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This WIKI is a resource for students taking Honors Economics in the New Visions Programs in Health, Education, Environmental Science & Engineering at Putnam / Northern Westchester BOCES. It will include readings, notes, multimedia resources, assignments & schedules.

Send me too, you will be saying, the things that have been effectual. Indeed I desire to transfer every one of them to you; part of my joy in learning is that it puts me in a position to teach; nothing, however outstanding and however helpful, will ever give me any pleasure if the knowledge is to be for my benefit alone. If wisdom were offered me on the one condition that I should keep it shut away and not divulage it to anyone, I should reject it. There is no enjoying the possession of anything valuable unless one has someone to share it with. I shall send you, accordingly, the actual books themselves, and to save you a lot of trouble hunting all over the place for passages, I shall mark the passages so that you can turn straight away to the words I approve and admire.

What progress have I made? I am beginning to be my own friend. This is progress indeed. Such a person will never be alone and you may be sure he is a friend to all.

//Seneca, Epistulae Morales ad Lucilium Letter VI//

//When I was very young, I forgot in the Trophonean cave how to laugh; when I became an adult, when I opened my eyes and saw reality, then I started to laugh and have never stopped.//

//I saw that the meaning of life was to make a living, its goal to become a councilor, that the rich delight of love was to acquire well-to-do girl, that the blessedness of friendship was to help each other in financial difficulties, that wisdom was whatever the majority assumed it to be, that enthusiasm was to give a speech, that courage was to risk ten dollars, that cordiality was to say “May it do you good” after a meal, that piety was to go to communion once a year. This I saw, and I laughed.//

//Soren Kierkegaard, Either/Or//

//Education is the strong and slow boring of hard boards; It take both passion and perspective. Certainly all of historical experience confirms the truth - that we would not have attained the possible unless time and again we had reached out for the impossible. To do that we must be leaders, and not only leaders, but heroes as well, in a very sober sense of the word. Even those who would not be leaders must arm themselves with the steadfastness of heart that can brave the crumbling of all hopes. It is necessary now or else we will not even attain what is possible today. Those only who are sure that they shall not crumble when the world from their point of view is too stupid or too base for what we have to offer has the calling to be a teacher. Only those who in the face of all this can say "In spite of it all!" have the calling to education.//

Adapted from Max Weber's //Politics as a Vocation//