school defeates free will and is a waste of life

What would you rather be doing with your time?

climbing, drawing, being outside, enjoying my life instead of spending it in school

Re: school defeates free will and is a waste of life

Schooling is relatively temporary...unless you choose to make it into a career. Half your life, eh? Since typical educational runs; even including college can end by the age of 25 (or earlier if you don't keep flunking out and having to repeat courses); you seem to expect your life to end before age 50. In most places with required formal education the schooling ends before age 20 (again, unless you repeatedly fail or are expelled on a regular basis).


Free will gives you the opportunity, once your formal education is completed, to take the ideas and thoughts and information which has been placed in front of you and select what you believe in and what you want to hold onto.

Stop looking at the schooling as being a waste, nothing is a waste. You learn something from every experience. Even the fact that you are not happy with the rules which the school has set in place is a growth experience and not a waste. Your ire, causes you to think, react and question why the rules are there and what purpose they may serve.

What are your plans for supporting yourself once you leave your parent's house? Where will you live and how will you pay for food?

How about the supplies you need to replenish for your climbing and drawing interests, how will you pay for those?

What if you get sick or injured while climbing? Do your plans include being able to pay for medical care?

And, once you're a little older, will you be getting married and having children?

I was able to climb, draw and be outside when I was in school. Maybe I just got lucky.

I think I've learned more on a2K than I ever did in school.

Yeah, and if you were out experiencing things, how would you learn the really important things in life: what those who have lived far longer than you think you will need to know, how to follow rules, how to present your ideas without alienating people, and how to handle the dark and boring times. There is more to life than enjoying yourself, although that is certainly a nice bonus.

PS: School may limit your freedom, but it cannot defeat free will. You can walk out of the classroom at any time - you just have to be willing to accept the consequences. You could become an emancipated minor if you are capable of supporting yourself. If not, you might try looking at things from the perspective of the adults who are providing you with food, clothing, shelter and an education so that you can mature enough to exercise your free will wisely.

I'd still rather be outside enjoying myself than working. <sigh> It sucks being a mature, responsible adult!

I wouldn't go that far, myself, but A2K is definitely a great place to practice various skills one learns in school.

Re: school defeates free will and is a waste of life


If you think school defeats free will, try it with the kinds of jobs you get when you don't have an education.

jespah

For that remark I vote for you as king of this thread. Or at least this (previous) page.

Thank you, dolling, but I'll have to be the Queen.

whoa buddy

In Time magazine december issue of 1999 I found the same picture, only she's holding a model of a ship in one hand and a lit match in the other...

I could swear that apart from those differences it is the same picture. The folds of the dress are the same, as are all other details..

I didn't even notice what she's holding. It looks like flexible tubing of some sort.

Yes it does. Now where could she have gotten ahold of that?

Here, I'm guessing.

Probably. The dimension of tube she's holding cannot be found on that picture, so it is reasonable to assume that she took it

Re: school defeates free will and is a waste of life


You misunderstand the concept of free will.

Well first the reason you should go to school...

You should understand that education (even in a public education system) makes your life better in many ways. I am not claiming that school (either yours or anyone's) is perfect, but it is clear that life with an education is better than life without one... and for teenagers in this society, school is the only good way to get the type of education you need to live a good life.

Look at the lives of people in other countries who don't or can't get the education you are complaining. There are parents and kids who would do anything for the education you are complaining about.

There is a direct link between the education you get from being in school between wealth (whether this is important or not), and health (life expectancy is directly related to education leval), and even happiness (as people measure with scientific polls).

Now free will... hopefully you have access to a good philosophy education somewhere (well you certainly have it here)...

Free will does not mean that you can do whatever you like (e.g. run, skip and climb trees) and avoid things you don't like. People in prison, or even those in Concentration camps have free will-- and writers, including a survivor of the Nazi death camps will tell you that.

Every day I am obligated to do things expected of me by my society, like wear clothes. I am forbidden from doing other things like spitting on people. I still have free will.

Hopefully you will learn more about free will (and other key parts of our cultural knowledge) from school.

Looks like Tigon, or was it Tygon, tubing from back in the lab..







It seems to me that a good education gives you the tools to think and the tools to do research and thereby to make decisions with more freedom than if you were unacquainted with logical process or experienced in observation.

However, a mere rote education is no damn good except for whatever aspects are useful from memorization.

I see it argued from time to time that mere logic is not enough for some learning, but it's not a bad start.

You can waste your whole life wishing you were in some other place.

When you are young, you can't wait to be older...and free.

When you are old, you wish you were young again...and free.

Better to learn to appreciate where you are now (where ever that is), because it only happens once. Unless reincarnation is more than just another pipe dream.