 Mr. Peters knew he was in for something unpleasant when the Reverend Jones, Freddie's father, stepped into his classroom as students were leaving for the day. There was no preliminary. Yesterday you challenged my son to give you reasons for his belief in God. I'm here returning the challenge. Give me one good reason why he has to prove anything to you. After the silence, Reverend Jones did his best to support the one before him, as was his way. The one who only believes because of reasons has to spend his life defending what he believes. The one who believes without reasons is secure. Instead of being forced to defend for his reasons, his face sustains him. Not everything is knowing about the truth, and always having reasons doesn't show how smart you are. People treat the truth as a possession, and they feel compelled to defend it. Like a rancher, they build fences around what is theirs. If they know it has proven wrong, then it is like someone has stolen something from them. Knowing what is true is also knowing that everything else is untrue. Any challenge to the truth becomes conflict. If you spend your time and effort defending what you already know, you become your own worst enemy. You limit your own ability to learn something new. Even in education, conflict kills performance. Possession of a truth is a challenge you must face as a maturing student, and your effort should assure that it is not limiting your future. You lose if you take what you have learned and build fences around it to keep from learning anything else. Performance thinking can serve you in this. Science is not some product, and knowing the truth of all things is not a value that you receive through education. The value is in becoming an effective adult, someone with great potential to understand the world and be effective in gaining what you value through what you choose to do. Even science, which is often presented as a source of truth, changes as we learn more about what is real. Science describes what we have experienced. Science describes that part of reality with which we are familiar, and when something new is found, something that is different than what we were taught as truth, then our truths are suddenly assaulted. It is amazing how even well-educated scientists will defend what they know even in the face of what is real. The purpose of science is prediction, learning to expect what will happen when new situations are encountered, learning how we can have effect. That is a purpose that has value, a purpose that can serve the larger educational purpose of helping you to be effective. Performance is a discipline. It requires the investment of your time and effort to keep from distraction, to maintain focus on doing things that will yield you value. It is discipline to seek what you value instead of insistence that you value what others determine to provide. This is part of growing into an adult, learning to make your decisions the best that you can, learning to get beyond the childhood acceptance of what others want you to accept as truth. As before, we learn to honor what others have learned when it makes them effective people. There is nothing wrong in receiving what teachers would provide. Their purpose is supporting your growth into maturity. Their purpose is good, but they are also products of alike education. Even your teachers will have fenced in what they know and will protect it from intrusion of new ideas. You will, because you are a human being, also treat truth as if it had value in itself rather than keeping focus on learning more. That is human. And how we treat education is part of our reality. The difference for performance orientation is a matter of degree. With orientation to results, you will recognize this for what it is. You will be able to step more easily aside, continuing learning even where it might assault what you have come to believe as truth. Should you need a truth to give you focus? Education is not about truth. It is about you.