Walking the rice terraces requires focus
Sunday, December 15, 2019 at 05:55PM 
Much of my hiking over the past week has been done on the flat tops of rice terrace walls like the ones pictured above near Banaue. These 24-inch wide concrete lips come as a welcome relief from the steep and muddy paths up and down the mountains in the area,
This is not to say walking the walls is like strolling on a city sidewalk. The paths are fairly narrow and can, at times, shrink to about a foot in width. Sometimes they are irregular stone. Moss or moisture on them can make them slippery. The may have settled into a significant sideways tilt. Broken sections require stone or dirt detours and moving from one level to the next can be tricky. Oh, the drop off on one side is usually 2-3 feet into a muddy field; on the other side it can be over 30 feet down. Not for those who fear heights.
But what may be the most dangerous about walking these paths may be the false sense of security they engender. After walking a few minutes in a straight line, it's easy to not pay a lot of attention to where the next step needs to be placed. When I slipped on my hikes, it was usually because I was looking around at the scenery rather than looking where my next foot should be planted. On slippery slopes, this focus on foot placement is easy to maintain (even when the footing is not). It's when we get get complacent that we fall.
When I think about the qualities of a good hiker, I usually think of strength and stamina. To be sure, scrambling up rocks and going long distance require both of those. But we think little of the need for focus.
As I look back on a 40+ year career in education, I sometimes wonder if I should have been better focused. Would I now be the guru of some corner of the education field had I stuck to, say, information literacy as influenced by technology? Or technology ethics? Or young adult literature? Or creativity? Or any of the myriad of things which fascinated me and about which I researched, reflected, wrote about, and presented? Should I have spent more of my time focused on the day job a tech director for my schools and less time writing, speaking at conferences, and giving workshops for schools and other organizations?
I have zero regrets about my career, but just wonder if our feet too often slip on the career path for lack of focus?
Reader Comments (3)
Great analogy - especially with technology changing so often. I sometimes wonder if we should go back and just teach BASIC, unplug the mice and teach just using a keyboard, and hand write flowcharts. I also wonder if the people who have entered the workforce in the past ten years are just good at programming and lack the problem solving skills that seem to be on everyone's most important skills list.
I believe I have at least five more years as a teacher, and wonder how the conversation will change then - a brand new language, completely new desktops and laptops, other technologies we can't even imagine now - but will students still have the skills to write complete sentences, explain an idea, and make a logical and effective plan to get from point A to point B?
Quite alot of wisdom packed in that reflective paragraph. I bet if you take a step back further, not on that path!, you might find that you did all those things everyday as you did do your job- I'm just sayin.
Kenn,
So many technological innovations are more distracting than helpful - in education and society. I just read an article that injuries are very high due to distracted walkers looking at their phones!
Thank for the comment!
Doug
Hi Stephanie,
I guess to have done as much writing as I have done, I must have had some degree of focus. Books, especially.
Thanks for the comment,
Doug