Inspiration

On Children

– KHALIL GIBRAN

This is the poem that has defined our thinking on being a parent or a teacher.

It is what inspired the name Stable Bow …

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

This poem is very spiritual to us.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

This poem urges us to be a gardeners ‘enabling the environment’, not carpenters ‘shaping our children’.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

... hence the name Stable Bow !! 

Many of us are scared about how to teach. This quote from Einstein makes it is so clear.

Create the environment and get out of the way. Un-Teach !!

“I never teach my pupils. I only provide the conditions in which they can learn”

JK set’s the bar. Very high bar. Can’t be met easily, but we all need to aspire to creating an environment like this.

“The function of education is to help you from childhood not to imitate anybody, but be yourself all the time”

– JIDDU KRISHNAMURTI

The basic flaw with most learning is so easily exposed by what Richard Feynman said below. Like everything Feynman says it’s funny, incisive and brilliant.

“You can know the name of a bird in all the languages of the world, but when you’re finished, you’ll know absolutely nothing whatever about the bird… So let’s look at the bird and see what it’s doing — that’s what counts”

– RICHARD FEYNMAN

Seymour Papert inspires so many on the HOW more than anyone else. The concept of Constructionism, the fact that programming is a language to learn any subject and it needs to all come together in each person’s mental model … all of these are so crucial in the design of how Stable Bow works.

“I am convinced the best learning happens when the learner takes charge”

– SEYMOUR PAPERT