School's Out! (..Or Is It?)

Checking out the stingrays with friends.

As many of our hometown friends celebrated the last day of the school year today, my kids are oblivious here in their little Central American town as they spend their day playing with stingrays and hanging out with their local caregiver and her family. They are happily absorbing a tremendous amount of knowledge through these new cultural experiences. Learning does not have a start and end day for them. If you think about it, no matter where you are in the world, learning never ends for any of us. All that ends are the restricting rules and regulations, blanket expectations, pressure, anxiety, labeling, standardized testing, regurgitation of facts outlined by strict curricula and herding that make up what we have come to call "education". (Oh, and don't forget the sack lunches!)

 Let's be real here, the purpose of school is not to educate but to dumb us down and create submissive members of society... good little citizens. I'm not saying that rule breaking is always the right choice but I am saying that there is something very wrong with never breaking the rules. Never questioning, never thinking independently of the machine... just obediently following the rest of the herd.

 Okay, end rant. Before I really digress, let's celebrate! Today we celebrate the fact that learning never ends for us. Whatever sea creatures, adventures and fascinating new people and cultures await us, we will value the education to be found in all of it. We celebrate the freedom that allows us to learn what, where, when and how we feel like learning, without fear of missing anything and to fit in downtime whenever each of us needs it. We celebrate each other and the roles each of us plays in the education of the entire family; we all have a lesson to bring to the table. We celebrate all of the teachers in our lives, from elders with a story to tell to babies who demonstrate with ease the art of happiness for it's own sake and everyone in between. ( Especially the local fishermen in our town; we have learned so much about marine biology from them!) We celebrate our new-found love of learning that had almost suffered a slow, cruel death at the hands of formal education. We celebrate educational diversity. We celebrate our personal as well as our family goals because we know that they will take us to the most amazing places. We celebrate endless possibilities. Today, we celebrate that school may be out but opportunities for learning NEVER end!