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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Returning the fruits of education

by

20151029

This quote by La­dy Bird John­son, wife of the USA's 36th pres­i­dent Lyn­don B John­son, "Ed­u­ca­tion is a loan to be re­paid with the gift of self", cap­tures what be­ing an Al­ta tu­tor is all about. Al­most every vol­un­teer who comes to Al­ta says "I want to give back". This is a great start–but not enough. This anec­dote cap­tures why.

Five par­rots were in a tree.

Four said, "I am go­ing to fly off."

How many par­rots are left?

Five. Why?

Say­ing is not do­ing.

Many of us have good in­ten­tions, but these on­ly count when we act on them. Al­ta faced this is­sue ear­ly–peo­ple train­ing to be tu­tors, then not teach­ing oth­ers to read. On one of the ear­ly train­ing cours­es for vol­un­teer tu­tors was a very com­pe­tent la­dy from San­gre Grande. She was en­thu­si­as­tic about teach­ing read­ing in her com­mu­ni­ty, ex­plain­ing that God had called her to do this. Sure­ly she would not aban­don Al­ta af­ter her train­ing. But ... af­ter the course, God changed what he was say­ing. She re­port­ed that God was now call­ing her to do some­thing else.

Emp­ty promis­es like these are not neu­tral in their im­pact–emp­ty promis­es come at a cost to non-prof­its. A cost in time and en­er­gy or­gan­is­ing for and train­ing the vol­un­teer, track­ing them down to find out if they are go­ing to do what they said they would, and re­or­gan­is­ing to fill the hole they leave when they fail to de­liv­er. At Al­ta, a no-show tu­tor means an­oth­er tu­tor has to be per­suad­ed to dis­rupt their own sched­ule so stu­dents' needs are met–to put the stu­dents above self. Vol­un­teer­ing–at least with any se­ri­ous agency like Al­ta–is more than do­ing what you feel like do­ing, when you feel like.

Ear­ly ex­pe­ri­ences like the Grande la­dy taught Al­ta the im­por­tant les­son of test­ing what peo­ple say. Every prospec­tive tu­tor must ob­serve eight con­sec­u­tive lessons at an Al­ta class of their choice. You must show that you can do what you say. If for one month you can't at­tend a two-hour class twice a week, then what hope is there that you can do this for an aca­d­e­m­ic year? And this is the con­tract all our vol­un­teer tu­tors sign be­fore train­ing–the tu­tor con­tract says: I will teach for two hours, twice a week for one aca­d­e­m­ic year.

So as we en­ter the sea­son of giv­ing, think about the gift of self. But keep in mind that giv­ing back in­volves work. There is a view that if you are not be­ing paid for work, you don't have to put much ef­fort in. The at­ti­tude of: "They not pay­ing me so what­ev­er I give them, they should be more than hap­py with."

If "ed­u­ca­tion is a loan to be re­paid with the gift of self", then un­ful­filled com­mit­ments to give back put you fur­ther in debt. If you say you are go­ing to do some­thing, do it � whether you are paid or not.


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