Thursday, December 29, 2011

A shore thing



Late December, the back bay, still autumn-warm, gets blown up the beach by the stiff breeze, and washes my feet. 
"I should have been a pair of ragged claws
Scuttling across the floors of silent seas."TSE
A shell on the beach, once alive, now falls apart in the dull sunlight, its intricate markings still telling stories.

Winter break is marked by the long shadows of mid-day, as good a time as any to wonder what matters.

The point of education, the only point, really, is to learn how to live a life that matters. Education itself matters no more than the swirls etched on a dead oyster's shell.

It's the stories we read from that shell that define who we are.





If our biggest concern is how well our children do on abstract national standards, we've lost our way.
I'm taking my kids to the edge of the sea in May to help them rediscover the stories that matter.

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