Ireland has been spending millions investigating past failures inquiries, reports, and compensation schemes. While these efforts offer some justice and recognition, they don’t change what happened. We can’t undo the past. But we can stop repeating it.
What are we doing today that may one day be the subject of another inquiry?
One area that deserves urgent attention is how we prepare young people for life. For years, college has been positioned as the only valid path, the mark of success. If you don’t go, you’ve “missed out.” But with the sheer volume of freely available information today, education no longer has to be confined to lecture halls or linear paths.
We’re not educating for the jobs of the future because we don’t know what those jobs are yet.
What we can do is foster skills like problem-solving, empathy, creativity, and leadership and there’s no better place to do that than in strong, local communities.
Communities as Classrooms
When young people are part of communities where people do things together – from organising an event, to running a fundraiser, to keeping a lakeshore clean, they see what it really takes to make things happen.
They learn that…
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Planning matters
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Communication is essential
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Listening to others leads to better outcomes
These lessons are just as valuable if not more so than any textbook or exam.
Strong communities also allow people to discover their gifts. As Price Pritchett says in You², “Open your gifts.” Not everyone’s gifts show up in traditional education. Sometimes, they appear when someone’s given the chance to try, fail, contribute, and belong.
When we build real communities that include everyone young and old, we not only create more connected lives, we create the future we’ve been hoping for.
Let’s not wait for another inquiry. Let’s act now, together.
