Wake Up and Smell the Big Picture
YouTube Video - Did You Know 2.0
It’s one of those videos that gives me a natural high. Let’s hope the high leaves dents in our mind. Healthy ones.
The world around us moves quite slowly even though it’s getting faster everyday. We get too wrapped up in the daily nuances of life that sometimes we miss the bigger picture. The bigger picture of how the world is changing around us. Something you can’t notice it immediately when observing your direct surroundings, but you can’t avoid it.
You can choose to ignore it, but you’re only deceiving yourself. It’s amazing how there is more information in one edition of The New York Times than the average person got in the 18th century. How times have changed.
It’s interesting.
It’s interesting how most people will not change until they hit rock bottom.
It’s interesting how society will not change until society hits rock bottom.
It seems so hard to change that you’d have to almost smell it to do something.
Education in the United States is doomed. Currently, we are too comfortable. The system may not be that great, but it’s still doing enough for us to look the other way. My intention is not to scare you like every other doomsday story. Global warming is one that comes to mind.
My intention is just to raise your consciousness because you can still save yourself. It starts with an individual, and it grows from there. Then there is a tipping point. The point where the masses start to notice. The point where there are just enough people doing it that it won’t let them feel awkward.
Where is this tipping point?
Can we hit the tipping point before we hit rock bottom?
I don’t know. You can’t predict the future. So then what? Is it better to forget about it or blindly choose to be optimistic.
Be optimistic because then you really have nothing to lose. If you choose to ignore it, you have potentially everything to lose.
Take action and find out. That’s my policy.
Highly,
Carl Zetterlund
P.S. This is more of a motivational piece than something concrete. It’s highly motivating for me, and I hope it is the same for you no matter what you are passionate about.
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July 31st, 2007 at 3:02 pm
Carl: I find this video motivational as well, but as I’ve shared the 1.0 version of this with different teacher groups around Oklahoma I’ve been surprised at some of the responses. Many teachers feel overwhelmed by all these changes and statistics, and take the video as reason to look forward even more to retirement in the near future! Of course not everyone responds that way, but I think the “overwhelm” aspect of this can play into fears people already have, and make them less willing to want to use technology and change. CHANGE is really the hard part: it’s difficult to get people to change. Especially when it comes to teaching!
July 31st, 2007 at 3:54 pm
That’s an interesting perspective. I think I sometimes forget the other side of the fence. I’m naturally into change, so it comes easy to me. However, I can only imagine how some of those teachers feel.
I hope to get some actual experience teaching soon. Not sure in what form it will be.