EDUC8 ME

So we’ve been set our 14th portfolio brief and it’s got my big old head spinning. It’s the last one set by Marc and I think it’s pretty fitting after the week he’s had.

I chose education. I have to try and persuade accountants, stockbrokers and general ballers to trade in their current high earning careers for a chance to shape the young minds of the future… and teach.

I’m not sure why I was drawn to it initially, but I know it created a bit of dissonance for me. It seemed hard… but I couldn’t really understand why? Why would it be so hard to persuade people to teach? So much so that Marc would set a brief on it?

It seems to be another overhang of our imbalanced culture. The lure of materialism and consumption draws us further away from an appreciation of our collective future.

It’s evident across many of the tyrannical efforts we’ve made to destroy our planet for the next generations. Consume now, worry later.

Teaching fits this pattern pretty well.

I had a lot of fun interviewing some of our mentors trying to uncover what led them to SCA in the first place. It was actually really heart warming hearing about their motivations and how much it meant to them seeing minds develop and shape, even just slightly, from any sort of impact they could have. Their other careers have given them purpose but nothing seems to drive a sense of legacy better than the opportunity to teach.

It’s inherently creative. I’m not just talking about teaching people how to make ideas, but teaching someone anything at all. It moulds a mind. The legacies we create aren’t in the things we leave behind, but the impressions we make in the minds of the people we communicate to.

The ripple effect you can have throughout someones life from introducing one idea is huge, and it becomes a lot larger the younger they are. Although I may be getting old I’ve been introduced to a lot of thoughts like that from mentors here. It’s something I have become a lot more conscious and appreciative of over the past week. We have access to a level of teaching here that far outweighs any environment I’ve ever been in, and I know its a rare thing. That’s an issue that obviously needs to change.

I interviewed Marc about all this last week, before he or I ever heard about the award he was receiving from the Drum. The heart, energy and soul he pours into this place its ridiculous. It’s all for a deep founded purpose which everyone around him can feed off. It was awesome watching him collect it tonight at The Chip Shop awards. More institutions like this should be faming education and it’s importance in our culture.

Getting people to teach shouldn’t be hard, in theory. It’s the most rewarding legacy you can build to make a difference to the world around you. We just need to find a more compelling way to communicate that to the world. Hopefully it will be PB14.