BY RUSSELL TURNER
THE DESIRE FOR LEARNING
Over the past couple of weeks we Oklahomans have been deluged with a constant flood of rhetoric from the Oklahoma Education Association (OEA) about how more funding will solve all of the problems in our state. A partial list includes the promises that our prisons would not be over crowed in the future, drug addiction would drop, etc.. While all of these claims may make good headlines for the 10 o’clock news, we are deluding ourselves if we believe spending more taxpayer money will solve all of our current social problems.
Having knowledge is a great thing, but our society is developing a huge deficit in the area of wisdom. Wisdom can be defined as common sense, or out here on the farm, as horse sense. We also have a saying here about leading a horse to water but you cannot make him drink. When we take an objective look at life it is quite apparent that learning is a lifetime endeavor. Merely graduating from the public school system does not give an individual the tools he needs to make a living; it is only a base to build upon. All of us are teachers; as for myself my true education started after I graduated school. I am a blue collar worker and I have been around many trades throughout my career. I have seen young people who excelled and I have also seen those who washed out. While all contractors want employees who have the basic knowledge of math, reading, etc., the main trait they are looking for is the individual who will get themselves out of bed in the morning and get to work on time and refrain from playing on their cell phone while at work.
One example I witnessed was how young, inexperienced young men fresh out of school that would go to work for a carpenter’s framing crew. Usually the young guys at first were given the simple tasks of carrying material from one point to another, but for those who had a desire to learn and better themselves; it wasn’t very long until the foreman would start giving them more technical tasks to do. I noticed that in a very short period of time the young men evolved into full fledged framing carpenters. Without the desire to learn it is impossible to get ahead in life.
Over the past several years our nation has been infected with the nanny state syndrome, too many of our people are not developing the American work ethic and the desire to learn has been diminished. Spending more money may help some sectors, but money alone will not cause children to want to learn, that teaching needs to come from the parents.
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