Everything You Can Do I Can Do Better
InSITE reporter Tanya Davison says school is a waste of time, why should you limit your education to just what THEY want you to learn?
I hate to be the one that said it to you first, but I say with nearing a 100% certainty that you wasted your time with state schooling.
For one thing, let’s put it this way, there are new things to learn every single day. It’s almost impossible to
quantify how much knowledge there is in this world. I ask you just to try for the benefit of this article to think of every scientific discovery, event in the economy, alteration in linguistics, political decision, historical discovery, and so on in the entire world that has happened this week. The idea that a few individuals can select a minute percentage of what there is to study and then force all children regardless of their interests or area of potential to collectively learn - it is bizarre if not a little cruel. Why would these few know better about what an individual should learn than the individual themselves?
However, there is a far more fundamental flaw with the national curriculum. People, if I dare refer to children as such a thing, are not aloud to seek out their passions and discover their talents while having freedom and fun prevail in their early years when such things are of most importance and school is also slow.
By its very nature as a static institute, things take decades longer then they should to change, and change is only ever slight. Not only does this apply to school culture, but sadly it applies to the national curriculum as well. After all because of how many new things there are to learn, and how fast things actually become superseded, it must be near impossible for the handful of people who decide on the school curriculum to make the appropriate alterations, and then
prepare the teachers in time.
In part because of this, and in part because of their pursuit to simplify knowledge, I think that not even everything taught in school is even true. Nearly all of A-level chemistry is outdated, over-simplified, or redundant. Another great example is that there is no force of gravity; the theory was outdated around 70 years ago by Einstein, yet it’s still taught in school. In fact the most up to date physics is just not taught in school full stop. History is taught often deliberately taken out of the context that gives it its significance. For example, World War 2 is taught to include as little politics as possible.
Let’s face it the majority of what is taught in even the best schools in the country is not true, useless, or boring. I e-mailed the people involved in the National Curriculum to ask them to justify this, make an argument for themselves in their own words, but they never responded.
If we think about it carefully, we all enjoy learning. Everyone is proud they know something, whether it is the exact history of the industrial revolution or each Poke’mon character’s name. The process of learning can be liberating, like cleaning a dirty window that looks out towards a beautiful view. It’s being woken up at 7 o’clock in the morning and being forced to attend dreary classes behind spiked gates while being yelled at arbitrarily by adults who barely consider you human that really sucks, not learning. Take away that environment and people are much more willing to learn, especially if it's what they want when they want.
As for the argument that people need to learn a few essential things to get by in life, like reading and using a computer, well people will pick these things up by themselves if they are actually essential, probably even without meaning to. This will happen because such skills are easy to pick-up and it is either that or limit yourself from things you’ll enjoy, like the thrill of reading a good book, talking to friends who live miles away as efficiently and cheaply as possible, or spending your pocket money.
Finally, this might all be true, but what about life skills? Yes, you can have access to a social life and know how to function in the world without school. In fact, it’s easier to make friends with people you’ll enjoy the company of. Those who’ll actually supply you with the things you require like emotional support, not just because you have to befriend the first person you find out of a selection of a couple of dozen because otherwise you’ll have no friends. Out of school you learn how to communicate with people of an unlimited age and culture, which prevails in adult life too. For example at work you need to continue socializing with people of different ages, with different incomes and from different backgrounds.
Anyway, so yeah, this school thing is pretty awful. But there’s still hope! Even if you are or were at school, Autodidactism (self-pursued education) begins and ends only when life starts and stops. There’s no limit to education which is good, right? Who would want to limit education?
