When we teach our children language (and our common habits with knowledge) — and yet fail to endow them with the powers of metaphor and rhetoric — it is like giving them the wings and landing gear to an aircraft.

And the terrifying thing for them is this: they see others flying but have no idea how this could be since they are missing the fuselage and -control pod-. And, in the large, neither do we. We -pay to hear others who have this speak for us-.

So, what they do, our kids… with these half-baked aircraft, is take running jumps off cliffs… using their mind and emotional bodies as a makeshift substitute… and… largely… they plummet. Many are destroyed. A few, on the way down, begin to notice what was missing. Most, however, live and lose their lives never knowing what language is or does… it is like a magic… used by others…

Yet every child comes poised to learn so much more than we have been able, yet, to give them. And so, too, every adult. We need more than technology. We need intelligence. And metaphor (in relation), not data, is the basis of our intelligence. Metaphor… and… rhetoric.

Give them the rest of the aircraft. Our minds and souls are made for flight, not crawling. Hell, if you won’t?

I will.