Education

The "E" in the word hope is representative of the word EDUCATION. Learning is a vital element in life. If we can't learn we can't be viable and independent. We can't take care of ourselves.

Robert Sylwester, an Emeritus Professor of Education at the University of Oregon until 2016 describes that we (human beings) are in constant motion; travelling in simultaneous physical, psychological, emotional and cognitive realms. 

Robert Sylwester characterizes this need to be in motion ... the planning, regulation, and prediction of movements are the principal reasons for a brain. Plants are as biologically successful as animals, but they don’t have a brain. 

An organism that’s not going anywhere of its own volition doesn’t need a brain. It doesn’t even need to know where it is. What’s the point? Being an immobile plant does have its advantages, however. Plants don’t have to get up every day and go to work because they’re already there. 

On the other hand, if an organism has legs, wings, or fins, it needs a sensory system that will inform it about here and there, a make-up-its-mind system to determine whether here is better than there or there is better than here, and a motor system to get it to there if that’s the better choice – as it is, alas, when we have to go to work.

I think that learning can be described as movement; multiple journeys over a lifetime in the simultaneous physical, psychological, emotional and cognitive realms. I believe the process of inquiry provides us with opportunities to travel the most engaging pathways on these journeys, perhaps fortunately, the ones less travelled by. 

We all need to learn to be in motion toward the things we want to accomplish.

Click through the sub-page headings below to learn more about each of the H-O-P-E Domains...