Our Day Out

Just back from a very good day out at Shah Alam in the company of Hamzah & Sharifah & family. In between us eating and drinking copiously, Noi went shopping for wedding stuff with her sister and bride-to-be niece Aziqah - so they obviously had a good time. Hamzah and I enjoyed a major confab about just about everything under the sun, including, of all things, the purpose of education and, more specifically, the IB Learner Profile and its place in that purpose.

I rarely talk at any length these days about education in what might be seen as philosophical terms and it was curiously enlightening to do so - the light in question shining for myself if not for my interlocutor. Hamzah's interest in all this springs from the help he's been giving one of the schools in Malaysia on the IT front with regard to it being at the forefront of the government's plans to develop it as a 'world class' institution. In the process of helping them develop the necessary infrastructure he's become quite a deep thinker with regard to education and its purposes and it was fascinating to discuss these matters with a non-specialist who happens to think cogently and sensibly about them.

It turns out that we are both fans of the afore-mentioned Learner Profile. In fact, in the course of our discussion I came to realise for the first time just how much of a fan I am and precisely why this is so. It's strange to think it's taken me this long to figure out why I do what I do, but there you are. Much of the value in telling someone what you think lies in finding out what you think.