As a profession, we teachers need to recover from our fear ofchange. We talk about preparing our students for the future, but if we willgive them tools and questions to investigate they are more likely to know howto do that than we are. Social media and new technology have opened upavenues of learning that we never conceived. Teachers are paddlingupstream to figure out Wikis and MOOCs.
Students are using them for their own purposes.
In 1923, Khalil Gibran, a Lebanese-American whose volume, The Prophet, is the third best-sellingbook of poetry in the world wrote:
Your children arenot your children.
They are the sonsand daughters of Life's longing for itself.
They come throughyou but not from you,
And though they arewith you yet they belong not to you.
You may give themyour love but not your thoughts,
For they have theirown thoughts.
You may house theirbodies but not their souls,
For their soulsdwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannotvisit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to belike them,
but seek not to makethem like you.
For life goes notbackward nor tarries with yesterday.
You are the bowsfrom which your children
as living arrows aresent forth.
The archer sees themark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends youwith His might
that His arrows maygo swift and far.
Let your bending inthe archer's hand be for gladness;
For even as He lovesthe arrow that flies,
so He loves also thebow that is stable.
Thewords are true for today’s teachers and learners.
