Education for pro skateboarding?

[winstoncarlton3]

How many of them will play their part in ridding the world of a true evil? How many will stand up for what’s good and right, regardless of their own sacrifice? How many will still rise to their feet, two years shy of their 100th birthdays, to salute the marching band? Indicating the true purpose of education is not drilling, or teaching a lot of useless facts (which one can find on the Internet anyway), nor submission to established societal values, but leading out that which already is within.

An educator, then, is a person who helps one achieve the fullness of one’s potential without trying to impose his own viewpoints. I have no doubt that his experience was by no means unusual. We wave our little flags today, pile the cream and jam on our scones, chink our teacups. But what that generation endured is hard to fathom, decades on. No technology, no phones, relatively basic medicine, no touchy-feely therapy sessions.

It was do or die; you had no choice but to get on with it. And just as a reminder of the absolute agony he’s suffering, his tin-eared idiot of a wife posted a picture of him and their two children with their backs to the camera, enjoying their not-so-hard-earned ‘freedom’ in an idyllic garden. But for all the jollity, all the smiles and uplifting stories, I could not escape a nagging sense of sadness. A bitter feeling that it was all just a veneer, a performance rather than a true expression of solidarity.

There is more passion, more vitality, in someone like Joy Trew, 98, a great-grandmother from Bristol who served as a corporal in the Women’s Auxiliary Air Force, than in your average 18-year-old, sitting in their bedroom watching TikToks or feeling triggered because someone’s misgendered their cat. Prince Harry is a classic case in point. He’s older, of course, but his man-child mentality puts him firmly in this bracket. His contribution to the VE Day celebrations consisted of sitting down with a reporter working for the BBC, slagging off the Monarchy and the Government and whingeing about his own safety concerns.

Forget that an entire generation ran towards Nazi Germany to protect HIS great-grandfather’s Crown and HIS country; the real injustice here is that poor Harry doesn’t get motorcycle outriders any more. Watching the Red Arrows, seeing the faces of the crowd, listening to the stories of the veterans, I felt a sense of wistful longing for a nation, a people, a spirit and, above all, a clarity of purpose that I fear no longer exists. And may never exist again. There is no ‘shoulders back, heads up’ nowadays.

No ‘keep calm and carry on’. Just ‘me, me, me’ – as exemplified by research conducted earlier this year by The Times, in which just 11 per cent of Gen Z (young adults aged 18-27) said they would be willing to fight for their country.

[Author]

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