To speak of our education system today, is to speak of a
multiverse where the experience of attending school can vastly differ from
person to person, even among those who attended the same one. This isn’t
totally surprising as people experience many of the same things in different
ways. Take for example a work of art, one person may fail to see past the
denotation of such a thing but for someone else a world of endless
possibilities may be opened up. Unfortunately I don’t buy the idea that the
differing experiences of people in education is in anyway related to perception
and someone’s own unique way of looking at the world. After some deep thought
about my own experiences of school, and discussion with a couple of people who
had similar experiences, I have come to wonder if there is a common feature
among those who find the experience pleasant and those who perhaps dreaded a
weekday for thirteen odd years.
‘School is the best time of your life’. This is a phrase
that justifies other phrases such as ‘if I had a penny for every time….’ Due to
the sheer number of times a child will probably hear this phrase uttered by a
parent or older person trying to encourage them to enjoy the experience. I have
no doubt the feeling is genuine among the older generation who remember their
school days fondly, perhaps not because they truly enjoyed it at the time, but
because they didn’t have the weight of responsibility that adult life has
brought them, and also the fact that the whole world lay ahead of them. I for
one never accepted this opinion, and have come to place it alongside other
myths such as; if you are bad Santa Claus won’t come to you and the Tories
favourite: ‘We’re in this together’. It is suffice to say that I consider
school to be something rather different from those who romanticise it.
For me
the classroom was not so much a place of learning, but a place of suppression.
Maybe I have the wrong idea of what education should be like but I like to
think that the school should fit around the pupils and not the other way about.
I believe that to give the impression that authoritative figures deserve
‘natural respect’ as opposed to earning it, is a convenient way to teach young
people that our politicians deserve the same free ticket to gaining obedience.
Maybe again I have the wrong idea but should information given by these
authority figures be accepted without questioning out in wider society? No, so
why should pupils be expected to accept what a teacher says without questioning
them? To challenge a teacher on something was to cross the line in my school.
We got the whole ‘I have a degree in this subject’ lecture as if that was
enough to squash any possibility of the person being wrong.
Critical thinking and questioning things is for me the most
important part of learning. We as people have to be able to make our own minds
up about things and to always be true to our values as individuals and as a
collective humanity. We can’t allow for the media to have us so indoctrinated
with a particular way of thinking that for them it is almost effortless to
influence public opinion and to get people to go along with a particular
agenda. If you stand back and look at what capitalism has created in this
world, you soon realise it is something so unnatural that it has to stop or else
we will cease to be. Boris Johnson and David Cameron might celebrate the
culture of greed and wish for it to be weaved into the school curriculum
somewhere, but if you truly believe that possessions are the defining aspect of
a human being then you clearly have sold your soul for short term vices.
‘Work hard and you’ll get a well-paid job’. Another myth perhaps, given that this so
called meritocracy that we live in see’s investment bankers on seven figure
salaries while someone genuinely useful, like a nurse or an engineer will be
worrying about the rising prices of fuel and food. But put this aside and look
at another reason why this phrase should be discouraged. ‘Well paid’, why is
this the most important aspect of a career? The government have been quick to
encourage people to leave behind the more creative subjects and to look at
something which contributes more directly to the economy. Well firstly the
creative industries bring a lot of money into to this country, and secondly
people should be encouraged to find fulfilment on a spiritual level before they
have to worry about ‘keeping up with the Jones’s’.
School and universities should be places
where society develops its thought and its collective consciousness. Not
somewhere to go so you become more ‘employable’. Why should working class people be told to
make themselves more useful to the policy makers of society? Education seems to
be just that, a place where the workers go to be taught how to be workers. A
lack of decision making in the classroom leads to a lack of decision making in
the workplace. I would encourage people to study what interests them and to
question what they learn. I would encourage people to believe in the power they
have in their hands to bring about change in society. It seems however the
education system would encourage people to passively accept certain norms and
values and to learn through repetition and retention of meaningless information
which has not been questioned. It is a sad fact today that the education system
of our country encourages a heteronomous society and promotes homogeneity over
diversity of the individual, the reasons for this may lie somewhere in the fact
that those who have their hands on the levers of power require things to remain
as they are and for true human nature and freedom to be oppressed as this is
the only way to maintain this pathological ideology of capitalism. If you step
outside the rules created to maintain the status quo you will be marginalised
and the ‘best time of your life’ may not quite live up to its billing. This is
why some of us hated school, not because we are lazy, stupid, hard to motivate
or mentally ill, but because we refuse to get in line and conform to the values
that would see us willingly participate in a criminal ideology.
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