Epiphanies: An Epiphany on Education

AMDG

No, I am not referring to the Christian festival of epiphany. I would rather write about the definition of epiphany as a sudden realization of things from everyday occurrences. I might be able to make a series of epiphanies; let's see how that goes. Here it goes...

An Epiphany on Education

A few days ago, while walking with my teacher and friends from school, our teacher spoke to us about things that we usually left unnoticed, our surroundings. He taught us the names of most of the trees (and some of the plants) that we found along the way. For a student who studied two-years worth of biology, I was pretty clueless about these trees! Then, he said that some of the trees we saw have grown scarce since they were the trees of old that people neglected because back then, there seemed to be an abundance of those trees. Sadly, he said that our generation might no longer be able to see the things that their generation saw.

And that was where my epiphany began. I used to think that my generation was lucky since my generation would likely be the pre-global-warming-out-of-control generation that would be able to cherish the remaining wildlife while they still existed. I used think that the next generation would not be able to see what my generation had seen, but I realized I haven't seen what the previous generation had seen. I have seen so few of the wonders of nature that they have seen, what would be left for the next generation if global warming remains unchecked?

Then, I boarded a bus. While walking home (the second time for that day), I realized that the textbooks didn't even bother to teach me about the indigenous lifeforms around me. The textbooks were focused about things in general. And so I thought, maybe that was intentional. Maybe the books aren't really supposed to teach us everything. Maybe its up to us to learn more about this world. Maybe its up to us to see, feel, smell, hear and even taste the many wonders of this world; things textbooks can't all offer. Maybe it is better that we discover the wonders of our world on our own rather than to stare at images of trees, wildlife, nature and so much more in a book.

Did you have your own epiphany today?

Thanks for reading; God bless!