Courage for the Uncharted Waters

"There are seasons, in human affairs, of inward and outward revolution, when new depths seem to be broken up in the soul, when new wants are unfolded in multitudes, and a new and undefined good is thirsted for. There are periods when...to dare, is the highest wisdom." 

William Ellery Channing

There is perhaps no magic that turns dreams into reality like courage. Courage is a human virtue that keeps society growing, adapting, evolving and becoming better. Yet education in my homeland robs us of this nobility instead of enduring us with such. How well is courage taught or  how deliberate should we be in passing this gem through education? These are the concluding thoughts we provoke in this part of the Education Overhaul series.

Courage is the ability to confront fear, pain, danger, uncertainty or intimidation. It is one noble virtue admired all through time and it is surely the foundation for all forms of good or bad. Winston Churchill in an insight put it this way, "Courage is rightly esteemed the first of human qualities ... because it is the quality that guarantees all others". The character trait of fear, giving up in the times of pain, avoidance of danger, avoiding a course in a maze and absolute lack of confidence for intimidation has become a 'normal' description of the African. To make it more unfortunate we confuse such cowardice with humility and call it cautiousness. 

Confidence should at least be the most notable scare education leaves on a person. The time when the African youth became confident is long overdue, it is time we broke the fear, pain, danger, uncertainty and intimidation of poverty, disease, superstition, cultural limitation, unemployment, western influence, political biases and corruption and rose in courage to tell a new African story. A story of courage and progress, one of innovation and initiatives and of drive and results.

We consider Christopher Peterson and Martin Seligman's four subcategory of courage and draw key educational lesson from it below:

1. Bravery: It is defined by Peterson as “the ability to stand up for what is right in difficult situations.”^[11]  He then goes ahead and puts bravery in several forms:  Physical bravery involves acting in spite of possible harm to one’s body. Moral bravery involves acting in a way that enhances what one believes to be good in spite of social disapproval and possible backlash. A third, theoretically newer, definition of bravery is psychological bravery which involves things such as overcoming one’s own addictive habits, irrational anxieties, and harmful dependent relationships. Our educational content should be placed in a context of promoting bravery. What we need are minds and hearts strong enough to solve the problems and not just to talk it. Our educational system must make sure it produces such bravery because there is no doubt such unconfident youth is a product of the current system.
2. Perseverance: Perseverance involves the ability to seek a goal in spite of obstacles and perhaps failure. A person high in perseverance is able to overcome the fear and intimidation of low self-esteem and estimations that one cannot do the task as well as discouragement from peers. This is where our educator will have to focus at producing finishers and not just starters. It only takes courage to be persevering and our education must endeavor to train student to be persevering and not unstable, emotional people as the case barely is now.
3. Honesty: Honesty and authenticity as a subset of courage means more than simply telling the truth. It involves integrity in all areas of one’s life and the ability to be true to oneself and one’s role in the world across circumstances. Honesty and authenticity require a great deal of courage.  I have wondered time and over again why corruption is always labeled as Africa's biggest developmental problem? This may provide a clue to how courageous our leaders are! Honesty is not an option if a group of people must grow and develop, it is a prerequisite and we must see it as such and educate ourselves with the intent of becoming honest to ourselves and to society.
4. Zest: Seligman and Peterson finally consider Zest as a character trait of courage and defines zest as, feeling alive, being full of zest, and displaying enthusiasm for any and all activities. They believe Zest most often comes forth as a character strength in the midst of trying circumstances which is mostly true. When there are shiver across the spines, it takes courage to posses your energies and seek change. We must therefore train people to posses energies that are strong enough to tear down the walls of cowardice. 

 Let me end with a quote from David Humes who was a Scottish philosopher, historian, economist and essayist from his part I, essay XXI titled, Of National Characters (1758), "Courage, of all national qualities, is the most precarious; because it is exerted only at intervals, and by a few in every nation; whereas industry, knowledge, civility, may be of constant and universal use, and for several ages, may become habitual to the whole people."  The delicate yet important nature of this virtue makes it imminent to be guarded and taught. The Eagles' Wing Foundation stands for this cause of educating and guarding such treasures but it is more of all our collective effort and thus we invite you to take the task of courage as your personal charge. Always keep yourself in remembrance that, Victory goes to those with courage!

Let's bear the torch of faith and courage through our time. Let our own acts of courage inspire others to hold onto theirs and together let us build a new continent, for, "Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once." William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, Act II, scene. ii (1599).

My Heart, My Mind and My Hands

Education has an amazing strength of bringing out skills, healthy character and a productive mind from the person who is been educated. The intent of a good education is not to pour into or perhaps force things inside of an empty brain but it is to guide out and to lead the student to a place of his/her natural affinity and ability. Such guidance must be carefully planned to train the total person.

The essence of a human being is not just a body. Everybody has a physical material part called the body (The brain inclusive). The training of this material part is what is referred to in this article as the training of the hand. In the body is the mind; the thoughts of the brain, the perspective, comprehensions of complexes, associations and innovation development are called mind trainings. Training a person in these two dimensions of his/her being will no doubt produce a fairly beneficial individual but there is a part of a human being that is neither his/her body nor mind and its development does not depend on hand or mind training. This is the spiritual part of a person and developing such a critical part of a human being is referred to as the heart training. Total transformation in education is only achieved when a person is engaged in hands, mind and heart to develop an experience of truth for him/herself.

 These separate parts of the human being speaks in different languages and it is the purpose of education to teach a person to understand and express his/her full individuality and purpose. We consider below how education could target and transform a whole being by leading the genius out of the hand, mind and heart.

The Heart Training: The language of the heart is Faith. As part of our assumed progressive nature we have tried to eliminate issues of faith, God, morality, from our trainings and developments as much as possible. Funny as it may be we have replaced it with an idea of self gratification and the individual as a law unto him/herself. The complexities and sensitivity around the subject of God must not make us to hide from talking about it. Theology is not only an academic discipline but a human need. Every person must be trained to verify and know the truth about origins, purpose, character and the existence of things more exceeding than his/her eyes can know. This is not to spun a superstitious education regime but to necessitate human's search for meaning and to tap into the source of human's essence. All that exist now is a product of somebodies faith. It was a seed of someones faith that has given us everything now, great people who leaves legacies saw these legacies in their heart when no one else could see them and they lived to exemplify their faith. Faith gave us automobiles, light bulbs, electricity, beautiful architecture, wonderful gardens, pens, chairs, aircraft, mobile phones and the list goes on unending. Faith is the only thing that produces! Human beings are not products of chance but we are the effect of God's cause such that we may become the cause for a great world. The training of the heart gives three key things: Hope, Faith and Love. These three lessons are fundamental building blocks to any great education and society.  The training of the heart must be woven around these three central themes and given as much attention as the other forms of trainings.

The Mind Training: Our education focuses on what is popularly called the 3R's. This concept has become the key concern of education in Africa. As important and critical as arithmetic, reading and writing is in mind development, it is not all there is it to mind training. Training the mind is positioning a person to dig into the myriad possibilities of faith. Mind training should pursue with much importance, logic, Multidimensional analysis, creative problem solution, Mechanical-Conceptual-Physical Reasoning, Visual/Spatial Processing,and Associational/lateral thinking. Education should not focus only on how well one can read, write or do arithmetic but we should begin to develop keen interest in how logical people reason, how well do we train people to associate things taught, how clear are students spatial reasoning, etc. What we are trained and tested for makes us inadequate to solve the real world complex problems and it is time we focused and taught our minds to fully develop.

The Hand Training: A fully developed spirit and mind lives in a body. Under developing the body is a sure way of limiting the scope of operation of the full being. In hand training we refer to training that teaches the hand to do. It will be best advised if physical training and apprenticeship training are not considered as appendixes to education but are looked upon with equal importance. Two other key dimensions to the Hand training is social intelligence and emotional intelligence. Education must bring people to know that no man is an island and that humanity exist in a complete and yet complex interwoven strands of interactions with each other.

This is the new pattern we must educate ourselves. There is enough time and resources to develop our geniuses if only we will appreciate we have been limiting ourselves for far too long. These courses of education is what The Eagles' Wing and this blogs stands for; To wholly educate every single person on planet earth.

We bear a torch lighting each others corner, turn the next person's light on with true education today for we are our own educators!