John Thomson and the rock that changed my life.

How an experience of childhood has shaped my lifelong interest in education

(This short article is adapted from a personal Facebook post that I published today)

Hi everyone, especially those who knew my father John Thomson. This is just to let you know if you haven't heard already that he passed away on Feb 7th, not far short of his 100th birthday - coming up on the 25th Feb.

John was a deep thinker and passionate educator who influenced the lives of many people from different parts of the world.

John Thomson at home in 2023 with one of his paintings on the wall and a small selection of his huge book library

For me as his fourth child, he showed what living meaningfully looks like - always on a quest for more knowledge, being prepared to change his views, being considerate of multiple perspectives whilst at the same time having clear judgements, loving learning, and having wide intellectual, social and artistic interests.

He loved meeting new people and having insightful conversations, and was impatient about spending time with anything he would consider trivial or superficial. The bluster, shallowness and self interest of politicians in the face of our compounding real world challenges was also somethimg that exasperated him.

A mysterious boulder

The picture below has a story behind it that is profoundly personal to me, and that I have shared many times with others to highlight my own interest in education. It was taken in the Jura mountains in France a few years back, five decades after Dad first took me there at the age of about 9 years old, little knowing that he was about to open up a doorway into my future life pathway.

He showed me that the boulder in the background was made of granite - a very different rock from the limestone that made up the mountain that it was sitting on. After encouraging me to wonder how it could have got there he explained it had been transported by a long-since melted glacier, all the way from Mont Blanc, 60 miles distant.

The sense of awe at the power of nature I experienced at that moment is what has underlain my values as a teacher and science communicator to this day.

What was the lesson I learnt from that rock?

It was that the most powerful force in education is to awaken feelings of wonder and awe in relation to the world, that then become drivers for an individual's own self-education and self-direction. Enthusiasm is everything because without it people become mere functionaries, blind to the possibilities in themselves and others, breathing out carbon monoxide where there should be oxygen. An educator has no business telling their students what they should become, but a very deep responsability to widen their view and awaken the fire within them so they can find their potential under their own steam.

Thanks Dad - go well wherever you are flying to from here.

Julian

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