I’m feeling mopey and nostalgic today — maybe it’s the weather. Whenever it rains, I start getting the warm fuzzies about going back to school. I think I need to talk myself down. I’m thinking that if there was a way to pay for it, I probably would go back to school. Get another degree in lord knows what. At least if someone dropped a pile of cash on me this morning. Tomorrow, I’ll probably feel differently about it. It’s a passing fancy, I know.
Can’t afford to go back to school. Haven’t paid-off my loans from my last round of school. And it’s not like anyone is throwing around free college scholarships in my direction. But I’m thinking that the last time I had a real conversation about anything that mattered, it was on a college campus. Truthfully, though, I don’t think it’s school that I miss so much as the idea of school. The idea of knowlege. Being around books. Aside from the wireless hotspot, I think that’s why I spend so much time in the public library. Just to feel like I’m in a temple of knowledge because books are the closest thing I have to an actual religion. I felt like I mattered when I was in school. I felt like a bright fellow who was appreciated for being a bright fellow. And there was all those books!
But then I remember the other part about school. I remember that I’ve always had a love/hate relationship with school. I remember times when I felt absolutely stiffled in that academic environment. I recall how isolated and out of place I always felt in school. I remember that I love learning, but I hate classrooms. I get restless in a class room. I’m not even sure it’s possible to learn in a classroom.
There — my passing fancy has passed.
Catana | 09-Jan-09 at 9:47 am | Permalink
I thought the move from high school to college was going to be my entrance into a temple of learning. It wasn’t. Kept trying to find the temple as I grew older and finally realized that it didn’t exist. Books yes, school no.
John Erianne | 09-Jan-09 at 3:02 pm | Permalink
I think my problem with our education system is that there is no room for free thought, real individuality. The system keeps turning out mediocre students who can’t think for themselves because that’s what the system wants — a bunch of braindead zombie consumers who wouldn’t know a creative thought if it dropped out of the sky and landed smack on their heads. The system doesn’t allow itself to be challenged, so the students are never themselves challenged and no real learning ever takes place.
Were I to design a new system, there’d be less time spent in a classroom and classes would be more like an open forum with Socratic-style dialogue instead of a single teacher droning on and on. There would be more one-on-one mentoring, more time for independent study and no standardized testing. Oral and essay exams only and lots and lots of reading and writing.