The story of the Kenyan boy who at the age of 11 was able to harness the wind, because he stepped into a library and picked up a book, is a story that reminds us everyday why  these children should have an opportunity to have access to books.

My team and I have this mission on our heart, we know the power of books and we will go to all lengths to make a difference.
Eselfone bringing libraries to communities  and the essence of self-education to the people.

You can support the cause, make a difference.

the seminar

Working on the seminar
A whole lot of things involved
We dont have to be selective
Trying to get to lots of hearts to follow our lead
Yet we need hearts that in the most willing to....

Its easier when they are willing
But then on the other hand ur task will be of no sense if there's no love
And love is not selective
It does all things with enthusiasm and purpose..

We will follow through suit........
We are taking baby steps as usual.... but the goal is to paint this picture clear cut...
And we pray we achieve that

Makes sense right?

I am sitting here right now
And I am thinking hard
Its hard to find words to express what is on my mind
All the thoughts coming to mind
The scenes of the past three days
The emotions cluttered in  my hearts depth
Its hard to find words
But I want so bad to say something
And say it with meaning
Words are crucial, yet let me let it out anyway without care

Children walking all around, doing all sorts of menial jobs
Do they choose this?
I see some mothers too with their babies at their back,working hard
And not long ago,  I was walking past some men digging a pit and one said;" charley life had O"..
I saw a drunk the other day, he had children, he had a wife and he looked really miserable on sight... immediately my thought drifted to  his children..

I look around my community and I try to see what the future holds for the youth, especially young guys of my age.
They are all so ambitious , and admire that so much. But all this energy is being directed wrongly, into all sorts of quick money schemes.

A lot of questions coming  through, but the one that seems most persistent is ; "why"
WHy?, what could be wrong,  all these people are living without hope for a better tomorrow....

I have mates who are out school who dont know what to do with themselves... they dont know what to become.. not that they are not ambitious enough, they  just dont where to direct all that energy.

I asked a couple of guys in SHS what they wanted to become 7 years from now and why. They just didnt know, and those who knew what they wanted to become just didnt know why they wanted to become that.

Its sad and I have been asking myself what is not being done, we are looking forward to educating the youth in this country to come develop this country into what.

I here rantings everyday about this issue and that issue.. about development, but what do we truly want this country to become and who and who are working towards this.

We live in a country where citizens feel they dont owe the nation nothing and the country owes them eveything, ridiculous!.
Looks like we are expecting the country to build us instead of we building the country.
We are expecting the country's natural resources to do all the magic.


Where do we want this country to go... we are building a structure and we dont even have a blue print of what we want. We copy blindy; yeah that guys building looks real cute the way they are building it, lets do something like that.

Hey, we need a dream.......
Every individual needs to know the dream and know his part in making it come to a reality
Too much talk makes no sense, I was taught it reduces productivity
Lets be real....
Lets know exactly where we want to be

Lets have a dream that will teach the people how to dream....
Yes,  a dream that unifies all and makes sense to all..

Checkout a society like Sparta they knew where they were going , well its democracy, cant force people to do stuffs, but for the sake of the growth of this country, lets employ the spartans style of dreaming.

Lets know what we want this country to become and lets train the kind of mind tools we need to achieve this.
Yet, until we know where want to go and what to become we wont know which tool to employ....
Dream, dream,dream..... makes sense right.

Individually, you  will unique force of your own, if only we will pick up a passion and pick a book. It will help you discover you and help others discover themselves too....
It will help you create the kind of educated picture we need to see and with you seeing that and helping others , we are on our way.

ALWAYS THINK OF A WAY YOU CAN GIVE RATHER THAN RECEIVE

Its been a beautiful day today, well its always beautiful, but I sometimes barely notice.
But its always beautiful experience to be and realize how beautiful the passing moment even is, it feels eternal.
I am really happy living in this experience, every becoming more and pushing towards perfection.
I am grateful.


Well this is the place where I get to talk about onething that I am really passionate about, reading; self-education.
There has been so much activity and neither Salifu nor I has had time to  update this blog.
Well will just be great to go straight ahead and talk about some of the things that has kept off the computer screen and these wonderful keyboards...lol
Yeah, having a little laugh.

The past weeks has been wonderful, met lots of great personalities and done real great things that makes me proud, and it somehow keeps affirming life is  beautiful.
We had the opportunity to share very interesting stuffs with the children at the Adaeso Presec School ,working with the World Reader.
Previous weeks we've shared subjects on DREAMS, SELF-RESPONSIBILITY, REFLECTION and ATTITUDE.
Its great what we in ourselves learned while interacting with these children.
I remember on the week when we talked about dreams, we told these young ones about the essence of dreams and the power in dreaming.
We got to the stage when I was asking what people would want to become and I asked this boy called Stanley, what do you dream of becoming and he says a missionary doctor, then the second question which follows which most of the kids were amiss with was the why question...why do you want to become a missionary doctor. His  answer is I want to become a missionary doctor because I see people are sick, in so many places and wish to travel and go help them...wow...his answer blows me away.
I wasnt really expecting it.
Last week Saturday was about ATTITUDE, after we had done the long talk about the essence of developing a positive way of responding to events around us, we brought a scenario to board.
The scenario was about two guys who wanted to be the greatest acoustic guitarists in the world and somehow on a journey to a class they ended up in an accident that got them both blind.
We asked the class what was the positive way of respond to this event and a lot of good answers are coming in, but I remember Stanley again because of  the previous answer he had given..
I asked him what do you think will be the most positive  way to respond to this situation and he says well, inability is not disability so I will strive on with  pursuing my dream, and the answer takes me by surprise again; what really hits me is " inability is not disability"
And there more wonderful stories I cant say here but I am just using Stanley's example... slowly but surely all these books these kids are reading and all the inspirational talk and other activities coming along with it is having a hold on the way these kids think and its just wonderful.
If slowly we are changing the way these kids think about their world then slowly we are changing their world.

@ PRESEC-ADAESO (Senior high school).
       Saturday, 14th May,2011
We started well, the weather was favorable and certainty about our predetermined program kept us moving. As scheduled, Samuel and I had to talk about passion in the art of reading.
We did just that, trying to instigate a reason for reading as a means of exploring more about things we are passionate about. We started by talking about passion and its traits so the students get to understand what their passions are, and how the intense innate desire compels and leads us into an unpredictable journey of exploration. We had some help from the dictionary on the kindles.
It was all cool until I had to talk about exploration as a trait of passion. I had taken my own experience as an example, talking about my pursuit towards the understanding of the topic of randomness versus determinism, how it later engulfed and made me explore other topics such as causality, certainty and uncertainty. Just then I was explaining randomness, that things just happened without the cause of other events and indeed it manifested.
It started raining heavily and we had not expected that at all.
So uncertainty crept in and few of us felt the program was going to be wrecked. We decided to be deterministic by following suit our programs as the weather changed. Samuel and I had to stop
because our voices couldn't pierce through the crackling noises of the iron roofing sheet. So we watched the volunteers from Ashesi take over.
 We became certain once more when the students engaged themselves in wonderful academic games. The games included spelling, and acting words or statements to partners.
So they picked some words from some stories on the kindles to test the spelling ability of the kids. Then we went on to play the "pick and act game" as it still rained heavily. This time I think I was inspired.
I saw the children  trying to bring words to life, doing all they could to tell their team mates a word or a statement without speech but mere action.
Among them was a tall boy hopping; his two arms fixed to his chest just like the tyrannosaurus. On the third hop I could hear the sound of his long feet pounding the floor and watching his hanged arms... I realised he was a man-kangaroo. I laughed because he had no pouch, no tail and no pointed face. Do actions speak louder than words?
I think actions themselves are words.
   The rain stopped, and so did the crackling noises of the roof. Samuel and I wrapped things up and took some questions from the students.
Joseph helped answer some questions as well about pursuing passions.
We all had fun learning and I think the worldreader is by far on the right path, not only reading but inspiring these kids to build the best future for themselves.
Being able to continue our program with the circumstances that befell, I think there is always a source of happiness around us, and all we have to do is to observe and discover what to learn at particular moments.