By Charles Sosnik
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings—nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And—which is more—you’ll be a Man, my son!
–Rudyard Kipling
In addition to being an eye doctor, my father was an avid hobbyist printer. At any given time, he had two or three presses, a light table and other printer swag in our enormous garage/printshop. At the entrance hung a sign that said, “If you can keep your head in all this confusion, you just don’t understand the situation.”
With apologies to Kipling, I think my father would have been right on in today’s education environment. There is so much going on, from the AI evolution in education, to the Federal government’s dismantling of the Ed Department and the subsequent freezing of $6.9 billion in funding.
But going back to old Rudyard,
If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
Or in the words of Charles Sosnik,
You are the difference that will be made.
Yes, times are uncertain. Yes, it can be a little scary out there. And yes, you may have doubts from time to time. But what you do is important. From your efforts, children are enriched. They learn. They grow. Their lives are brightened, and they have a better future because of what you have chosen to do.
As educators, administrators and EdTech providers, your blood, your sweat and your tears make a difference every day. You and I and everyone in our community stand on the wall every day, no matter what, and say, “Today our kids are going to learn. Today, their lives will be a little better.”
But let’s not get too battle weary here. For every challenge, I see so many wonderful opportunities in education. I see new teaching talent coming in from everywhere. And new, amazing technologies to help children learn and prosper; technologies like NeuraPoints, BrainWare and others. I see AI being used to open children’s minds to incredible new ways of thinking.
And the future? It is wide open. None of us knows the changes that will come. But one thing is certain. All of us – every one of us – should have a voice. The future requires all our voices to make the necessary changes for learning in a new world that is far different than the one in which we were raised.
But if you can keep your head in all the confusion, we will have the most marvelous future for our learners.
And I know you can.
About the author
Charles Sosnik is an education journalist and editor and serves as Chief Editorial Officer at ET Magazine. As a long time writer in American education, he uses his deep roots in the education community to add context to the education narrative. Unabashedly Southern, Charles likes to say he is an editor by trade and Southern by the Grace of God.