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Assisting in the Education of Our Future

Sammy Korgi

Georgia Gwinnett College

English Hybrid 1102

Dr. Lilly

November 22nd 2014

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Abstract:

Henry David Thoreau in Walden supports education. However, it is not apparent in the

way most people would see it as. He views learning through life experience and changing

lifestyles, as his definition of education. In the organization Caracolí, Thoreau’s view on

education can be used to improve or give new ideas in 3 goals. The goals are hiring parents of

the children to a paying job for help in the organization, having smaller social groups within the

children in order to appreciate the natural ways, and children learning the correct work-ethic by

doing real life- labor at a young age through gardening. In the review of Walden, education can

be thought of differently than just in the commonly scholarly ways like reading, writing,

studying, and just overall schoolwork. I will capture how experience through life is a form of

education, and how it is achieved through companionship, exploration, and sustainability. 3

objectives can be accomplished in Caracolí through bringing in parents of the children (most

important people of the children’s lives) to help and become part of their upbringing, exploring

nature with small groups and focusing on how the children can grasp its true meaning/beauty,

and finding sustainable meaningful work. The true priorities and how parents manage their time,

dangerous environmental conditions, and the children having a correct work-ethic all prove to be

barriers. Finally, “Assisting in the Education of Our Future” advocates that learning with the help

of life experience through companionship, exploration and sustainability contributes to Caracolí

in helping towards the education of our children now and the future later.

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Overview:

In Walden, Thoreau is constantly practicing, observing, and teaching education. He takes

these viewpoints on education in order to fully grasp and get across its importance and value.

Thoreau wants his audience too see that education doesn’t need to be represented just in

scholarly ways; it can be portrayed through life experience. For education to be gained this way,

people must be open to looking beyond at what can better their futures and the communities.

Through companionship, exploration, and sustainability Thoreau specifically does this with

education. Although Thoreau may seem to be in isolation, he is keen on companionship and

appreciates it as much as anyone else. Undoubtedly Thoreau believes exploration of nature is

important to learning. He broadcasts this throughout Walden by venturing off into the woods. In

the “Bean-Field,” Thoreau gets after the significance of practicing sustainability while farming.

You only learn by farming repetitively, not just one time and giving up. Thoreau believes that

education in these ways can change your lifestyle for the better.

Caracolí is a non-profit organization that is based in Colombia and is a successful early

childhood development center. It focuses on education for 0-5 year old Colombian children, but

it could do more with the expansion and improvement of education methods that aren’t just

scholarly but more to do with life experience for the children. The mission of Caracolí is to

contribute to the early child’s development of Colombian children living in susceptible

conditions. El Caracolí provides comprehensive care and early education for both the children

and their parents. This charity serves as a sort of daycare that operates from 8:00 a.m.-5:00 p.m.

for approximately 390 children, and it has two different centers. The organization helps the

children that partake in it to be capable of growing Colombia into a developed country with

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significantly increased economic opportunity for the future. Caracolí stands by what the children

do in their first 5 years of life, as a child will help them become a better adult.

Like in Walden, Caracolí hopes to show that education can also be learned through

children’s life experience. Caracolí, like any organization has issues that come up in order to

attain goals. Its issues are children becoming motivated to learn in the organization if they can

just at home with their parents, not being able to appreciate and learn about nature in a big group,

and failing to learn a work-ethic through real-life labor.

Hiring parents of the children to a paying job for help in the organization

Having smaller social groups within the children in order to learn about nature

The children gaining knowledge of correct work-ethic by doing real-life labor

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Background:

The way Thoreau views education in Walden is unlike any author. He gets his point

across on it by thinking outside of the norm and obtaining an education that applies not just at the

moment, but forever to life experience. Thoreau makes it known that life is the single most

important thing we have. People should grasp all knowledge gained through education and apply

it directly to situations in life. He isn’t the most adamant on education in children towards a

single subject. He believes in education for a greater purpose. Thoreau broadcasts his outlook on

education in “Economy,” when he is speaking of Cambridge College and one says to him, “you

do not mean that students should go to work with their hands instead of their heads?”

“I mean that they (students) should not play life, or study it merely, while the community

supports them at this expensive game, but earnestly live it from beginning to end. How

could youths better learn to live than by at once trying the experiment of living?

Methinks this would exercise their minds as much as mathematics. If I wished a boy to

know something about the arts and sciences, for instance, I would not pursue the common

course, which is merely to send him into the neighborhood of some professor, where

anything is professed and practised but the art of life; — to survey the world through a

telescope or a microscope, and never with his natural eye; to study chemistry, and not

learn how his bread is made, or mechanics, and not learn how it is earned; to discover

new satellites to Neptune, and not detect the motes in his eyes” (38).

In the quote he gives comprehensive examples of how scholarly work doesn’t do justice in

accomplishing a ‘Thoreauvian’ education.

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Thoreau expresses how education is done this way through his bases of companionship,

exploration, and sustainability. Thoreau and companionship is regularly seen through nature, but

that doesn’t mean he is against it with people. He keeps three chairs in his house for a reason in

“Visitors”. In the chapter he says, “I have had twenty-five or thirty souls… under my roof, and

yet we often parted without being aware that we had become very near each other” (97). By

taking visitors in his house, at times, it becomes known that Thoreau is willing to engage in

companionship because it is beneficial for education in life experience to him and the people. He

wouldn’t do so if there was no reason in benefiting from it. Exploration by Thoreau is seen

profoundly in Walden. Thoreau explores throughout the woods of Walden because much can be

learned of life experience from nature. He says this of exploration, “We need the tonic of

wildness — to wade sometimes in marshes…and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the

whispering sedge…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things” (213).

Thoreau believes sustainability is a vital component in reaching education through life

experience. When doing a task repetitively with a certain level of integrity, it shows commitment

in learning and dedication in accomplishing a goal. All throughout Walden Thoreau lived

sustainably, while being happy without quitting. Thoreau In the chapter “Bean-Field” surpasses

the obstacles of exhausted soil from corn/beans planted earlier and woodchucks destroying the

crops. He works many days and long hours, and in the end slowly but surely makes a profit from

the bean-field due to a strong work-ethic.

It is clear that Thoreau sees that education through life experience is more valuable,

beneficial, and overall worthier than through scholarly manners. Scholarship on Walden has been

written analyzing Thoreau’s views on education through life experience. In the essay, "Growing

Beans with Thoreau," Lorna Unwin says, the focus should be more on “vocational skills” than on

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“academic study” (158). Vocational education should enhance child development and give them

the skills and knowledge to a healthy life by putting more of an effort on life experience. Overall,

there should be a ‘broader approach’ to vocational education. Alan Fox in, "Guarding What Is

Essential,” expands on this idea. He states selfishness gets us nowhere in achieving a natural

destiny. In order to educate ourselves and get nature’s true beauty we need to live life in the

easiest of ways and not complicate ourselves. “The concept of natural destiny should be held

onto by our own conservative simplistic life force in the way Thoreau and Yang Zhu did with

themselves” (369). Furthermore, Laura Smith in, “Restoring Walden Woods And The Idyll Of

Thoreau II," achieves the nature-society interaction and management of socio-ecological

systems while acknowledging that areas change due to history and others due to environmental

changes. There is a distinct relation with nature and the social environment, and over time there

is, “evidence of the changes…of nature in restoration narratives…as well as the underpinning

causes/contexts and prevailing social attitudes” (86). Knowing this increases our ability to

become aware of change in our natural habitats, and our life experience benefits from knowing

what has changed and in which way. In “the Heights of Humanity,” Douglas Hochstetler

publishes an essay which argues that, “movement can provide humanizing possibilities even

more pronounced for those subscribing to pragmatic themes” (117). He writes comprehensively

on Thoreau’s relevant life experience educational model, explaining with running and cycling

how the strenuous mood can open possibilities for’ recovering our humanity.’ Hochstetler

compares Thoreau coming to live on Walden Pond for two years, to an athlete going to train as

leaving a part of something else to gain life experience, like freedom, agency, and creativity.

Educating oneself through life experience or education in the ‘Thoreauvian’ way is a goal

for many to complete. An example would be teaching a young child to learn in this matter. The

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organization of Caracolí does their best in doing so for children, but also their parents. Caracolí

was founded in 2010 through its founding member To Love is To Give (TLTG), another non-

profit organization. TLTG then helped recruit the local board of directors, which brings the

connection as to why I choose this organization. My aunt Maria Elisa Korgi is happily honored

to be part of the board of directors of Caracolí. She says, “I feel privileged to be a part of such an

extraordinary organization that helps children from the ages 0-5 here in Yumbo, Valle del Cauca.

I love my job and being able to be responsible for such young children through educational and

nutritional ways that will lead them to eventually becoming capable of continuing the growth of

Colombia. Our mission is to contribute to the early child development of Colombian children

living in susceptible conditions” (M.E. Korgi).

Caracolí is a pre-school/daycare that operates from the early morning to late afternoon. In

Yumbo, Valle del Cauca, there is no pre-school for children, like there is here in every city in

America, so to have a program that does this says volumes about the organization because it is

unheard off in the city. Caracolí receives their money from the government for the most part, but

donations have started to become more popular. The organization has started to reach more fame

not only in Colombia, but throughout Latin America. As mentioned earlier, the organization

serves children from the ages of 0-5. This is so because they feel that the age gap is crucial for

the brain development of social, logical, and intellectual ways of a child’s life. The children in

Caracolí are brought in based on economical statuses of their families. Poverty is what mostly

generates the recruitment of the children. Caracolí does not in the least bit of ways tune out the

parents of the children when they are brought in during the hours. They maintain contact with

them throughout the day via phone calls and visitations. Incorporating the parents of the children

is essential for the life experience of the children; it shows that they care about them while they

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are away. Once the children enter the organization they come together with instructors and are

put in groups of 20 depending on age. There are all sorts of departments that exist in levels:

Board of Directors, psychologists, nurses, accountants, reading, and mathematics teachers

(www.globalgiving.org).

Recently, according to the age of the child, Caracolí has begun to have outdoor activities.

The organization came up with a ‘green zone,’ where children can go and be around nature with

their parents and/or instructors aiding them in the process. The children take turns doing this, and

are put in smaller groups to keep an eye on better. Specifically, there is a gardening area and the

children are allowed to go and plant a crop of their choice. This activity gives them a different,

more enlightening form of education that can be applied to life experience at a young age (M.E.

Korgi).

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Evaluation:

Caracolí’s work brings benefits for children in the long scheme of life. However, they

could do better by thinking of ways to enhance children’s life experience. Room for

improvement will always exist and is not a bad thing at all. It simply gives constructive criticism

for the betterment of an overall cause, in this case Caracolí’s.

The absolute most important figure in a child’s life is their parents. Caracolí does do a

good job of keeping in touch with them during its hours of operation, but it could improve by

hiring parents to a paying job. This would do wonders for their children’s life experience. At a

young age of 0-5 a child learns quickly who important figures are through them being around

often. It gets in their minds from the start, while their brain is developing, that those important

figures are their parents and they care about them. As they grow older in life it sticks with them

because of experiences they had at a younger age with them. Getting across to parents how the

children would benefit from having them around is how to reach this goal. Firstly, the reason

children are even cared for by Caracolí is because of low incomes or unemployment of parents.

For that reason they aren’t able to support their children sufficiently during the hours of 8-5. By

hiring parents to paying jobs in the organization, it would improve their economic problems, and

their children will know early on in life that they are important. The success of improvement can

be measured in the positive results said above, and started as soon as possible. Of course barriers

come into effect for Caracolí if they were to achieve incorporating parents. The children would

have to become first priority in their lives. If they are, parents must be willing to alter their own

time management and change daily routines.

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A second improvement Caracolí can do is to have smaller social groups within the

children’s in order to learn about nature. Being able to grasp nature’s true beauty is essential at a

young age for children. Going on nature walks in smaller groups can accomplish this goal. The

children would be more alert to their surroundings, such as big trees, spiny bushes, crusty leaves,

and possible insects or animals. By being alert, concentration rapidly increases. The learning

aspect of nature intensifies because the children are better focused than they would have been

had they, for example, gone on a nature walk with a bigger group of students. In a big group of

children going to observe nature, distractions become more of a problem. The children would

talk to one another, and not be able to maximize the life experience available to them through

nature. To measure the success of this goal there would be more interest in the children about

nature. For example, they would ask questions, touch natural objects, and their vision would be

more widespread. As soon as Caracolí feels the children are mature enough to truly grasp

nature’s beauty they should start implementing this goal. To complete this goal the child needs to

understand the importance of knowing true beauty of nature towards their life experience. An

obvious barrier that would prevent Caracolí in accomplishing its goal would be environmental

conditions. If conditions outside aren’t safe then the children shouldn’t partake in any sort of

activities there. Conditions that wouldn’t allow going outside could range from, extremely high

or low temperatures to storms.

A third improvement Caracolí can take into account is the children gaining knowledge of

the correct work-ethic by doing real-life labor. The organization does indeed have a ‘green zone,’

which includes a gardening area for the children. However, it is just set out as a fun activity for

the children, and doesn’t include any education on gaining the correct work-ethic that may be

included in gardening. If Caracolí can teach the children correct work-ethic in an activity as

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simple as gardening, it will apply directly to their life experience. On when great effort is put in,

positive results follow. When the children focus on work-ethic in gardening, rather than just

doing it for the activity in itself, much more can be gained. The children would know from a

young age that when hard labor is put in the chances are more than likely that results will be

encouraging. This strategy would be a stepping stone for the children, eventually adding to the

economic growth in Colombia as they grow older. Caracolí could achieve this improvement by

supervising the children one-on one as they garden. To measure results the organization could

follow up with the children as they begin to work on real-life labor. Results from that can be

translated directly to the work-ethic they learned at the age of four, which is when they should

begin applying this goal. A barrier to this goal would be the children just wanting to have fun

and not caring at all for gaining correct work-ethic. This could arise as a problem because the

children are undeniably young and enjoy just playing around.

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Conclusion:

“Assisting in the Education of Our Future” proposes the importance of gaining an

education at a young age through life experience and the usefulness of it in the future. The

organization of Caracolí works for the greatest of causes. Their work contributes to the

children’s education now and helping the growth of Colombia’s future later. Through an

education that includes life experience the children may not recognize at the moment what they

are incurring, but in the future it will be sure to pay dividends. Alejandra Sanchez, a parent

whose son is taken care of by Caracolí says she, “is thankful for all that the organization has

done for her son in terms of developing his education in the correct manner” (“Somos El

Caracolí”). All of Thoreau’s ideas, but particularly life experience in Walden can be applicable

to anything and if understood correctly used in advancement. With Thoreau’s concepts of

companionship, exploration, and sustainability Caracolí can accomplish educating the children

through ways that have to do with life experience more.

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Works Cited

Unwin, Lorna. "Growing Beans With Thoreau: Rescuing Skills And Vocational Education From

The UK's Deficit Approach." Oxford Review Of Education 30.1 (2004): 147-160.

Academic Search Complete. Web.

Fox, Alan. "Guarding What Is Essential: Critiques Of Material Culture In Thoreau And Yang

Zhu." Philosophy East & West 58.3 (2008): 358-371. Academic Search Complete. Web.

Smith, Laura. "Restoring Walden Woods And The Idyll Of Thoreau II: A Recent

Historical Tracing Of Changing And Renegotiated Restoration Goals." Ecological

Restoration 32.1 (2014): 86-95. Academic Search Complete. Web.

Hochstetler, Douglas, and Peter Matthew Hopsicker. "The Heights Of Humanity: Endurance

Sport And The Strenuous Mood." Journal Of The Philosophy Of Sport 39.1 (2012): 117-

135. Academic Search Complete. Web.

"To Love Is To Give." Overview of To Love Is To Give. GlobalGiving Foundation, n.d. Web.

Korgi, Maria Elisa. Personal Interview. 4 Nov. 2014.

"Somos El Caracolí.” Caracolí. Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 17 May. 2013. Web.

Thoreau, Henry David. Walden Civil Disobedience and Other Writings. Ed. William Rossi. New

York: W.W Norton & Company, 2008. Print.