All in all you're just another brick in the wall.
I hate school. I hate the way the school system works.
Why do we insist on schooling young people? Well, that's obvious, isn't it? To educate them about the world around them. To teach them about life, about the world, about how things work. To prepare them for life as an adult.
That might be fair enough, in the beginning. You enter nursery. You learn to interact with other children and with adults. You learn about manners, and about fairness. You're introduced to all kinds of exciting new ideas and activities. You have fun.
I love little children. They're so full of life, so full of that childish curiosity. They want to explore and learn about every single thing they come into contact with. Of course, as we get older, everything stops being new and exciting. We've seen it before. Maybe, though, that's not all there is too it. I know I still get excited over little things. I know that the times when I'm actually in sight of that elusive thing called "happiness" are when things are at their simplest. The sun. Laughing. New places.
As we get older, further through the school system, they take the "life" part out of it. It becomes less and less about life, about living, about enjoying living, and more and more about fitting in all the "necessary" things. It becomes stressful, not just for the pupils, but for the teachers. The teachers have got too many things they're supposed to get done in too little time, and the pupils are faced with the impossible task of keeping up with what the teacher doesn't even have time for. Being the daughter of two teachers, albeit two primary school teachers, I'm horribly aware of the other side to things.
There are too many thing to be taught and learned in every school year, in every term, even in every day. Too many things to be covered that there just isn't the time for. You'd need the perfect class to get it all done. The perfect class, however, doesn't exist. There will always be the pupils who are intelligent and get all their work done before everyone else. There will always be the pupils who try their hardest but are just slower and not as bright as the rest of the class. There will always be those bright pupils who respond to their lack of stimulation by acting up, and there will always be those slower pupils who express their frustration at being slower by acting up. There will always be children who come from troubled homes. There will always be children with parents who are pushy, overbearing and expect the very best for their little darlings, and their will always be children whose parents send them to school each day without any breakfast.
And, of course, each child is supposed to be dealt with in a certain way. And, of course, each teacher has about thirty children to teach and therefore can't devote their attention to each child individually. And so, everyone is stressed. No one gets what they need and deserve out of it.
Then you get to my age, from younger than I am now to basically the end of the education system, and suddenly, the life part seems to have disappeared. My schooling now isn't about teaching me to appreciate life. It's not about encouraging me to enjoy everything around me or responding to my curiosity. It's about exams. They're about how much of a certain load of information from an entire year I can remember and write onto a piece of paper in an hour or two. That's not life.
I was sat at the table just now, struggling to fix my attention on psychology revision, when I looked outside and saw the sun. The thought occurred to me that I would like to just go ad sit in it. Maybe take a drink, maybe take a book, maybe take my ipod. Maybe sit for just ten minutes, maybe stay for hours. That's life. Being able to enjoy what's around us. why can't school be about that? What does a certificate of education in some subject really tell you about someone?
And, of course, after this, I want to go to university. Why? Because it's what's expected. It's what people do. Therefore, it's what I want to do. Because if I don't do that, then I'll feel inadequate. A failure. It's a sort of don't-want-to-miss-out thing. Don't get me wrong, I genuinely want to continue learning French. But could I do that just as well by going to live in France for a while? Yes, probably. And would I be happier doing it that way? Well, I'd certainly be less stressed. But I wouldn't have that magic degree at the end, and it seems that things like that are important in life.
Of course there are valuable skills that come from schooling. It's important that we know how to focus, how to pay attention when it's required, how to respect other people, how to be considerate of those around us, how to follow rules, etc. The list goes on. Unfortunately, school doesn't always teach that effectively. It can't, not with everything else. And there are an awful lot of adults out there that don't have those skills.
After uni, then I'll go and get a job, apparently. Most likely, a job that isn't really needed. That isn't actually helping anyone or sorting society out.
I guess it's not the schooling system I hate. I guess it's just the whole fucking society.
I'm tired of typing now. I'm tired of the whole thing. Sorry for the poorly structured rant.
Why do we insist on schooling young people? Well, that's obvious, isn't it? To educate them about the world around them. To teach them about life, about the world, about how things work. To prepare them for life as an adult.
That might be fair enough, in the beginning. You enter nursery. You learn to interact with other children and with adults. You learn about manners, and about fairness. You're introduced to all kinds of exciting new ideas and activities. You have fun.
I love little children. They're so full of life, so full of that childish curiosity. They want to explore and learn about every single thing they come into contact with. Of course, as we get older, everything stops being new and exciting. We've seen it before. Maybe, though, that's not all there is too it. I know I still get excited over little things. I know that the times when I'm actually in sight of that elusive thing called "happiness" are when things are at their simplest. The sun. Laughing. New places.
As we get older, further through the school system, they take the "life" part out of it. It becomes less and less about life, about living, about enjoying living, and more and more about fitting in all the "necessary" things. It becomes stressful, not just for the pupils, but for the teachers. The teachers have got too many things they're supposed to get done in too little time, and the pupils are faced with the impossible task of keeping up with what the teacher doesn't even have time for. Being the daughter of two teachers, albeit two primary school teachers, I'm horribly aware of the other side to things.
There are too many thing to be taught and learned in every school year, in every term, even in every day. Too many things to be covered that there just isn't the time for. You'd need the perfect class to get it all done. The perfect class, however, doesn't exist. There will always be the pupils who are intelligent and get all their work done before everyone else. There will always be the pupils who try their hardest but are just slower and not as bright as the rest of the class. There will always be those bright pupils who respond to their lack of stimulation by acting up, and there will always be those slower pupils who express their frustration at being slower by acting up. There will always be children who come from troubled homes. There will always be children with parents who are pushy, overbearing and expect the very best for their little darlings, and their will always be children whose parents send them to school each day without any breakfast.
And, of course, each child is supposed to be dealt with in a certain way. And, of course, each teacher has about thirty children to teach and therefore can't devote their attention to each child individually. And so, everyone is stressed. No one gets what they need and deserve out of it.
Then you get to my age, from younger than I am now to basically the end of the education system, and suddenly, the life part seems to have disappeared. My schooling now isn't about teaching me to appreciate life. It's not about encouraging me to enjoy everything around me or responding to my curiosity. It's about exams. They're about how much of a certain load of information from an entire year I can remember and write onto a piece of paper in an hour or two. That's not life.
I was sat at the table just now, struggling to fix my attention on psychology revision, when I looked outside and saw the sun. The thought occurred to me that I would like to just go ad sit in it. Maybe take a drink, maybe take a book, maybe take my ipod. Maybe sit for just ten minutes, maybe stay for hours. That's life. Being able to enjoy what's around us. why can't school be about that? What does a certificate of education in some subject really tell you about someone?
And, of course, after this, I want to go to university. Why? Because it's what's expected. It's what people do. Therefore, it's what I want to do. Because if I don't do that, then I'll feel inadequate. A failure. It's a sort of don't-want-to-miss-out thing. Don't get me wrong, I genuinely want to continue learning French. But could I do that just as well by going to live in France for a while? Yes, probably. And would I be happier doing it that way? Well, I'd certainly be less stressed. But I wouldn't have that magic degree at the end, and it seems that things like that are important in life.
Of course there are valuable skills that come from schooling. It's important that we know how to focus, how to pay attention when it's required, how to respect other people, how to be considerate of those around us, how to follow rules, etc. The list goes on. Unfortunately, school doesn't always teach that effectively. It can't, not with everything else. And there are an awful lot of adults out there that don't have those skills.
After uni, then I'll go and get a job, apparently. Most likely, a job that isn't really needed. That isn't actually helping anyone or sorting society out.
I guess it's not the schooling system I hate. I guess it's just the whole fucking society.
I'm tired of typing now. I'm tired of the whole thing. Sorry for the poorly structured rant.