What a spring. I'm sitting here enjoying another Al Gore moment. It's cold outside, it doesn't stop raining, and I think the last time I was really warm was sometime in the beginning of last August. I'm quite sure that one of these days we'll all find out that Gore recently invested in a raincoat and umbrella company and is considering manufacturing waders. Then, next year, when he starts promoting global cooling, he'll move on to selling heaters, sweaters, scarves and mittens.
Now, to move on. In reviewing the last few of my blogs, I realized how much disrespect I'd displayed regarding our educational system. While that certainly wasn't news to me, and I was surely aware of my feelings, I'd never put those thoughts in writing before. Most often, my comments were limited to conversations here and there or throwaway lines about the disastrous state of education in the U.S.
But, now that I've gone back to review my own writings and re-read the same barrage of negativism about education that I'd thrown at my readers, I thought perhaps I ought to explain in more depth where my conclusions came from.
To begin with, I'm one of those people that has trouble sitting and listening to anyone or anything, almost regardless of the subject. So, the basic premise of being lectured to doesn't work for me in the first place. And, to combat verbal assaults of my comfort zone, I learned early on how to tune them out. Consequently, classroom environments are alien places to me, and I'd do almost anything to escape, physically or otherwise. So, if I'm not able to actually flee the room where I'm held captive by lecturers, I've trained my brain to go elsewhere by itself.
Next on the list is subject matter. I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in anything scientific or chemical, and care very little about math. Geography, history and sociology don't do much for me either. Reading is fine, so long as I like the subject, but the interest I have in writing came much later in my life. I have no talent at all for music, or the arts and in fact am clinically tone deaf. Thus, for most of the curricula I've been exposed to in most of my dealings with schools, the only things really attractive to me were recess and after class sports.
Now, one would think, why would someone like myself be so negative about education and educators when from what I've written above, the obvious problem here is me? I'm the one who rejects the subject matter and tunes out those whom try to help me, while they're all trying their best to assist. It seems I've gotten the picture upside down and pointed the finger of blame in the wrong direction completely. I really should apologize to all of those in education that I've belittled and disrespected all these years. And I would...except.
If I didn't fit the mold educators prepared in which to shape my little mind, did they have any obligation to find out why? Actually, one or two did along the way in my case, and when they learned my problems they shrugged, happy to know it wasn't their fault and continued on to deal with me as they had in the past. If I didn't fit, so be it as far as they were concerned, though they did take time to tsk tsk as they gave me an "F".
In later school years I learned how to squirm through the system by just enough margin to survive, but did that because of my family's desire to keep me in school, never for my own objectives. And that says something, too. Because my disinterest was obvious to any educator who ever "taught" me. Yet, their conclusion always was, I had some kind of problem, because it certainly couldn't have been them. And, in this way, the educational system failed for me over, and over, and over again. So much so, in fact, that here I am all these years later and still can't point to a single thing the "system" ever did to help me.
Yet, I'm not an illiterate, have decent verbal and communication skills and, if pressed, can even write on occasion. Beyond that, I've learned enough to go out and get jobs and even become an officer of more than one public corporation. So, how did that happen? The answer is simple. I educated myself. I selectively read and learned as much as I could about things that mattered to me, instead of the curricula that some ditsy educators thought to be important. What's more, what they tried to teach me was fundamental and boring but was necessary to them, because if the subject matter had any real depth or required any intellectualization, they wouldn't have been able to comprehend it themselves.
Thus, in the end I think the way it worked out was best for us all. The teachers are still right where they belong, mired in their own worthless academia. And I went out into the real world to compete, unfettered by their limited knowledge. For had I really listened to their words and direction, I would have jumped off the dock to try to swim in the world of competition while holding a very large anchor.
That's it for today folks.
Adios
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