When you observe animals, you quickly realize that their instincts in raising offspring are geared toward preparing them for real life. Dogs, cows, and pigs rarely if ever play with their offspring. Young play with young; adults show them how to act as adults. I could tell many stories where I have seen this, but a recent circumstance highlighted this for me: My wife and I just brought home another livestock guardian dog for our farm. His job will be to protect the chickens, calves, and piglets. When we brought him home, I expected to see the older guardian dog interact and play with him. Instead, she often ignored him. Over time I realized that while she sometimes played with him in the back yard, she completely ignored him whenever they were out in the pasture near the other animals. It was as if she was saying, “Here, we work. This is no place for puppy behavior.” It made me realize that the animals do not pander to their young or give them years to shirk mature action. They train their young for real life, for survival, for flourishing in their natural habitat.
Here are a few more lessons I have learned about upbringing by watching the natural world.
- Education about protection. The world can be a scary and dangerous place. Roosters put out a special call to their flock, especially to their young, when they notice a danger. In our world, these threats are not just physical but also ethical and philosophical. Students ought to be inoculated against the subversive and insidious ideas that can lead them down the wrong path. The best thing we can do for our children is to teach them about the real world.
- Education creates community. Though a calf may like to wander off, the mother cow calls regularly for it to rejoin the herd. It becomes second nature for the calf to stay with the group. In a similar way, learning about our adult community prepares children to join human society. We do not educate children for them to remain children. Instead we feed them a steady diet of lofty ideals and deep ideas, giving them a sense of place and belonging in the adult world.
- Education never ends. Dogs are still trained after they have left the puppy phase. Chickens adapt to new circumstances. Learning always continues. It can be a new intellectual skill, a new physical talent, or a new piece of information. We should not be content with “Oh, I already know that.” There is always more knowledge to acquire and new things to find out about the world.
With these as our goals, let us begin this new school year excited for the learning to come. At the end of the year, may each student be one step closer to mature adulthood and a more integrated part of our common society.
The post Education for Adulthood appeared first on Memoria Academy.