Age doesn't matter in Education!

Have you ever asked your parents about their lives? How they lived before they met us, their children? Asked about their education. About how they managed to go to school?

So here, let me tell you about my mother.

Way back 1950's, there was a man from far away place who happened to come to a certain village for an unknown purpose. He saw a beautiful woman whom he was in loved with likewise with that woman. Because they loved each other, they got married after few months of knowing one another. This couple lived in the hometown of the woman, and were blessed with children.

One of their children, our mother, started to go along her grand parents to the ricefield at age five. She learned how to work there and enjoyed it. At age seven, her parents told her to go to school but she did not like. She told them that she prefers to go to the ricefields rather than going to school. They kept on convincing her but still cannot be convinced until age eleven year old. They were very much worried to what will be our mother's future if they failed to send her to school.

One day, our mother's father thought of something which might be of help in convincing her to go to school. So, one summer he told our mother that she will go with him to visit a hometown where he came from. Mother liked it. So, she packed her clothes for a travel.

In going there, they met buses going to different places. Her father started to ask what he thought of as follows:

Father: My child, will you read what was written on the head board of that bus to which place it will go?

Child: Eee....... I don't know.

Father: What about in that other bus coming, can you read?

Child: I don't know.

Father: Here comes another bus, can you read it for me?

Child: You know that I don't know how to read, why do you insist on asking me how to read? (angry)

They kept silent for few minutes then the father shifted the conversation to another topic until they reached their destination.

The night of that day, the father took the chance to explain why he kept on asking her to read what was written on the head board of each of those three buses they met. While listening to her father, she now realize the importance of going to school. Much more when she was introduced by her father to her new friends of that place. She was very much ashamed because she was the only one who couldn't read among them as friends. As a result, she planned to go to school when they go home after summer which she really did.

From then, she was challenged to study well especially that she was the oldest in the class. She did her best from elementary to college. While studying in high school to college, she had been a working student in one institute until she graduated Elementary Education course. She again encountered another challenge because she failed in the first teachers' board exam and passed only the second time she took it.

To cut it short, she was employed as a classroom teacher in one school after a year. As a teacher, she used to relate her previous experiences to those pupils whom she observed seeming to drop especially when they were bullied by their classmates calling them "mama/ daddy.

Now, she retired as Master Teacher 1 at the age of 62 with 32 years of teaching. After many years of teaching, she thought of retiring which she did last december 2019. She's enjoying her retirement going to the fields. She was able to do now what she wanted to do since she was a child with our father. They go separately to their own fields. My father retired as well.

So that's it for today. I hope this serves as an inspiration to all of us. Until next time again.