As a follow-up to #hope, On Children, by Kahlil Gibran

As a follow-up to my post on hope (click here), I could not help but recall and read the poem, On Children, by Kahlil Gibran from his book the Prophet.

On Children
by Kahlil Gibran

Your children are not your children.
They are the sons and daughters of Life’s longing for itself.
They come through you but not from you,
And though they are with you yet they belong not to you.

You may give them your love but not your thoughts,
For they have their own thoughts.
You may house their bodies but not their souls,
For their souls dwell in the house of tomorrow,
which you cannot visit, not even in your dreams.
You may strive to be like them,
but seek not to make them like you.
For life goes not backward nor tarries with yesterday.

You are the bows from which your children
as living arrows are sent forth.
The archer sees the mark upon the path of the infinite,
and He bends you with His might
that His arrows may go swift and far.
Let your bending in the archer’s hand be for gladness;
For even as He loves the arrow that flies,
so He loves also the bow that is stable.

There is a part of me that believes the post on hope ties nicely to Gibran’s thoughts about children.  Again, I ask the question, what would school be like if this were our shared vision of how to educate children?  How would our schools have to change to become stewards of Gibran’s vision for children.