by svizzerams » Thu Jul 15, 2004 7:40 pm
In reading over the various posts I am feeling a bit like off in left field. I went to high school in a very poor school district, we didn't have anything extra. But I got the basics, and my parents had a ton of books laying around the house to supplement my interests as well as the local library. But then I loved school and the possibilities it represented even if it wasn't perfect. I loved university, being a total bookworm (read: no fun) but I was putting myself through and maybe I appreciated it more. I was always a bit mystified by the people around me who drank themselves silly every weekend, showed no discipline toward studying or failed to recognize what was beyond the surface of this particular opportunity.
My education has been my greatest gift to myself. I like my work, but it is simply a means to the things i really want to do with my life. I've been to graduate school...and I want to go back...again. I just like to know "stuff". I think education is what you put into it. I never regarded my brain as an empty vessel that someone else was to passively fill up with knowledge. For me it was the jumping off point to explore more ... on my own with a nudge in the right direction. Its all about choices and attitude.
I know this might shock all you have perhaps percieved me as a raving liberal, but I think schools need more discipline and less individualism - like uniforms to lessen the social discrimination inherent to the environment based on the superficial (and it might be good to have closed campuses, no soft drink machines, and forbid students to drive to the school). Going to school is partly a business like endeavor and should be respected as such - you can express your individualism outside of the classroom environment. Tracking students according to interest and abilities to technical or academic tracts might be useful - however I wouldn't like to see such a rigid tracking as in Germany where kids at a very young age are pigeon holed without taking into account that some people develop academically at different rates.
Joan of Arc went to battle with nothing
but the voices in her head
and a well-sharpened sword ~ Charlotte
...those without swords can still die upon them...
Illegitami non carborundum est