Nurturing the thirst for knowledge

I was raised by my parents, my father in particular, to be as much like them as possible and to share their aspirations as my own. It is no accident that I became an architect, as did my brother, because that was my father’s profession. I was well into my teenage years before I realised that, left to my own inclinations, I would have become a mathematician, statistician or scientist instead.

I have no regrets about spending most of my professional life as an architect, nor do I blame anyone, least of all my parents who believed they were doing the right thing. I don’t remember when I realised it was wrong either, and it took me even longer to figure out why.

There is a fundamental difference between children and adults. Adults can look at the world and make up their own minds about what it means for them and choose for themselves what impact it will have on who they are. Children on the other hand can’t do this without help, hence the concept of the age of consent. We do not own our children, nor do we always know best. But they are in our care for the most important and the most vulnerable period of their lives, and there is no place in this scenario for indoctrination. It should be filled to the brim with the opportunity to learn and grow.

If these essays mean anything at all it is that we are on our voyage of discovery from the day we are born. As adults we are in control of that journey; as children we are not, and that makes nurturing, and especially the way it is done, profoundly important. At some point, and again I don’t remember exactly when, I resolved that I would raise my own children differently.

I don’t know if I succeeded or not, but I know what I intended. I wanted my children to grow up with an open and enquiring mind and a curiosity about the world around them. I wanted to make sure that they not only wanted but also had access to all the knowledge that’s out there, and to nurture in them the strength of character to look at it all and make up their own minds about who they wanted to be. I saw myself as the facilitator of that process.

Successful or not, they turned out very different from me and from each other. It is by a million miles the proudest thing I have ever done, and nothing I have done since or will do in the future even comes close.

Part of the reason I embarked on writing these essays was to try and get back to my own childhood potential, and leave myself enough time to make it meaningful.

Fingers crossed.