Day One
Posted by michael on April 14th, 2006 filed in EducationI begin. Again.
The old blog server was wiped out and the new one is a Wordpress installation. It looks like pretty good software. Dreamhost.com made it easy to install. They set up my MySql database and everything.
Driving into work today, I was thinking about the education of a young man. I guess the thinking was spurred by my concern over the rearing of my 16 year old son, but the thoughts were more general than that.
It has become clear to me that not everyone is suited for the traditional classroom education: Sitting in a chair, hearing teachers spout on and on, testing, following silly rules. I can barely believe that I ever succeeded in such an environment. Those who can’t fit this model–those who can’t learn here–are left behind. “No child left behind” is absolute garbage. Those who can’t be efficiently brought into line will be removed from the system, so they don’t skew the statistics and negatively impact school funding. Target and remove is the unwritten policy.
So we remove them from the system. We force them to search for other systems. We tell them nothing about where they may look for such systems. We set them up for failure.
A human must be educated or they will be a burden. Or they will live as a servant to society. You’ve seen them at service counters, with their signature downcast gazes. Hopelessness. Frustation. Devaluation. How does such a human gain his education? How does such a human make his place in the world? How does such a human realize his worth?
April 15th, 2006 at 4:43 am
I know what you mean when you say you can’t believe you succeeded in that environment of silly rules and sitting in chairs..because I can’t believe it either. For me, I guess I was on auto-pilot just following the program. I remember when the mainstream education auto-pilot shut off for me…it was Calculus II…and I said this is ridiculuous and I don’t know what I am doing anymore or why (it was also hard!). From that moment onward I wasn’t going to play the silly game anymore automatically. Then begins life without auto-pilot…pursuing interests or skills that are marketable that are enjoyable or because you want to.
Post-auto-pilot advice is not so simple. I am reminded of Dustin Hoffman in The Graduate when someone gave him a bit of advice — “Plastics.” As parent, any advice you may believe worthy and offer, such as “Ruby On Rails”..or”learn the LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySql, PHP) stack…will be received in similar manner as “plastics.” It just won’t make sense or strike a resonant chord and will bounce off like a dead cat flung against a wall.
As parent, I see my job to keep the mainstream auto-pilot on for as long as possible on the kids. When the auto-pilot shuts off..then I switch to a supportive role. It takes a good long while..years… post-college or post-high school for one to explore several avenues, backtrack and try another…until one finds himself…or at least becomes established enough to continue the ongoing quest. At least it did for me.
It’s a journey and there is no easy answer.
March 5th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
the insurance companies don’t want you to know…
Information on the life insurance industry…