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Miscellany

Posted September 5, 2025

School

"To be or Not to be”, that is the question!

William Shakespeare

At some point in time we are born. The timing of the event is not ours to set, but it is ours to take. Before you are, you cannot decide to be, much less select the attributes you would like to be endowed with if you opt to be. And other parameters to “Be-coming”, such as where and when to be or not to be born. William Shakespeare sought to change that, all in vain. Hence if you happen to be, you are the making of others more than yourself and therefore you are not you as God intended. To appreciate this, look at God whom we made to our image and demeanor.

But when we are born, we know that “we are” and a few other basic things. Such that just by virtue of being born, alone, we have entitlements. These we must “learn” about if we are to claim them for otherwise we will forfeit them, which would be bad. That is why we are born with some instincts which we need to complement with newly emerging knowledge. A loud cry helps us access bags of warm milk, cuddles and a cosy safe place to sleep. These come with a flight ticket but before long the plane lands and the flight attendants leave us behind on the tarmac. Lord Baden-Powell did not like that, and to mitigate the consequences, organized the “Be Prepared Club”, the Boy Scouts. But all of us need some assistance to “prepare”, and it is such that I presume which inspired the good Lord Baden-Powell to start the Club.

As we grow in age, increasingly we tend to “go get it” instead of “asking for and being given it.” Additionally our needs multiply in numbers and grow in size. Eventually, we learn that crying out, as loud as we may, will not fill our belly. Crying needs to be supplanted by labour and knowledge to be effective. We need “learn” and we have to learn that fact. And we must seek to learn and acquire knowledge.

The aforesaid inform that knowledge is an “economic good” in the sense of being sold and bought in the marketplace. We may look at books, including fiction and poetry, as being containers-of-knowledge. When Guttenberg invented the printing press, the Clergy grabbed it and used it to propagate the word of God, proliferating the numbers of God fearing folk. When Marconi invented the Radio and Baird the television, of course, there was a massive proliferation. Since knowledge is Marketable, it’s got to be Profitable and the “governing” establishment grabs it to deploy it to generate profit. The knowledge to make Heart Pacemakers produces profit by making and selling the gadget. The knowledge of fitting a pacemaker into somebody is sold as “education”.

The purpose of these “observations” is to underline the necessity for us to learn to operate in contemporary society which is complex. The level of civilization we are at demands “acquired knowledge”. What I mean by that is the need to learn the skills and straddle the nuances of sciences and technology that are available to us. To make the best from our living, including the theory and the practice of using the proper tool to remove a rotten tooth and replace it with a new strong one. To do that is a complex process, often to be performed on short notice. To get ready to perform such a procedure, a dentist may have to spend some two dozen years in the classroom and then dance around a supervised dentist’s chair. That is schooling, growing fast and forever expanding to serve more of us in an ever widening list of curricula.

That is why we have schools and we rush the young into them at this time of year. So kids, listen up! These are the best days of your life. If you do not see it being so, make it so. You will learn by doing that and this feels good.