Firstly, does anyone really give a damn about the environment? In all honesty which would you give your money to when the charity advertisements come up on television; the ISPCC or Green Peace?
Secondly, education is the most overrated activity in the developed world. It's merely an extension of wallowing and self righteousness, am I right? Really the benefits of education usually only lead you to question; Why am I so poor? Why am I not attractive? Why do I not have a girlfriend/boyfriend? Why am I writing a blog? The lesson is without education, one would enjoy blissful ignorance!
Third, education entails some level of superiority or inferiority. You either went to a university or an IT, or you went to UCD instead of TCD, or you're smarter or more stupid than some of your friends, or you got a 2.2 instead of a 2.1 or a 2.1 instead of a 1st. The lesson is education promotes hierarchies and classes within the system. Who would want to join something where you're social order is dependent on your ability to read Habermas or understand Inductively Coupled Plasma - Optical Emission Spectrometry?
Finally and most importantly, education and college usually entail 'student activities'. I won't lie, I wasn't a hit with the ladies, and Jesus Christ have I missed out on a lot of funkyzeit mit damen! Yes, my time at college has been one of loneliness and self loathing, however without college I would have never had experienced this. Reason, I would have gotten a job straight out of school back in the before time (2006), I could have bought my Honda Civic, started going out with ladies in my social pecking order and boomb! No more reading Lyotard or Wittgenstein on a Saturday night!
The lesson is, what have I learned from going to college?
Nothing!
I'm still unhappy, I've learned a lot but all for nothing really because at the end of the day most of us will end up on one of these, and I'm back to square one where I began back in 2006. I wonder, does "have you ever seen the backseat of a honda civic?" still work as a chat-up line in one of the local nightclubs?
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If this is your view on education, please don't go ahead with your application for secondary school teaching.
ReplyDeleteEducation is one of the ONLY commodities that is provided for free in Ireland and the UK and therefore does not put anyone in a social peking order....When I was accepted into UCD (by an access programme for students from underprivileged backgrounds), I had to deal with snobby shitheads(D4 wannabes) who looked down their noses at me for being a "culchie". However, this didn't get to me...and why... because I was in the same university as them, I passed the same exams and did better in my essays than some of them... Through EDUCATION I felt on an equal footing because it didn't matter what my Mummy and Daddy did for a living, I was a peer and money doesn't come into your natural intelligence/determination/ambition.
Similarly, when I was teaching in Wales (which I'll warn you in advance is one of the poorest nations in Europe!!) I taught in schools with kids from low socio-economic backgrounds and the only way to inspire these kids (with no self-confidence due to their social order relative to family income) was to help them see how much better their lives would be with education and the experiences that go with it.
All my teaching experiences (voluntary and paid) have been with the same type of kids and it would absolutely break my heart to know that any of these kids being subjected to the above ideas. :(
Sorry for the rant but education is, in my eyes, a gift and the most important gift anyone can be given and you need to believe that if you want to teach teenagers. So....your comments hit a nerve and I needed to defend it.
Noted and responded to privately.
ReplyDeleteRegards.