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Wed 16 Dec, 2009 10:14 pm
I'm beginning to really despise going to school and it's really tough to have any passion for something you absolutely hate. The only reason why i stay in school is for the sake of my parents. I don't want to disappoint them so as of now i'm still playing the game and following the system. Now don't get me wrong on this, i really love to learn and discover. I love to read, watch educational TV, and discuss and learn on the web. Right now i barely have time for anything with school consuming 7 hours of my day and on top of that to even get close to passing i need to put in hours of homework each day. I'm just having a real problem with the educational institution and i don't know what to do.
So as i mentioned before, if not for my parents i would have dropped of school as soon as i could. The thing is i love my parents of course, they only want the best for me. We have much different views on success, values, ect. I really want to make them proud but it's getting harder and harder. I try in school only to keep them from thinking i'm a fuckup. Hopefully i'll get into a good college just so they'll be happy and think i'm successful. I wish only that they saw things my way in terms of the values and ideas of success we hold. I don't want my parents to known as bad parents because of me. Trust me they're ht best parents a kids could have but the truth is i'm not problem, at least the problem as viewed upon by the common ignorant delusional pawn spewing misconceptions every which way.
I believe the system is split up into two parts, the educational aspect and the aspect of practical skills and work ethic. I'm thinking our schools are becoming less and less about true education but more about the technicalities. I could get an A on every test and without doing homework i could fail. The system evaluates your practical "life" skills more than how well your absorbing information.
Childhood used to be about learning everything the hard way and becoming mature through experience, but we are so sheltered now days we don't know how to live in the real world. Here let me break it down mathematically, 7hrs a day+ ideally 3hrs of hmwk. I wake up at 7am and go to bed at 11pm that's 16/24hrs of my life 5/7days of the weeks for 10/12months, that's approximately 40% of my ******* life i'm spending in this shithole. What a waste of my life, i've learned barely any useful information outside the practical skills that my parents can teach me.
There is so much pressure to get good grades now a days i can barely enjoy learning in school. We're fed a generalized curriculum in a small period of time and then expected to regurgitate everything from the lecture. This is no intriguing discussions going on, just teachers following the book and then us, consequently, doing the same.
It really is a shame to have access to learn from some of the most brilliant minds, not only do you need to play the game well but you also need to have a bunch of money. I can't just sit down and have an intellectual discussion with a Harvard professor , i need to spend years and years of my life flawlessly repeating the same generic routine until i can put together a college application worthy of being accepted in this society which is extremely competitive when it comes to so called "high learning". Seriously, it's such a shame only a select amount of us can be taught by quality professors, teach because you love to and you have a desire for sharing your wisdom with others, not for the sole purpose of cash. That is, not to say that there are a few teachers out there who do like such and get paid because that's the only;y way to survive in our world.
The environment in which the learning takes place really is starting to bug me. Learning such a predetermined set of knowledge is not how i'd like to obtain information. If you don't a find a topic interesting, too bad for you, you must impound the necessary facts into your brain or else you fail the course.
I've learned well over half of what i know from learning on my own and not school. If school is just for teaching everyone practical skills then don't try and trick us with it being an institution for gaining knowledge.
I also think being in school from when we are very young and for so much of our life, it really has an impact in our values, decisions, and personality. With all of the rules, regulations, and restrictions, your practically being turned into a mindless zombie which obviously makes us productive and "normal" american that stay out of trouble, follow the law, and only think within a set perimeter. We can barely think for ourselves anymore. I say let us decide what's right and wrong on our own. All this sums up to the school being a disciplinary system for all the kids that are naturally troublesome. We're fed into the machine, we go to college, get a good job, have a lot of cash (Oh yea!), and live happily ever after. Is that all there is to life? Seriously?
Now i have very different value of success and happiness than most people, but it still seems crazy that if one fails at school, one connects that with failing at life. One has nothing to do with the other. Money is not even close to what i value most. I could careless about material objects, i just want to live my life happily and contribute the most i can to society. As i mentioned above, going through school puts us on a path set up by the system to turn us into "productive people". The truth is that we grown so dependant, that it couldn't be any other way. We can't fend for ourself, we feel completely helpless without our laws and police. I don't why i can't just live my life and be happy. Why am i a failure if i say "**** school"? That doesn't mean **** learning whatsoever. Our whole society says money, house, job, =happiness=success but it really doesn't, i'll be living in a box and be happier than anyone who played the system. Personally i believe success is measured through the impact we have on others and out contributions towards society, and nothing else.
Order is so much more important to all us us than life experiences, risk, ect. It's ashame because we are addicted to comfort. The truth is comfort is relative and we're brainwashed into believe order=comfort and conveniently our government provides order for us, how nice. I can have order and just live my life and be through with it, cool huh? Risks are bad of course, play it safe, that's what were always told.
School also seems like a way to take up our time because apparently when we have free time we cause trouble. I can't argue with that but i can say that when humans in general have a lot of free time, we tend to create and actually be more productive than we would normally. I mean look at the renaissance, a period of time which far more and far greater accomplishments took place than those that take place now a days. We need more time to just sit, be bored, think, and enter into a lateral drift where we really can think deeply and in no particular direction.
So many societal influences, false values imposed upon me, i don't buy any of this bullshit. I'll be a freelancer when it comes to knowledge acquisition and if i don't care about money then as long as i know i'm not a failure, it's all good. I'll just laugh at those who have the nice cars and big houses. They think they're happy because they have ****... I'll be happy as long as i have food in my stomach, probably much happy than any of them. Congratulations, you are a success in our system, now you have tons of money, how happy are you? Have you achieved fulfillment in your life?
Help me out here...
Edit: Sorry if it seems like i'm cramming a billion ideas together but my mind is racing with all this frustration at the system and ideas about society. It's good to vent and get it all out there sometimes, thanks for listening.
@Yogi DMT,
sorry to say i totally agree with you.
it is quite possible to succeed even in america in making ends meet without any education-one needs brains and ambition, and you have both. a brother of mine made gobs of money being a 'computer consultant' and never went to school for it. he just told people at companies what kind of computer they needed and what programs etc.
that's just one example.
so as long as you have the innovation, ambition and intelligence to come up with something marketable that gives you pleasure, uses whatever skills you have, and generates enough income to buy the things you want to buy, you will be fine without education. i dont know why your parents wouldnt recognize that in time, once you were on your own and doing fine.
but i guess all i can say for the sake of family is that if they are paying your way now, and you have enough freedom when you are not in school, giving up 7 hours a day isnt a lot for you to do for your parents for a few years. but seeing them put out a lot of money to send you to college and then finding out you dont want to get a job within the career line it prepared you for would be kinda sad...
if you are able to think of what you want to do and if you know what kind of degree would be a plus for you in those lines, you could do that. everyone would be happy, and when you get to college it probably doesnt take as much as 7 hours out of every day, and you could do some constructive things as well and enjoy life more.
actually if you were my kid i would worry that you go to college and get a lot of rotten ideas into your head like those other kids have, maybe decide to become the owner of some huge conglomerate and destroy the environment etc etc...but i never went to college.
probably i am not the one to be giving you advice...
i would be proud if my kid said this:
QUOTE: i just want to live my life happily and contribute the most i can to society.
@Yogi DMT,
Completely agreed. It's an embarresing thing to admit at our age, but when you explain it the way that you just did. Well, that's really cool.
@Yogi DMT,
First off, study what you want to study in college (unless you are in high school). If you want to study engineering, then by all means do so, but if you want to study cultural anthropology, literature, philosophy, or the classics go for it. If your parents foot the bill then by all means do so. We have more of a use for people that love what they study for the sake of studying it than for people that study what they do to get a job.
@Yogi DMT,
Good thread Yogi. It's all about satisfying the status quo. You have the intellectual resources that will allow you to find substance in your life if you don't become too impatient. Don't hold your parents to blame for wanting the best for you if they are the caring parents you proclaim them to be. They know who you are to an extent, and your feelings about the absurdity of our present educational system alarms them is all.
There is much we don't know when it comes to guiding our young. They are born with those programs that will guide their life if we just knew how to allow them to access those programs without filling their minds with crap that only tend to thwart that process and confuse it.
You say a lot and I congratulate you on what you offer. You are a brilliant young individual and you will find your calling, just don't get into too much of a hurry. Speed kills. Always has and always will. I have no idea of what they are teaching in schools these days and even had a hard time when I was in school. Yet there are some things I carried with me that have helped my throughout my life. Things I was meant to learn. It easy to identify these, they stick with you forever.
We are on different ends of a spectrum here. You are so much more fortunate than I to recognize the absurdity of our educational system and because of that perhaps that is your calling. To help and improve it. You seem to have a good grip on it's shortcomings and in that you will find a measure of satisfaction in coming up with those ideas that will improve it.
The gifted man is he that does what comes so natural for him and he is rewarded for those offerings he is allowed to render that aids in the welfare of all. Our young hold our future in their hands and it is a pleasure to observe one so young with the insight you offer. Hang in there Yogi, it will become clearer as you go. :a-ok:
William
@de budding,
de_budding;112030 wrote:The feeling of spending "approximately 40% of my ******* life ... in this shithole" is one that you will find yourself enduring more by simply perusing "food in [your] stomach". The only way you will get food in your stomach and a roof over your head is - you guessed it - by working for it. Now this may mean 'work' in the systematic sense of a job, or a career or what you might call "success in our system
", or it may mean work in the sense of foraging for food and materials, living of the fat of the land, stealing, taking and generally living "sub-system."
Now either way you are going to be working (remember that) and you will likely be working in a 'shithole'... that is unless you push through school so you can earn The Choice.
You are in school - the system - so you can then graduate on to further education and enjoy success in a chosen career, or, so you can develop your vocational skills to a professional level, giving you the best chance in a job. In the UK, if you do well at A-levels you get a larger choice of universities and thus a larger choice of courses and qualities of teaching (whether you like it or not there ARE massive variations in the qualities of universities.) This gives you more choice of advanced study and career. Play your cards right and work hard enough and you will earn the chance to live how you want. Drop out now because you think the system is rotten and old and you give up any chance; you will be working for food in your stomach and convinced more than ever that you are in a shithole.
The system allows you to choose, don't give up that right because you don't agree with it. Channel your negativity into critical and academic energy.
You need to push through school and learn to channel this negative energy in to critically academic energy.
does it work that way in england? maybe yogi can move there?
i think it must not happen in america. if that were so, those with privileges of education would be the happy ones, but they arent. everyone i have known in life...yep, everyone-whether educated or not, hated their job, and just got channeled into one. i think one of the best things in life would be doing for a living something that you truly love-but thinking an education will allow you to do that just doesnt work, at least not in america.
at the same time, staying in school even if it seems boring and frustrating would give a person a sense of tolerance and endurance i suppose that could come in handy later. life has a lot of boring and frustrating in it. also it would be a way of exploring what is available so there wouldnt have to be a rush the minute you are out of high school to get a job and get started.
school doesnt teach you anything, you have to learn it, which you can do with or without school. what school does is give you a degree-and there are plenty of lines of work that you wont get into without that. so you need to know what it is you want to do. think very carefully though, while you have the opportunity. if you pass it up it may never come again.
@Yogi DMT,
Yogi DMT;111983 wrote: I can't just sit down and have an intellectual discussion with a Harvard professor , i need to spend years and years of my life flawlessly repeating the same generic routine until i can put together a college application worthy of being accepted in this society which is extremely competitive when it comes to so called "high learning". .
That is right, you can't. You don't know enough, nor have you considered enough. And maybe, even, you are not smart enough. Isn't that possible? Why would the Harvard professor want to sit down and have an intellectual discussion with you? What have you to teach him, or to challenge him? Home truths.
It is hard to believe that anyone can sympathize with your belief that you are entitled to good things you have not worked for, and do not yet deserve. I suppose it is the sign of these times. The entitlement society.
@kennethamy,
kennethamy;112081 wrote:That is right, you can't. You don't know enough, nor have you considered enough. And maybe, even, you are not smart enough. Isn't that possible? Why would the Harvard professor want to sit down and have an intellectual discussion with you? What have you to teach him, or to challenge him? Home truths.
It is hard to believe that anyone can sympathize with your belief that you are entitled to good things you have not worked for, and do not yet deserve. I suppose it is the sign of these times. The entitlement society.
Have you considered that there is more, and perhaps, more useful knowledge outside of high school? My question to you use is: What has a Harvard professor to learn from some "straight A" guy in high school? I'm pretty sure he's seen those a million times, and knows everything they have to say to him.
I also don't think he's saying he shouldn't have to work for his good things. I believe he's saying that the way that most young people have to work for them these days is bullshit. In which case, I'd completely agree with him.
@Quinn phil,
Quinn;112089 wrote:Have you considered that there is more, and perhaps, more useful knowledge outside of high school? My question to you use is: What has a Harvard professor to learn from some "straight A" guy in high school? I'm pretty sure he's seen those a million times, and knows everything they have to say to him.
I also don't think he's saying he shouldn't have to work for his good things. I believe he's saying that the way that most young people have to work for them these days is bullshit. In which case, I'd completely agree with him.
You mean that the Harvard professor really ought to sit down and have a intellectual discussion with him? And what is this about the "straight A" guy. Did you think I thought that the Harvard professor should sit down and have an intellectual discussion with him?
The only difference is that the "straight A guy" probably wouldn't be so foolish, and egotistical as to think he had any right to expect expect such a thing. Why don't you sit down with a three year old and have an intellectual discussion with him?
It is really hard to credit what you and others from the entitlement society are arguing.
@kennethamy,
kennethamy;112093 wrote:You mean that the Harvard professor really ought to sit down and have a intellectual discussion with him? And what is this about the "straight A" guy. Did you think I thought that the Harvard professor should sit down and have an intellectual discussion with him?
The only difference is that the "straight A guy" probably wouldn't be so foolish, and egotistical as to think he had any right to expect expect such a thing. Why don't you sit down with a three year old and have an intellectual discussion with him?
It is really hard to credit what you and others from the entitlement society are arguing.
Just keep in mind that much of this could be a stage. It's fine for teenagers to rebel, as long as they grow out of it eventually, don't you think?
@Zetherin,
Zetherin;112099 wrote:Just keep in mind that much of this could be a stage. It's fine for teenagers to rebel, as long as they grow out of it eventually, don't you think?
Why is this rebellion? He (and others) actually bellieve that he can sit down on an equal footing with someone who has been highly educated and published in a certain field of knowledge, and have a meaningful discussion with him. And, furthermore, he is entitled to do so. And that all that the professor has done to accomplish his position is worthless.
It is not rebellion. It is ....well never mind. I don't want to violate the rules.
It is a sad reflection of this culture, and the ego-building that has replaced education in this country. It is hard to know whether to laugh or to cry.
@kennethamy,
Yogi, think back 500 years and ask yourself what the a teenager living then would give to have the life you have. This is a golden age compared to the past.
kennethamy wrote:It is a sad reflection of this culture, and the ego-building that has replaced education in this country. It is hard to know whether to laugh or to cry.
People's expectations keep increasing, and they aren't satisfied. But that's what has driven us to this point.
@salima,
salima;112038 wrote:i think it must not happen in america. if that were so, those with privileges of education would be the happy ones, but they arent. everyone i have known in life...yep, everyone-whether educated or not, hated their job, and just got channeled into one.
Then I'm pleased to be your first exception to this assumption. And because most professional programs in the USA require an undergraduate degree first (in contrast to both India and England, actually where in both places you start medical and professional school right out of high school), you have considerably more freedom to change your course in the US.
@Jebediah,
Jebediah;112134 wrote:Yogi, think back 500 years and ask yourself what the a teenager living then would give to have the life you have. This is a golden age compared to the past.
People's expectations keep increasing, and they aren't satisfied. But that's what has driven us to this point.
But the expectation of getting the benefits of achievement without achieving, or even trying to achieve, is simply outrageous. I think that no other generations has had those expectations. As Freud said, the world is not a nursery, but up to this point, people have not thought the world is a nursery. How unreasonable of parents to have any expectations of their children!
@kennethamy,
I see the potential uses of school, as more varied.
1/ to prove to potential employers that you can show up every day for the dull grind.
2/ socializing with kids your own age - probably having less contact with hardened criminals and social misfits.
3/ being entitled to pursue any potential interest in that system, that might spring up. Likely not going to happen in the first couple of years though. More rote learning than ever.
If you need to put huge amounts of money into it, might be better to go straight to writing a code exam for a trade, and get to work as a plumbing inspector or something.
@Zetherin,
Zetherin;112152 wrote:What about #4?
4.) Becoming educated.
Edu-what? .................
@kennethamy,
kennethamy;112147 wrote:But the expectation of getting the benefits of achievement without achieving, or even trying to achieve, is simply outrageous. I think that no other generations has had those expectations. As Freud said, the world is not a nursery, but up to this point, people have not thought the world is a nursery. How unreasonable of parents to have any expectations of their children!
Isn't that the story of buddha, raised in a nursery and shocked when he saw the real world? Well, I don't know enough history. But often things that we single out as a problem of our culture have been singled out by many cultures as "a problem of our culture". Materialism, for example.
It's more common these days because you don't have to be the son of a prince. But it's a negative side effect of a good thing. If you take a kid raised on blu-ray and hdtv and have him watch a vhs on an analogy, he'll complain about it, because he expects better. But having better tv technology is a good thing.
To be clear, I agree with your criticism of Yogi, but not completely with criticizing our generation.
@Zetherin,
Zetherin;112152 wrote:What about #4?
4.) Becoming educated.
That part is covered in "you might find an interest to pursue, and you would then be entitled to follow it". Otherwise, almost any job or series of jobs provides an education as well.
You can read online in your spare time, if that kind of education (university education ) is your real goal - as compared to collecting credits.
Many first year profs will only be presenting examples straight from texts anyway, and you can read it all in much less time at home.
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