As I fell deeper into bow making, I began to search far and beyond my neighborhood.

I’ve been studying the TED talk below – “Dong Woo Jang: The art of bow-making.” In a high-pressure, high-stakes testing environment, Dong Woo Jang pursues a personal passion and extended project that helps him construct knowledge, skills, understanding, and wisdom from areas that we would typically separate and subdivide in school, likely with no intentional, threaded connection.

What drive and persistence it takes for a young person to make time for such committed exploration and discovery while living in a system that dominates so much of his day having to study someone else’s interests.

What if school were more purposefully designed for the committed pursuit of our passions and curiosities? So that a story such as Dong Woo Jang’s would be ordinary instead of extraordinary.