Linking Back: Class sizes, Hurdles, and Happiness

Boy, what a quick week - and not much newsworthy items when it comes to education, tutoring, and the like. But here's what I rounded up:

- More on the debate of long trips to get to school, from CNN.

- Debatable results from this study on stay-at-home children vs. foster children.

- Happiness and taxes - this link is not perfectly related to the typical CK blog post, but is interesting nonetheless.

- More hurdles to becoming a teacher, from the NY Times.

- And finally, an excerpt from this post:

Anxiety is a cousin of the avalanche about to roll, but it is more about uncertainty than an emerging, disruptive trend. Examples of anxiety themes abound: (1) Financial services companies urging baby boomers to hurry up and invest more for retirement: “You’re 55. Will you have your needed $3.2 million to retire comfortably?” (2) Tutoring companies planting seeds of doubt about whether our kids will score well enough on the SATs to get into a good college. Although anxiety themes grab attention, go easy. People are becoming skeptical, and rightly so. Too many politicians, companies have bombarded us with FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt) with no facts to back up their point.

I'd like to point out that #2 isn't what all tutoring companies do :-)

The Great Debate: What do you want to do with YOUR life?

I had the infamous "doing what your heart desires" debate with my friend from Princeton and the premise of our discussion is worth mentioning here. We debated the typical "would your parents let you do what you wanted" and the importance of education and I've come to a distinct (but perhaps not unique) conclusion: many parents may SAY they support their kid in whatever they want to pursue, but that's not often the case. Let me explain...

I know many people, including this person with whom I debated, who feel passionate about something "else" - that is, something they're not currently pursuing but would, in all likelihood, make them happier. In this case, the person is studying business/economics but has a stronger interest in fashion. In the case of a different friend, he is studying aerospace but has mentioned to me before that he would have liked to study architecture (and probably would have been a great architect!)

So now why do these people - and believe me, there are many more examples - all follow a more "conventional" route? It can't just be a parent's pressure - there's also pressure from society and, well, the pressure each person puts on themselves.

So should everyone just follow their passions? No, not necessarily. I think people should follow their passions to the extent that their passions align with their abilities. It's certainly the case that this world isn't structured so that everyone can do whatever they want. And, of course, I'm certainly not advocating doing whatever you want because you may be very, very bad at it.

Hypothetically, say I greatly enjoy math - deriving formulas is MY inspiration (ha, that'll be the day!). But assume that I'm very bad at math and very good at... litigation. Well, I would (likely) feel strong pressure from my parents, friends, and other acquaintances to become a lawyer, or at least something related to my strength, rather than a mathematician.

But my take is that shouldn't be the case - I should pursue whatever makes me happy, with a slight nod to practicality. And I don't think enough people do that. So, who knows, maybe this post will inspire at least one person to think again about what their passions are and to think about whether they are pursuing what makes them happy. It's definitely not too late to go after that thing that inspires you. And if you don't know what makes you happy, maybe this will get you thinking about it a little more!