When a child is born we do everything we can to protect them, nurture them, love them. A child’s heart and mind are fragile. As they grow we want to teach them everything that we know; we send them to school to fill their minds with wonderful knowledge, to give them the tools they need for life. At school they get a taste of what things are like in the world outside; there’s friendship, romance, disappointment, embarrassment, discrimination and bullying. But are the tools we give them enough to prepare them for this world? We have an enormous responsibility and an amazing opportunity. If we truly want to prepare them for the world outside, we must also educate the heart, because to navigate the world outside with compassion, acceptance and tolerance, we need to teach them compassion, acceptance and tolerance. This can begin in our schools and it can start today; it can happen at hockey practice, dance class, at day camps and music lessons; and it’s already happening around the world with astonishing results. If we want our children to grow into socially and emotionally capable young people we must ask for a balanced education that puts importance on educating both the mind and the heart.
What does “educating the heart” mean to you?
Somewhere along the way we got very invested in things
that don’t care about us, because they’re things, they can’t love us back;
money doesn’t love you back; your car isn’t going to sit down with you and hold
your hand if your child is sick. But we had this huge disconnect happen where
we started to invest emotionally in things rather than people, and people are what’s
available toyou to really help you through those tough times. Now we see,
you know, that sort of consumerist mentality where, you know, the new
thing is going to make you happy, the new whatever it is, and I think people
forget to talk to one another so you really do need that education of the
heart, you really do need to show people that compassion is what makes the
world a better place, it’s not a technology.
How can we “educate the heart”?
There’s no lesson to be learned, there’s nothing you
can write on a chalkboard, it comes down to actual human interaction, human
experience, and those are the things that we’re missing a lot of the times
in schools; we’re not teaching kids to be compassionate.
Who educated your heart?
You know there are people who say ”those who can, do
and those who can’t, teach”, which to me is such a tragic insult; a teacher
should be revered; I wouldn’t be where I am today without the teachers that I
had, those who cultivate, and a teacher to me is someone who doesn’t just have
the answers in the back of a textbook or whatnot; a teacher to me is somebody
who can look into you and find those hidden talents or find that part of you
that ignites a passion for knowledge, and so… to me… I love teachers!
