Bret Perkins has taken his sons around the world — without ever leaving the house.
Perkins, the vice president for external and governmental affairs for Comcast Corp., is continuing the intergenerational love of formal and informal education that was instilled into him by his parents. Using the information superhighway – the World Wide Web – Perkins is able to make self-education fun, engrossing and beneficial for his two sons.
“My kids will learn they have to be global. And so, being able to give them that because of where you are. I can’t hop on a train and be in three countries in a day,” said Perkins. “But online I can expose them to all sorts of different readings and maps. I was in Egypt and taught my sons about what I saw there through the Internet — ‘here’s the Pyramid of Giza.’ It’s awesome.”
Through the Internet, Perkins has shown his kids how they can use the powerful, intercontinental medium for much more than video game, sports and cartoons. In fact, even through sports, which his kids love, Perkins was able to show them how they can procure opportunities and slide through open doors that they would not be able to if they didn’t know how to navigate the electronic highway.
“My oldest loves baseball. He’s really into baseball and he’s playing and we go online often. We spend more time learning about opportunities and free clinics that are available that wouldn’t have known about without the Internet. I never played lacrosse, but right now the best thing is lacrosse because they have the highest number of scholarships for the kids that are coming through,” he said, stating that if your goal is to get a free education, then your chances greatly improve if you gain proficiency in lacrosse. “It’s not played in a lot of places. It’s not played in high school. They get a free lacrosse clinic for eight weeks. But we found it online. We stumbled into. If you’re not online the likelihood that you will find this is minuscule.”
