I can’t honestly say I learned anything useful in school. I did sit through a lot of tedious lessons, where teachers attempted to explain the contents of the textbooks to those who found it difficult, while simultaneously attempting to control the unruly element that weren’t interested, and the unruly element who already knew it. I was in the latter group, for the most part. If I didn’t know it already, I read the textbook during the aforementioned fiascos they called lessons. Where the textbooks left questions to be answered, the teachers dutifully responded with the time-honoured “you don’t need to know that”.
I suppose I did learn how to look after myself in an uncontrolled, vicious and often violent institution, but I’m not aware of any equivalent in adult life other than prison, so I won’t count that since I very much hope I won’t ever find it useful. It certainly wasn’t a bad school, by the standards of the day, and certainly not by today’s standards, but nonetheless I believe I came through it physically unscathed only by some good fortune, and use of my wits. Others weren’t so lucky of course, and while I merely found it mindnumbingly boring, frustrating and irritating, I can remember many poor souls whose school lives must have been an absolute misery.
Since I left (albeit at the earliest possible opportunity) with almost a full set of grade A’s, I had always assumed the education system would have considered this a success story, despite the fact I’ve never needed the qualifications. However, over time, I’ve come to the conclusion that it actually failed very badly in my case – I’d just misunderstood the real intention. I came out of ‘the system’ with my thirst for knowledge and ability to learn and think for myself intact – hardly the ideal worker bee or consumer sheep that the ‘corporate state’ intended.
Anyway, rather than continue my verbose and pompous version of “school is rubbish”, I think I’ll post a few links to things I’ve been reading lately on the subject:
- John Taylor Gatto’s “The Underground History of American Education” – the whole book…
here
- A shorter article by Gatto…
here
- Roger C Shank’s “dangerous idea”…
here
- What is education anyway?…
here
Yes, I really am using this blog to store links I might want to come back to later, rather than using Firefox’s perfectly functional bookmarks. Actually, while I think about it, sooner or later someone who has been subjected to one of my lengthy rants on why I hate blogs and bloggers is going to stumble across this and laugh loudly at the hypocrisy of it all. I still maintain nobody is interested in the random thoughts and nonsense found in most blogs, particularly this one, but I’ve come to realise that writing something that might be read is a good way of focussing your own mind. I suppose I should apologise to those bloggers that cottoned on to that idea before I did, but who the hell is going to read this far anyway? Nonetheless, I can read this myself in a couple of years (or maybe tomorrow) and have a good laugh at myself. That’ll do for me.
