The Village Notice Board

Villages can be the hubs of Education!

As I walked up the lane today I stopped to browse the notices on our village notice board. Our disability information day was featured, as was a presentation about the last boat built in the area, a concert, a lent lunch  and the dates for the next photography and yoga classes.

It struck me how, in a very small village we had so many 'experts' and that if I had chosen to go to each group in turn I would have covered law, history, P.E, art,catering and socialising and music without a single formal lesson.

That's just how autonomous education works and the relevancy of the subject to the here and now makes the subject more compelling and  likely to be retained.

It's from little seeds such as this that projects can balloon. My son's interest in rifle shooting stemmed from the opportunity we spotted for children to go a try a free session of shooting at our local rifle range. The day was a wash out, most of the sports were cancelled and no one turned up. That is apart from my two sons! I rang up during the day to check if the session was going ahead and was told that as it was indoors it would. When we arrived the doors were locked and I could see from my Autistic son's face that this could turn nasty- he was getting stressed as things were not going to plan. Fortunately I had thought to programme the instructor's phone number into my mobile. He had been given the incorrect starting time but was just round the corner so the day was saved! For that evening my son and big brother then had an hours instruction from a former British champion in rifle shooting!

The University of Life is indeed a powerful learning tool if you choose to study there!