had never happened to reflect that somebody had to get up out of a warm bed to run them. I began to fear that piloting was not quite so romantic as I had imagined it was; there was something very real and work-like about this new phase of it.” So too it is for our sons. Learning occurs in the finer details they so often miss or take for granted. As they grow, the big picture dreams stirred by the imagination have to give way to the smaller, often less interesting details associated with the reality of it. The more Twain learned, the more he realized the river’s complexity, but the more he also began to see its systems, its interconnected parts. It was here, in this discovery that he really began to learn the river. It was difficult, often dangerous, and constantly challenging. It required alertness, an attention to detail, and an avid awareness of all the natural and man-made variables at play around him. Twain learned for example, that where the current is fastest, the river is most dangerous, but that this was also where his boat gained most speed. Given that moving the boat “at speed” was a principal aim of the steamboat pilot, Twain concluded then that the best pilots were those who were always steering in the “shadow of death.”
“In fact, without struggle, real learning isn’t occurring and real character is not being formed.”
Our boys are not facing this extreme, even though they may often complain that homework is “killing” them, but it illustrates the importance to learning of taking the risk, operating outside our comfort zone, confronting our weaknesses, and working to overcome significant hardship. It illustrates that real learning is accompanied by some element of fear. I might also add, that this is where we find the development and formation of true character. In fact, without struggle, real learning isn’t occurring and real character is not being formed. It’s only when we confront our failures and fears that we really learn who we are—it’s more gritty than romantic, but it’s also more real. As teachers and parents, our job is to guide our children through, not protect them from, the troubled waters. On the banks of the Clarence as a boy of eight, that first morning fishing with my dad, I stood there filled with years of fishing stories, the romance of the river, and the dream of catching one of the “greatest ones.” I can remember longing to go with my father and his friends for years before this morning. Always being too young, I had waited in eager anticipation for this day. After catching, gutting, and filleting my first sea mullet on that cold, damp morning purely in preparation for seeking the Australian angler’s greatest On their lifelong journeys of learning, boys pursue a balance between knowledge and what is meaningful.
prize, it all quickly yielded to a less pleasant reality and the bigger question, “What am I doing here?” I want to share another river story, this one written by a man much later in life. Unlike Twain, who was young when he wrote Old Times, Norman Maclean was 74 when he penned A River Runs Through It.3 As practical and pragmatic as young Twain was writing Old Times, moving quickly from dreams and imagination to gritty unromantic reality in an effort to learn and achieve his goal; Maclean remains more philosophical and romantic throughout A River Runs Through It. Maclean’s river, unlike the wide, slow moving water of Twain’s meandering Mississippi, is a narrow, fast moving, small mountain river. He attempts to answer the big questions of life through fly-fishing: What is the chief end of man? What’s it all about? At one point in the story, Maclean, sitting by the river, reflects, “I sat there and forgot and forgot, until what remained was the river that went by and I who watched. On the river the heat mirages danced with each other and then
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