Chapter 13: Know a fat cow from a poor bull.
This year, as my job, I am a substitute teacher for two different schools. I have substitute taught for other schools in the past before I had children as well. Substitute teaching is a tough job! There is so much to know, and so much that I don’t know. Every day you go into a classroom, sometimes different ones from day-to-day, and try to assimilate all of the information available as quickly as possible before students come into the room. Often times, there is very little information available and you have to try your best to use your own knowledge to figure out what you are teaching and how to do it. To top it off, every school has different rules and expectations as well as different teaching styles. It is an exciting, ever-changing challenge to be a substitute in our great American schools.
To be able to distinguish between the information available and information that needs to be available, but isn’t, is a challenge. Every day I must “know a fat cow from a poor bull.” Many people believe that all the information presented to them is completely factual, while much of it is subjective and not useful, or even completely untrue. In all the classes I go into, I read a variety of science and history books. Some have outright untruths in them, that go beyond Evolution. Yet, teachers and students alike take these for absolute truths. A very important part of education is being able to recognize what seems strange and researching it yourself to find the truth.
One of the greatest parts of my job now is the constant learning, I am able to partake in. Every single day I learn a new word or phrase, a new way of doing a math problem, or remember how to do something that I haven’t used since I was in middle school, namely diagramming sentences. This is something I love! The challenge of realizing I do not know something, coupled with the challenge of finding the correct answer before leaving a class, is so exciting, and greatly furthers my education. The day that we stop learning is the day we die. Our brains are wired to learn and grow, and accepting something without questioning it or finding out for ourselves why it is or is not true is to begin a sad decline in our life.
Knowing a fat cow from a poor bull applies to everything in our life. We should be constantly seeking the truth and learning and growing from the results. If we accept what a preacher says in the pulpit as “gospel” without actually reading the Bible and knowing what the truth is proves our ignorance. Getting our driver’s license as a teen without reading, asking questions, and practicing with a skilled adult, leads to certain disaster. Francis Bacon once said, “Who questions much, shall learn much, and retain much.” There is no possible way to know what is wrong or right, or what is fact or fiction without questioning, reading, learning, discussing, and remembering. Very few people learn just by reading something once. Most require a few times of reading, trying, discussing or questioning, or experimenting with what they are learning. The joy of education is to try new things, to not close our minds to what is only in a book, but to challenge what we have read or seen to make sure that it is the truth, and then to share that truth. Discussions directed to you from other learners will only enhance your learning and aid your retention. Enjoy learning, and try to distinguish between a fat cow and a poor bull.
Comments