Education in the 21st Century

Oh, I don’t know but this seems rather appropriate this morning.  From the Gospel of John (as translated by Clarence Jordan), we read

“If y’all stick by what I’ve said, you are honest followers of mine.  You’ll understand the truth, and the truth will liberate you.”

And from George Bernard Shaw, we read

“Some men see things as they are and ask why.  Others dream things that never were and ask why not.”

This is the quote that President Kennedy referred to in his speech to the Irish Parliament in 1963 and was often used by his brother, Senator Robert Kennedy, during his 1968 Presidential campaign.  Senator Kennedy also said in 1964,

To say that the future will be different from the present is, to scientists, hopelessly self-evident. I observe regretfully that in politics, however, it can be heresy. It can be denounced as radicalism, or branded as subversion. There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed.

You cannot dream of things that never were, you cannot have a vision of the future, or even be free without education.  And education must be more than the memorization and recall of facts but the active experience of learning, of seeking and of finding.