Fun with GIS 327: On This Day
On this day, when I was not quite two. a boy named Emmett Till was murdered. On this day, when I was not quite 10, a vast crowd assembled in Washington DC and heard Martin Luther King talk about a dream. On this day, when I was still 21, I walked off the Juneau Icefield after a summer of studying glaciers as climate indicators. Three simple facts are each part of vast scales and trajectories.
As a student, the last days of my summer were never long enough. As a teacher, I loved the start of the school year. As a child, I was only vaguely interested by history and geography, because I was flummoxed by the torrents of facts. As an adult, I learned to see, seek, find, grasp, and use patterns and relationships.
Teachers have long borne a heavy burden: to foster capacity, show truth, care, and build insatiable learners who question, explore, and branch out. Today like never before, we face the pain, backlash, and unintended consequences of growing too soon old and too late smart. Across USA and around Earth, we can today map the places and ways where some (often many) have been consciously inhumane and/or inconsiderate of consequences. We must also map trajectories, and strategies for healing and remediation. On this day, young students inherit an unfortunate position: they must learn as if their life depends on it ... because indeed it does ... just as it does for us older learners.
