People who make laws should have fresh first-person experience of what life is like for those concerned by those laws. Especially children. How much do pot-bellied bespectacled old men with a bad back remember how it felt to be small and powerless? How it felt to be in school at the mercy of bored teachers who hated their job, their life and the likes of you? As it happens I got a quick taste of how awful it is to sit through a boring lesson and write an assignment on something you didn’t understand or cared for.
I am currently enrolled in an online course on analytical psychology. Of my own choice as a (more or less) responsible adult. Being back to school is exciting, it makes you feel young again, so I enjoy saying things like “I have a class this Saturday” or “I need to do my homework”. Or at least I did until one of the teachers I was looking forward to listening to turned out to be a complete bore and I didn’t understand one word of what he was saying. This pompous guy lost me from the recorded presentation, but I was still supposed to attend a live event on Zoom. However, as an adult I have a privilege school-age children don’t have. I made myself invisible by turning my camera off and opening another window to play a game for 90 minutes. I kept listening and shaking my head from time to time. This guy is nuts. Keep in mind that this was a one-off event. I don’t have to listen to this guy and his stupid theory week after week. Remember that sinking feeling you had waking up on a Tuesday and realizing you had both Geography and Chemistry that day? And prayed to God the teacher won’t check your homework or give you a test? A friend of mine was recently complaining all her children are struggling in Chemistry and it’s so awful their eldest needed a tutor, at $150 per hour. I could commiserate with her as organic chemistry remains a mystery to me to this day. School-children don’t have the luxury of saying “F**k this! I am not going to another chemistry lesson ever again”.
After successfully ignoring the live event I still had to do my homework. Not that I was worried about it. I don’t think anyone from the faculty reads what we post on the discussions forum. Yet the whole idea made me quite depressed. Really bummed me. I spent the past few days going through one of the teacher’s books and listened to a few podcasts, all in the hope I might get his point. Instead I became more and more convinced he doesn’t have a point. Yesterday I went for a walk in my neighborhood but I couldn’t shake this feeling of dread. When I came back I accessed the discussion forum, went over the topics again and found one question that didn’t require talking about the teacher’s dubious theory. I managed to write a few hundred words, comment on other two posts as required and by dinner time I was done with it. Again, school kids cannot know the relief of being done with a subject they’re not interested in because the guys who make the laws see it fit that anyone should know the chemical formula of vinegar. Can you draw the formula of vinegar?
Unfortunately, all it takes is a few boring or downright mean teachers and a couple of subjects you’re not interested in to kill the joy of education in children. Nature endows children with an eager mind but our current school system quickly cures them of it. It also kills in the bud any notion that they may be born free or have the right to make their own choices. As an adult, I made a choice to enroll in this course and I can drop out any time I want. Not that I will as I’m really interested… and the next teacher writes books I can understand! For me this was a brief experience that got me annoyed for a couple of days. Imagine dealing with this sort of thing day after day for 12 bloody years! Even worse than the misery of trying to cram useless things into your head, worse than losing any idea of being in control of your life is the conviction most people have when finally graduating. They consider themselves educated people! Most people equate education with going to school for a number of years so they won’t have to learn anything else in their life. After such a mind-numbing experience in their formative years can you really blame them?
No wonder Alice Cooper usually ends his shows with School's Out. Virtually anyone in the crowd is ecstatic when he announces "School's out COMPLETELY!" (God, I want to go to another concert!)
Thanks for reading!
I believe this is the very point of public education, and much of private education too. Our children are systematically being turned into law abiding zombies. The conditions were very bad before the covid con, but during that utter nonsense, the conditions got even more similar to the conditions a prisoner experiences: no talking, no touching, no sharing, walk in lines, and above all, no complaining about any abuse from your zombie teachers. The only thing they learn in school is how to mindlessly regurgitate useless and often false information, and to obey orders, no matter how unjust those orders are.
Get your kids out of schools!
Thank you for your thoughts on this important topic!!!
#familyprotection
Oh, God, I remember the photos with kids forced to stay far from each other in the schoolyard, each one in his little circle drawn on the pavement. Looked more like inmates getting their daily dose of fresh air, but then again public schools are prisons people send their children voluntarily to.
Oh my I forgot about the masks! And the terrible trauma. What a fiasco.
So what made you want to take a psychology course? I begin to think that, of all our medical specialists, those in the mental health field have done the most damage to us all.
Yes, I feel the same about those who push drugs down their patients' throat nowadays. As for me, I've always been interested in psychology, even considered studying it back in the day. I just happened to stumble upon Jung last year and decided to finally read him. I was fascinated because his work and that of his followers is dedicated to fixing people the old way and help them understand what's troubling them. Needless to say, his views aren't very popular today and aren't taught in schools. I've also read book by trauma experts who remember the excitement when some of the pills currently abused came on the market... and how they realized the damage they were causing.
I loved school just because it wasn't home, but I can safely say that in 15 years of full-time education, I learned nothing that was of any use to me whatsoever. My father used to say we should teach kids to read and write and then let them pursue what they find interesting.
I liked school, too, but things are different now than they were when I was school aged. My kids were nothing but stressed out in school, then again at home doing their worthless homework. I would most definitely have homeschooled them had I known more. I like your father's advice. How many kids are forced to "learn" to read before they are ready to read at all? Those kids are lucky if they ever learn a darn thing.
I can't imagine what it's like to be at school these days We may have wasted countless hours memorising lists of countries, many of which no longer exist, together with their capitals and the size of their populations, all stuff subject to change, but the gender and race theory they're indoctrinating kids with now is not only nonsensical but positively dangerous.
Yeah, I can't say I hated school because I didn't care much about grades, although, looking back, some experiences were actually traumatic.
I like your father's advice, although I'd say it's enough to teach a kid the alphabet and provide him with books. You can try to teach him reading but he will get the trick only when his mind is ready for it. As for writing, my son was typing like a pro before he mastered handwriting. On his own. At one point he asked for a calligraphy set to improve his handwriting. Again, of his own free will.
You're absolutely right! I was lucky enough that my parents ran a bookshop and without any instruction at all, I could read before I started school.
That is indeed lucky... My daughter would kill to have a whole bookshop at her disposal :)
I turned off cable in 2000, and my kids became avid readers because that was the best entertainment available to them. I didn't manage to cram the Harvard 5 foot bookshelf down their throats, but they did read books they found interesting. That was before libraries became weaponized in the indoctrination wars and the advent of tranny story time, so libraries were still useful sources of reading material.
Today online sources are really all that's left.
My philosophy as a parent has always been buy whatever book the kid wants. No questions asked. This is how they both developed a taste for reading.
I think schools make kids believe that learning is hard and boring. Then they grow up with a disproportionate idea of how hard it is to learn certain things. It is unfortunate because children are natural learners.
Certainly. Part of the problem is that children are forced to learn things they have no inclination or interest for and get good grades if possible. This ruins the whole experience of schooling. There are some (very few) unschooling 'schools' were children are allowed to study whatever they want or nothing at all. It's been shown that children will eventually find what speaks to them and learn, hopefully something they'll actually use later in life.
Yes, I agree. I think they fill children's heads with a lot of uninteresting and unnecessary information. And they are too young to handle it. I think they are not so much interested in the children learning as they are in getting them used to a working environment.
In a sense I think the focus is more on getting good grades and/or getting a degree, rather than truly learning. And then, contradictorily, there is the fallacy that only those who studied in formal institutions are the ones who know.
I think that the problems of the educational system, for those who propose to count them, are far too many.
I consistently dropped my GPA by forthrightly stating such arguments in my coursework and pointing out when the curriculum was insuperable. This was why I eventually have been unable to comply with institutionalization, because I will not parrot drivel trickling down through the hierarchy like corporate drones will, and this gets me booted sooner or later, while keeping me miserable while I hang on. This is why I'm an autodidact, and didn't last long in government employment when I managed to get hired on despite my lack of a degree.
I managed to hang on through High School by ignoring that kind of crap and just reading scifi books during classes I couldn't sleep through. I read the entire scifi section in the school library by graduation, and still barely made it. However, by that gambit I preserved my intellectual curiosity from the mind-numbing assault of social science lectures, and became able to self educate as need arose. This is why I unschooled my kids by putting hammers in their hands on construction jobs, because by that means they learned why things are done the way they are, and how to actively learn to get things done, which has served them well ever since.
Thanks!
No way you could have read a book in my school... I guess the rooms were too small. But I used to do that in college, during classes I found boring.
I would prop up my textbook on the desk, and hide the pulp fiction behind it from the teacher. The textbook wouldn't hide me when I was sleepy, however.
I always managed to get good grades but had a love/hate relationship with school. Public schools here in America, and even a lot of universities, don't challenge the students nearly enough and I found myself bored more often than not. As an adult I've loved self-directed learning. I've taken some in-class courses but mostly have continued my education online. The Masterclass series of courses have been especially helpful to me. I remember those old days though. I often felt more like an inmate than I did a student. Except for a few really exceptional teachers my entire K-12 education was such a huge waste of time.
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