Education
Charles Dickens once wrote in his classic novel Tom Sawyer, that Tom's friend, Huckleberry Finn, would "never let schooling interfere with (his) education".When you actually sit down to think about this, the result can be quite shocking. considering that school is supposed to be a place where we are to learn how to deal with life in the real world, much that we learn there is rather redundant. what can world war II tell us about the future, when we are so caught up in reminding ourselves about the past? why learn about the Earth, when we seem to do nothing but observe the wanton destruction taking place? why study the laws of the physical world, when we cannot explain why the sky is blue? why obsess over the precision of numbers and patterns, when we come up with something like the chaos theory to contradict ourselves? do we blindly accept the status quo, and mug through whatever syllabus the authorities deem fit? what exactly are we learning in schools?
I have a lot more to say about the present education system here, and what i say will most certainly be shared with the majority of the student populace. subjects like project work and Science Practical Assessment (SPA) seem to have very dubious objectives. are we to conjure imaginary meetings just to show the boss we are oh-so-effective in a team when we join the workforce later in our lives? are we allowed to present the board members a project on hang-gliding when the actual aim is budget deficits? is eight times the stress really necessary to prevent a screw-up? why do i feel like some kind of guinea pig? why do we learn that gravitational acceleration is 10 in secondary school, only to realise that it is a lie only in JC? why study physical geography, when the only probable job prospect for the subject is to be a population surveyor for the government? i shall refrain from saying more, because that is not my point.
Some things cannot be taught. there is a very big difference between hearing about something, and actually seeing it in its entirety. you can describe rain to an Arab, as water falling from the sky in tiny droplets, but he will never believe you, unless he witnesses it for himself. he will never understand the calm before the first droplets arrive, few and far apart, never feel the coolness of rain on his dry skin, never hear the pattering of rain on a tarred road, or on a dusty trail, or on cobbled streets, never taste the sweetness of untainted rainwater, bland yet refreshing, never see the grandeur of the relentless assault of wave upon wave of watery footmen, crashing to Earth to join the tiny rivulets of lost besiegers wandering down slopes, never smell the humididity of rain upon grass, green and earthy, never, until he experiences. because there is a difference between an astronomer and an astronaut, a scientist and an engineer, a thinker and a doer.
School cannot account for a great deal of life in the real world. no matter how close the syllabus follows, it will always fall short of its aim, because nothing save the real deal will suffice. what is learnt in schools, in the classroom, cannot, must not, come in the way of learning anything that would aid survival in the outside environment. paper qualifications prove nothing other than how well you memorise facts and figures. a test cannot judge a person's intellect, only his discipline. an exam cannot rank success, nor can it depict cleverness. and i stress cleverness, not smartness. there is a difference there. smartness is how well you can recall and apply facts. cleverness is how well you fare without facts. and trust me when i say that there are not many who can survive without facts.
The saying goes, all roads lead to Rome. school can but only endow upon us one means to an end. what that end is is entirely up to you. what i want is to take the road less travelled, or to create a whole new road, because the common road is too trite for comfort, too restrictive for novelty. let the complacent remain there. who knows, maybe i'll even find a shortcut to wherever i'm headed.
So, what have you learned today?