lifelong learning...

Robert Keable Row wrote in 1909, "... to speak of one having "finished his education" is utter nonsense, unless he has died or become an imbecile."

I missed the public hearing in Rogers yesterday on the Shipes Road-Kings River powerline project, and evidently the citizens of Benton County are not as stirred up as those of us who know that the powerline will bring such destruction to our homes, our scenic beauty, our environment and our economy. Television coverage talking about the project showed much smaller conventional powerlines in their film footage making those of us opposed to this massive project look foolish. But that is the way of things.

There is a relationship between having students sit still, inactive, and complaisant and disengagement in civic life. The early advocates of manual arts believed that it led to the development of active citizens. Without active learning children develop a sense of impotence in relationship to authority. One thing one learns through craftsmanship... to take matters into one's own hands eith the potential of making oneself a steady nuisance to the status quo.
A person cannot be engaged in making beautiful and useful objects without also being engaged as a lifelong learner. The most certain way to make certain we have power in our own lives is to be continuously schooled in the intelligence of our own hands.

Make, fix and create...