Here we have a good spoken word modern poem, that starts out complaining about why we have to learn the things we have to in school, and to get the best grades we can. Why I hate school but love education.
I understand the youngster's rant. I made it; my parents made it; my kids make it. Like always this young man confuses learning as much as you can, while you can, for the shear sake of expanding your mind,-- and your choices that you have NO IDEA that you are making for yourselves by the choices you make today,-- with regimented, test oriented, social control, with all its contradictions.
It's not the education, the material we should learn, that is the problem. It is the top down, control freak, rabidly competitive system. At the end, the video concludes that we are not our grades, or our test results. This is profoundly true. But in its ranting and complaining, it gets lost inbetween the whine at the beginning and the truth at the end, because of its beginning in which it blames the adults who have not been taught to know better, and have been beaten down to think that they cannot be smarter than the system.
Here's what I tell my kids, and what I'll tell the self created ignoramuses that follow the herd, and look to be told what to do by their sheople herders:
If you want to escape this system, know more than it does. THINK better than its minions. Understand logic and fallacy, and be able to use them and spot them in all their camouflaged forms.
Learn your grammar and geometry. They teach you how to THINK! Learn your geography. It teaches you empathy for other cultures. Learn your history so you do not repeat the mistakes of your ancestors. Solve for X, because algebra teaches you to think in numbers and words at the same time, and gives you the facility of mind that allows you to order and reorder concepts so you can actually SEE the BOX that created the problem in the first place!
To the extent that we are stupid-willfully, intentionally ignorant-we will get more of the open air prisons and educational insane asylums we have today.
As my Sainted Mother used to say, and still says in the dreams of our family, "DON'T BE STUPID!"
Rant OFF!
I understand the youngster's rant. I made it; my parents made it; my kids make it. Like always this young man confuses learning as much as you can, while you can, for the shear sake of expanding your mind,-- and your choices that you have NO IDEA that you are making for yourselves by the choices you make today,-- with regimented, test oriented, social control, with all its contradictions.
It's not the education, the material we should learn, that is the problem. It is the top down, control freak, rabidly competitive system. At the end, the video concludes that we are not our grades, or our test results. This is profoundly true. But in its ranting and complaining, it gets lost inbetween the whine at the beginning and the truth at the end, because of its beginning in which it blames the adults who have not been taught to know better, and have been beaten down to think that they cannot be smarter than the system.
Here's what I tell my kids, and what I'll tell the self created ignoramuses that follow the herd, and look to be told what to do by their sheople herders:
If you want to escape this system, know more than it does. THINK better than its minions. Understand logic and fallacy, and be able to use them and spot them in all their camouflaged forms.
Learn your grammar and geometry. They teach you how to THINK! Learn your geography. It teaches you empathy for other cultures. Learn your history so you do not repeat the mistakes of your ancestors. Solve for X, because algebra teaches you to think in numbers and words at the same time, and gives you the facility of mind that allows you to order and reorder concepts so you can actually SEE the BOX that created the problem in the first place!
To the extent that we are stupid-willfully, intentionally ignorant-we will get more of the open air prisons and educational insane asylums we have today.
As my Sainted Mother used to say, and still says in the dreams of our family, "DON'T BE STUPID!"
Rant OFF!
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