Snippets of True Education

Fitting a sphere onto a flat surface is always challenging, made worse when space is limited. But it's okay. Life isn't about perfection, and I'm pleased with how the maps turned out on the walls of my nanny-kid's playroom. Perhaps we should have at least cut Antarctica into strips to spread out along the bottom. Perhaps we should have double checked before we accidentally colored half of Russia red and the other half brown. Perhaps I could have gotten the sizing scale better if I'd printed everything all at once, instead of in segments. But it's all okay! Perfection isn't the goal. And education happens by degrees, it is never an exact science, and the goal should always be to be a life-long learner. 

My nanny-kid had some commentary while we were coloring and labeling countries.

"Oh I know about France, that's where that big tower is."

"Ah, Bolivia, that's where the piraña is from in my comic book!"

"Philippines... that's where the Abuela is from in Blue's Clues."

"My old nanny was from Brazil."

I haven't tracked down a picture of the Abuela from Blue's Clues or his old nanny yet, but the Eiffel Tower and the piraña weren't that hard to get printed and pinned to the appropriate country. 

Knowledge is pleasurable. Cramming for a test is not. Knowing a list of facts is dull. But encountering our world and beginning to understand our place and the place of other things and people within the framework of our globe is heartening. Ever since I was old enough to understand educational philosophies, I have always had a huge heart for living education; both for myself and for others. I marveled with Uri at all the life discoveries he was making as a toddler, and I wish I could be doing these types of projects with him. And the time will come when I'll do these sorts of things with Ocean. But in the meanwhile, I'm glad my nanny-kid and I were able to do this project together, and I hope it inspires some of my readers here as well. I believe even snippets of true education are far more interesting, memorable, and valuable than any compulsory rote memorization.