�鶹��

Available for over a year

Good Morning The closing of some schools is yet another blow to our young people. As if Covid hadn’t caused enough disruption now a dangerous form of concrete is threatening the safety of our classrooms. We don’t yet know how many schools are affected but many pupils hoping to start term this week will be told to stay at home. The situation will once again test the ingenuity of teachers and parents as to how their children can carry on learning in such adverse conditions. As I look back on my own time at school it’s significant the things I do and don’t remember. Few of us can recall what we were actually told in any given lesson but many of us have vivid memories of who taught us and how. The character of the teacher more than the content of the lesson shapes the learner more than either of them realises. The distinction is sometimes made between instruction, training and education. Instruction is the imparting of knowledge, training the acquiring of skills and education is about formation – the development of personality and character. It’s unavoidable that both Covid and the concrete crisis will affect the opportunity for pupils to gain knowledge and skills. But the adversity that now engulfs them might offer an unexpectedly fertile education in how to cope with a crisis. At a recent teachers’ conference the main theme was “Change”, and how to educate students for living in an unpredictable era. From AI to Air Traffic Control, to disruption on our railways and in our hospitals, to food shortages in our shops we live in an unstable world. Such volatility requires our young people to develop an inner poise to cope. That’s why the arts, music, poetry and, yes religion, are so vital to the curriculum of life. It’s in these realms of the imagination that we find sustenance when we’re thwarted and frustrated by adversity and, on occasions, by perversity itself. But the imagination is not just an escape route from the realities of life – it’s where we find renewal to go forward. It’s said that the origin of the imagination lies with God. It was only because God could imagine what it was like for us to be thwarted by adversity that he was compelled to enter our world to help us deal with its consequences. It’s in the imagination that solutions are explored to what life throws at us. And I imagine that will be true today for teachers, parents and young people themselves.