My Thoughts on Education.
“A good head and good heart are always a formidable combination. But when you add to that a literate tongue or pen, then you have something very special.”
~Nelson Mandela
My love for education arose from the fact that when at school I could somehow forget about everything going wrong in my life.
From a young age most of my life was spent trying to escape something, you can say I was a very curious and adventurous kid, and that somehow always led to me being in some sticky situations.
People don't like that which they don't understand, sadly they try to stop the development of that which surpasses their understanding thinking they know best.....
My young mind was able to find peace where many thought there was none, my classmates thought of school as more of a prison, while to me that was where I felt more at ease than at home. Many were okay back at their homes, but for me heading home always had me in an anxious state.
Pouring through any reading material was my best way of passing time, my young mind loved, it still does, though not so young anymore, being lost in new realms, and just exploring and seeing myself in those other worlds away from my problems.
And so excelling to me was rather easy without even putting in the effort, I just always had too much content in my head, and would look for more time to just get lost in a new novel or some science journal even though understanding of some content was limited.
With the state of affairs back at home never improving, I knew that by only being well educated could be able to escape it one day, and make something out of myself.
Despite my grandmother not fully comprehending the effects of what I was going through she always encouraged me to keep at it, to always strive to be the improve and make a name for myself, in a world where many never really cared, she was and is always there for me.
“Poverty must not be a bar to learning and learning must offer an escape from poverty.”
~Lyndon B. Johnson
Through school and self education I was able to keep my head preoccupied with many interesting thoughts to the point of even having conversations with myself when alone, which was pretty much all the time.
Simply put I credit where I am to education, without it I am not sure where I would really be. Without education I would not know how to maintain a level head with all going on.
It was not always a walk in the park though, I always had some issues with some of the ways of education being employed, always maintained a rebellious character and am sure many teachers resented that about me because somehow I could not always toe the line like the rest, they entertained me as a result of my grades, they were never excellent but that was a result of lack of extra effort on my part, something I struggle with even currently.
But.....
Despite my praise for school and appreciation for what education has done for me, there are quite many flaws with the system, education itself I have no problem with but rather how it is taught, the system greatly contributes to the most, and that is teaching of herd morality, or rather group thinking.
Unfortunately many schools never teach students to be autonomous but rather to always be obedient and follow the rules and regulations, do what one is always told, without questions, and that lack of questions feels me with disappointment.
Yeah the elders have been here longer than us the young, but that doesn't guarantee that all their policies are right, and somehow society thinks otherwise. society doesn't like independent thinkers but rather sheep who will gladly follow their leader even off a cliff just because the leader jumped.
“The surest way to corrupt a youth is to instruct him to hold in higher esteem those who think alike than those who think differently.”
~Friedrich Nietzsche
And just like that many of those in schools come out not knowing how to think, but rather what to think, already decided for them by the facilitators of wherever they got their education from, this is only leading to mass production of people who can't really think for themselves, many ending up with much self hatred for they have that feeling that there is so much more but their minds have been conditioned to think otherwise, and hence the subconscious not being at peace ensures a lifetime of agony despite how one is successful according to societal metrics.
It should be better though...
“Ideally, what should be said to every child, repeatedly, throughout his or her school life is something like this: 'You are in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We are sorry, but it is the best we can do. What you are being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and the choices of this particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. You are being taught by people who have been able to accommodate themselves to a regime of thought laid down by their predecessors. It is a self-perpetuating system. Those of you who are more robust and individual than others will be encouraged to leave and find ways of educating yourself — educating your own judgements. Those that stay must remember, always, and all the time, that they are being moulded and patterned to fit into the narrow and particular needs of this particular society.”
~Doris Lessing
Treat people as if they were what they ought to be, and you help them become what they are capable of becoming.
~Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
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