By Neil

Thank you for inviting me to give a speech at today’s flag raising ceremony.

The topic I chose for this speech was ‘how to manage your time’? a topic that as a teacher my experience will be somewhat different to that of the many students here who continuously push themselves to improve their grades and achievements in search of further education or career paths.

I do have some experience as a student, as many of our teachers will too, and I can share some of these as I am sure many of your teachers do, but my main focus in this speech is to ponder the life-learning aspect of education, rather than the strategies, tips and tricks we all use in our everyday lives to make time for ourselves.

Short term strategies for managing time, provided by us teachers, should be reminders of what you already know, after all they are behaviour; scheduling, prioritizing tasks, considering the time of day and how you work or who you are working with, getting the most out of your task, working efficiently by breaking down tasks into mind maps etc. The list goes on and I’m sure you can add to it.

So, continue with these strategies: they are important, but consider your longer-term aspirations too. Let me quote John Stuart Mill, the famous British Philosopher, Economist and Politician: Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them.

Mill goes on and conveys a sense of helplessness in this situation. Do we really not have time to indulge in what makes us tick- what stimulates the mind intellectually? This sounds like a sad situation.

What Mill actually gets at here is that over time (and I quote again from Mill)...many who begin with youthful enthusiasm for everything noble, as they advance into years sink into indolence and selfishness. Mill believes people have become incapable of higher types of pleasure. We become lazy and selfish and not out of choice too- our environment, for example, shapes our behaviour.

Lifelong learning offers us more than just maintaining our intellectual tastes; more than simply a strategy to find more time in the day, more than the habits (good or bad) we have formed. It is based on personal development and follows you into your adulthood. Development creates innovative new ideas- self-initiated goals. So now you are asking what has this to do with planning or managing my time?

According to Mill you may not have the time or opportunity to continue your studies and intellectual life. But your interests, your passions and your ambitions should always be developing. There are no excuses not to pursue your dreams where time is not an issue. So perhaps when you have a minute or two to think, you may start to consider the longer-term aspect of your learning- and start your journey into life-long learning.