The Continuing Education of Maria O'Ryan

Grow old along with me! The best is yet to be, The last of life, for which the first was made: These words of Robert Browning were used quite often by my grandfather, William Hartshorne, who showed by example that our education is never complete.

I received an Associate of Science in Construction Engineering Technology in 1981. As I was going through a divorce I decided, with the help of Mr. King at the department of employment security, that I did not want to work for minimum wage. Because I used welfare, food stamps, and lived in public housing I was able to finish this program in two years.
I have received a Bachelor of Science in Organizational Management in 1998. TVA, my present employer, has a tuition reimbursement program and I took advantage of it. The Quest Program at Covenant College is a comprehensive course of study that combines formal classroom study, independent research, and on the job experiences to teach the basics of management. I started this Home Page beacause of my college research paper.
I have embarked on a lifelong Study of the Great Books, through The Center for the Study of the Great Ideas in Chicago. My son, Krishna, attends St. John's College which is a course of study based on the Great Books. I am following in his footsteps to study the classics. The first forum in the Fall of 1997 focused on Plato's Apology and Crito. Since then we have worked our way through Aristotle's "Politics". This has been the most intense learning experience of my life. It stretched my abilities and I found more of my talents. Will wonders never cease!

These are links to Educational Institutions, click on them to learn more

The liberal artist learns to read, write, speak, listen, understand, and think. He learns to reckon, measure, and manipulate matter, quantity, and motion in order to predict, produce, and exchange. The liberal arts are not merely indispensable; they are unavoidable. Nobody can decide for himself whether he is going to be a human being. The only question open to him is whether he will be an ignorant, undeveloped one or one who has sought to reach the highest point he is capable of attaining. The question, in short, is whether he will be a poor liberal artist or a good one.

Robert M Hutchins

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler with his friend and assistant Max Weismann. These men are responsible for guiding us toward our duties as citizens, to attain happiness, and to seek the good and do no harm.

The aim of education is to cultivate the individual's capacities for mental growth and moral development; to help him acquire the intellectual and moral virtues requisite for a good human life, spent privately in a noble or honorable use of free time and publicly in political action or service. Our schools are not turning out young people prepared for the high office and the duties of citizenship in a democratic republic. Our political institutions cannot thrive, they may not even survive, if we do not produce a greater number of thinking citizens, from whom some statesmen of the type we had in the eighteenth century, might eventually emerge. We are, indeed, a nation at risk, and nothing but radical reform of our schools can save us from impending disaster. Whatever the price we must pay in money and effort to do this, the price we will pay for not doing it will be much greater.

Mortimer J Adler

If you have comments or suggestions, email me at moryan@gowebway.com