“You don’t have careers anymore, you have lives”.
A friend of a friend wrote these notes about Charles Handy. If you have never heard him talk - then do yourself a favour and go see him. You wont be disappointed.
Charles Handy - Management guru and respected thinker on people and organisations at a management conference promoting his new book, ‘Myself and other important matters’.On the subject of teaching and learning, Handy was clear about the need for lifelong learning. On degrees he said, “a degree is only proof that you can learn. It is irrelevant for any other purpose. All it proves is that you can adapt and that you have potential.” “By the end of this lecture you will have forgotten 80% of what I have talked about.
By tomorrow morning, this will be 95%… I remember all of it!”
“What this shows is that if you want to learn anything, then you need to teach it. If you have children, then you need to get them to teach you. They will learn faster this way.”
Drawing on his studies at Oxford, Handy talked about happiness, commenting that it is good to see this being given attention. “It is not new however, Aristotle talked about this many years ago”.
Handy commented on the term coined by Aristotle, “Eudaimonia”. [u-dai-moany-ah] “This has been commonly translated as ‘happiness’, but this is a mistranslation. A much better translation would be flourishing. What it means is doing your best at what you are best at … for others”.
“It is about feeling bloody good about yourself. Because after all, that is all that is left. It is not a state. So how do you find this out – you need to work that out for yourself.”
“Education should therefore be about finding out what you are good at. We have a problem today with young people leaving education too early. If we followed eudaimonia we would allow them to understand what they were good at and then allow them to do it”.
Personally, I couldn't agree more. School should largely be about helping our children to discover their strengths / what they are good at. It doesn't matter what academic achievements people have - ( see Tim Marshall story ) its the A word that means the most - Attitude and bloody hard work.
3 comments:
Katie,
Check out the latest Cambridge University analysis and report on the European Social Survey into well-being (happiness). This has been carried out every two years since 2002. The UK ranks 9th out of the EU-15. This survey will expand to all 27 members in 2008. The Danes came top. So what makes us happy? Money? No. Sunshine? No. It is all to do with trust, socialisation and inter-personal relationships . If we do not trust the press, business or Government we become less happy. If we lack close family and friendships we are less happy. The UK is less happy in this survey than the last one as we trust instutions less and socially we feel we have a more fragmented society. How does that effect the younger generation, growing up in a more unhappy less trusting society? Will their extensive use of Social Media tools be a solution to this or is it part of the problem? Trust in peer group information is higher than 'official sources' for most age groups. This leads onto another good point you made in an earlier post - the rise of Citizen Journalism. But that is another subject...
See www.admin.cam.ac/news/dp/2007041701for details of Cambridge Uni research.
Adrian - you make some great points. I believe all generations but particularly the younger ones will choose to use the best of the social media tools and follow up with face to face communication. Lloyd Davis talked about this on his perfect path blog yesterday - how an online communication can develop offline( face to face) and then be sustained using all the tools - til you meet face to face again. I am finding this happening to me and think its a great way to meet people who have something positive to contribute. Thanks again.
Between career and life, I will choose life,for I think I just a visit in the world.
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