I may be incorrect, misinformed, or perhaps lacking in information period. However, I present you with thoughts, not facts. Therefore I shall ramble, and if you so choose you may partake of my rambling. Perhaps someday it will matter. Then again, maybe not; but all the same...
The topic of education has surfaced in several conversations of which I have been a part recently. Personally...I feel that due to the education system, learning has virtually lost its value. We do not teach in order to enrich a young mind. We do not teach in order to build on the talents and strengths of each individual child. We do not teach to quench a thirst for knowledge. We teach to fulfill requirements and meet standard test scores. We teach to prepare for the next level, and the next, and the next, until finally the peak of Mt. Everest is reached, which is in essence a high paying job. Status. Success. Money. Such glory, such triumph...
Philosophers and great men of knowledge in the days of old used to teach tirelessly to students who themselves never tired of learning. They did not learn in order to obtain a college degree so that they might make money and purchase a ridiculously expensive car. They filled their minds and souls with knowledge so that they might better understand themselves and the world around them. Learning was about discovery. Knowledge built upon knowledge for the purpose of building upon knowledge. Knowledge was the means and the end, a reward in itself. Today we have a system that too builds upon itself, but knowledge is only the means to an end.
Maybe I just have something against systems. Maybe it sickens me that although systems work, they work while life quietly passes by. Maybe it sickens me that we measure success by the great ruler of society...while some of us are far better off using the metric system, and still others prefer to measure in hands and feet. Knowledge should sprout and grow like something organic. Our education system is merely a cold factory of stainless steel and quality inspection stickers. No flower could ever hope to bloom in such a place.
I wish learning could be like planting a pumpkin seed. Of course the seed needs soil, water, sunlight, and love. Then it sprouts, and the little leaves stretch into the sunlight as the vine unfolds this way and that way, growing where it pleases. Soon enough the vine will bear pumpkins, and the pumpkins will ripen and some will be made pies while others will be used to pretty up porches. But America the gardener would never dream of planting something so unruly. To give even a tiny seed the means to grow and bloom and bear fruit where it pleases would be unthinkable.
Instead, potatoes will be planted in neat little rows. Potatoes aren't all that exciting but they're not entirely useless either. More importantly, potatoes will grow where planted. Potatoes are predictable. Potatoes will provide food, and none will be wasted as decorations on a doorstep. And so, our knowledge is obtained in little rows under the dirt until finally our children graduate college and congratulations, you have yourself another stainless-steel-factory-made-quality inspected bag of lays potato chips.
Of course our society functions due to systems. Our nation has thrived due to systems. Our nation is the greatest on earth due to systems...oh wait, no...we are made to think that our nation is the greatest on earth thanks to systems. How will we function when our systems begin to fail? How will we see that our systems are already failing when we are still functioning blindly within a system? Yet somehow I believe there is hope.
I've heard speakers say to large groups of my peers and me in other words that they believe in us. Honestly, I always thought it was a way of trying to salvage whatever good might be left in such a screwed up generation of kids, but I'm beginning to see that maybe they were simply enlightened. Recently the enlightenment has somehow begun to stir in others my age everywhere and it seems as though the light from the little bulb shining above their heads has allowed me to see that there was a bulb above mine just waiting to be illuminated too.
These little bulbs signify not only a realization of mistakes made in the past; they shed light on realities of the present and possible catastrophes of the future. They allow us to see the flaws in the ways that generations before us so narrowly viewed the world. They allow us to see the flaws in expectations of perfection, and the beauty in the unexpected. They allow us to see that normal simply does not exist and that without a standard of normalcy, craziness holds no ground either. It is only life. Life at its best.
