Blog 3 if

IF

Here is a thought to transform the education of our children. As a country we continue fall behind in the attainment of international educational standards. We slavishly follow the mantra of test after test after test. Our children emerge from school as the most tested young adults in the whole of Europe and yet still languish in the bottom quartile of educational attainment.

So a thought… How about we give children on their 8th birthday, a copy of Rudyard Kipling’s IF. And we dedicate one hour per week out of the timetable to explore it, play with it. Ask them to think about what it means to them in their life, review how they have applied it, how it felt, is relevant to them?
Worth an hour I think, don’t you?



"If”

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream--and not make dreams your master,

If you can think--and not make thoughts your aim;

If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster

And treat those two impostors just the same;

If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken

Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,

Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,

And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings

And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,

And lose, and start again at your beginnings

And never breathe a word about your loss;

If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew

To serve your turn long after they are gone,

And so hold on when there is nothing in you

Except the Will which says to them: "Hold on!"

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,

Or walk with kings--nor lose the common touch,

If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;

If all men count with you, but none too much,

If you can fill the unforgiving minute

With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,

And--which is more--you'll be a Man, my son! (Woman my daughter!)

By Rudyard Kipling