In my first lifeguarding summer, capability changed my life in nine weeks. I could not swim to the required standard, then I could. The training did not ask me to remain forever identified as an engineer who knew resistors and wires. It gave me a standard, a pool, instruction to master and work worth learning. That experience never left me.

The Trott Bailey approach to learning begins from the same confidence. A child can become better at things. An adult can learn a language, a musical instrument, animal husbandry, coding, first aid or wind-turbine maintenance. A professional can go beyond the job written on an old certificate. Pacorips records capability as it grows, and NoDumbDumbs makes learning practical, social and enjoyable.

Our own children have been publishing, photographing, asking technical questions, sketching and watching systems come into being beside their parents. Their education includes swimming, gardening, words from many languages, food, machines, music, movement and the history of people we meet. A real world presents a thousand laboratories. We want safe environments and competent guides so children can explore them with greater independence every year.

Sher and I keep learning on purpose. Every unfamiliar discipline brings a fresh person into our marriage and new possibilities into our civilization. I might study a language while she authors a new building body. Next month we may both become beginners somewhere else. There is no reason to be embarrassed by that. We are delighted to be students.