What’s in a name?

My name is Lainie Liberti.

Liberti is “liberty”, for freedom.
Liberty for liberation. Liberty a state of being free.

It is the essence of who I am, and that’s not a coincidence. I consciously choose that name and it was my 40th birthday present to myself. Little did I know that just 2 years later, we’d be making a lifestyle choice where we had the opportunity to fully experience liberty and freedom as the driving force in our lives.

Webster dictionary defines liberty as:

the quality or state of being free:
the power to do as one pleases
freedom from physical restraint
freedom from arbitrary or despotic control
the positive enjoyment of various social, political, or economic rights and privileges
the power of choice

Liberty is in essence the state of being free from what? Slavery, oppression, control. I look at how these concepts do not apply to our lives anymore and specifically look at the paradigm of thinking we’ve stepped beyond.

But what about liberty in education? Freedom in learning?

The world is the way it is, because education is the way it is. Is there freedom in that paradigm? I recently watched a TED talk that got me thinking:

Dr. Ron Glasberg discusses “Learning for Liberty” at TEDxYYC 2011.

Education determines the way people relate to the world. I’ve seen the effects of ‘modern education’ in developing countries, and this influence has created a culture of capitalism, consumerism, greed and brand name associations, among other things. Knowledge drives relationships, based on axis of understanding. Education defines that paradigm.