A quick Glance at All-round Education

A Forbidden Education

We've all been students, regardless of what, when and where we've studied. But what is studying?

Think of an answer.

Studying is the process of learning something by … going to school! University! Getting an MBA?

Think back, about all the things that you've had to mug up since you were a kid, at the age of 4 most of us were taught how to read and mastered basic counting techniques. At 6 most of us were familiar with the concept of problem.

Problems needed to be solved.

In primary school my math teacher introduced this by putting a key onto the last shelf of the wardrobe and said 'go get it kid!'.

Back then I was about 3ft 7 and I genuinely told her, 'I can't! it's too high away - I should get a chair...” That was the very first problem I came acroos at school. Clear and well-rendered.
What happened afterwards? Why has everything gotten so hard to understand and utterly useless. Why have teachers forced us to learn endless notions of history, latin, analytic geometry. We have spent our childhood and teenagehood cramming on books. Hundreds of pages, dates, formulas and what have you. Learn this learn that, grind away, get the best marks or – or what???
They made us cry our souls out, they made us want to drop out when we couldn't possibly bone up everything, we just couldn't. Some told us we were thick, others told us we needed to stay focused and stop hanging around with friends. We all had to be good in everything, we couldn't get by, we needed to master everything in order to face real life.

How many of the things they taught you at school have had any practical use in your life? Reading, writing and basic counting? Well this you could do at 5.

What about all the things you couldn't do when you went to school, e.g thinking. What did you think back then, what problems did you come across, and I'm not referring to the X you had to find in you math workbook.
Where was the key you couldn't reach? What about the mere 8-minute break my school generously granted us to take a break. 8 minutes in a 6-hour school session, and we were only 14 when we started. What about getting to know other cultures, talking, visiting without the fear of profiling a detailed report depicting what we did? What about getting to respect the surrounding nature by making the most of it and living on emotions.
Why couldn't we have class outside sitting on the grass when spring was in bloom – because we'd get distracted.

Of course we would, we were never given the time to look around us to explore, to ask questions. We had to pack up Earth Science notions from a book! When we could have just walked out of the freaking classroom and go touch things. I'd have loved a teacher who could show us the environment we were living in rather than seeing it on a picture or craning our neck towards the window if we got any luck. We spent days without looking at the sky.
Experience is learning and culture is what remains after you've forgotten everything.
In an era in which technology is making life so much easier for us there is something that, as teachers, we should pass onto our students.

No computer will replace the joy of a fresh brush on a canvas, marine breeze and the smell of a recently bloomed flower. Take your students out, let them speak their mind, listen to them and they will ask you to teach them things. Just like they did when they were 3 and they had all the time to play, but they'd beg you to teach them how to read instead.