Learning Has No End

Irma Cruz

Mature people have a growing understanding of themselves, of others, and of social,

moral, and ethical problems. They have the ability to translate words into meanings, to grasp
the ideas presented, and to sense the mood suggested. They have curiosity and enthusiasm for
a wide variety of experiences, directly and also indirectly through reading, and they relate new
ideas to previous experiences. Thus, they acquire new and deeper understandings, broadened
interests, rational attitudes, and richer and more stable personalities.

I have few memories of my early childhood. My parents were poor and so involved in
the struggle to survive that they could offer me little or no personal enrichment. No books were
given or read to me, there were no trips to museums, zoos, theatres, or movies, there was no
money to buy the kinds of toys that would have stimulated my imagination. My early days in
kindergarten were bright days. I remember looking forward to the mornings that I would spend
in school, but another memory like a rainfall, bitter in taste, is of being labelled by the system as
a remedial child. I was made to feel that I was going far in life. A year later when my younger
sister joined me in school, my parents and teachers gave me the message that she was bright,
and I wasn’t. From that moment on I imprisoned my soul with the ridiculous challenge of
proving that I too had abilities.

In my early twenties I fell in love and married. I can truly say, as I look back many years
later, that on the day of my marriage I was born again; I wish that I could change my entire
name to suit my second birth. I entered marriage with no identity, no sense of myself, no
experience of life whatever. Through my husband’s patience, through my struggles with
everyday life, through bearing children, caring for them and trying to meet their needs in a
more conscious way than mine were met, through reading more and reading with a more
critical view, and through developing my love for art, I began to grow and continue to grow.

I have chosen a career in education and have worked as a paraprofessional teaching

“target” children, children who need to catch up. I am in college, an activity which my relatives
and I had thought I would never be capable of but which I had always wanted. I look forward
with great hope to continuing to experience and to grow more mature in life, for learning has
no end.