Drive

It’s 3am.

You’ve been on the road since 11:30pm after grabbing 90 minutes of sleep at the end of a work day that started at 1:57am the day before.  There are 368 more miles to go to your destination, which you must reach by 8am.

It’s just you and the satellite radio out on the road at this hour.  On comes this song:

These are the moments that make life worth living.

The destination: Indianapolis Indiana and the National FFA Center, the headquarters of the premier youth educational organization that instills a sense of drive in its members.

It is fitting, and not surprising, that those who direct the work of this organization would be similarly driven and passionate about their work, and that commitment and drive were on full display following a rather lackluster introduction by yours truly.

In today’s educational climate of standardized tests and SOLs, where success seems to be measured in a student’s ability to check the correct box, even if they don’t know why.  Where teaching critical thinking and problem solving skills seem to take a back seat to having all students equally prepared to advance to 13th grade…. I mean college, it can become difficult for school systems to see the benefit of “the ag department” taking up precious instructional minutes that could be used to insure that yet more boxes are blindly checked correctly by pupils, thus improving the district’s standing in some ranking or another.

But, as anyone who has experienced the benefits of the FFA, Ag Education and SAE trifecta first hand could tell you, “the ag department” is valuable whether or not a student’s future is in an agricultural pursuit.  It is critical because of its ability to build upon the other academic subjects and give students the ability to see the how and the why behind that box they checked in an earlier class.

It was good to see how that message is being communicated, and the work being done to ensure FFA’s relevance in the future preparing students for the “real world”.

BeanCrusher, Twitter, Facebook.  (postings are sparse now.  lt’s harvest season)

And yes, there was a bit of painting with a broad brush with some hyperbole thrown in too.  I trust the reader to discern when these were employed

Update:

It would seem that “Drive” marketing took no time at all to take off following my initial post, as evidenced by my son when he came down stairs this morning:

That’s New Holland for you, way out in front.  And then I recalled that we have a supply of these shirts available at Augusta Equipment Co. in Staunton. Should you wish to procure your own, let me know.