Dec 17 2012
Leave a comment
2012

The greatest misconception

For quite a few decades, there has been a great deal of speculation over prophecies which foretell that our world is coming to an end. While many people may think twice about expressing their thoughts on this issue due to the fright of being judged or criticized, I have decided to elaborate on this topic. Many of these prophecies have been proved to be incorrect, as they have predicted events that have never come about. Whilst this may be a very valid reason to subsequently dismiss any new prophecies or theories that become present in the near future or that have not yet taken place, it is only idiotic to dismiss any prophecies or theories without rightfully contemplating them as I am certain theoretical ideology was discarded in the same way with Galileo, Newton, and many other great discoverers.

Although the vast majority of these prophecies are indubitably mistaken as they are based on dreams, experiences, or other incomprehensible phenomena, there are very few that are based on logical comprehension. One of these prophecies is based on astronomical events that originated a few centuries ago by the Mayan civilization. This prophecy has become extensively augmented in the last few decades, and has subsequently led into a misconception believed by a great amount of people. For this very reason, it is crucial to emphasize the belief that the world will come to an ending on December 21st, 2012 is an arrant misconception of what the Mayan prophecies truly speak of. This misconception originated from a very ignorant conclusion that was based on the fact that the Mayan calendar ended on this day without taking into consideration the fact that the Mayan calendar is a cycle. Because of this misconception, and the falsehood that has come about from other prophecies, the seriousness of this prophecy has been greatly diminished, causing us to ridicule any person who believes in any of this, instead of considering the likelihood of this prophecy to take place.

A vast majority of people who have not been misguided into believing the misconception that the world will come to an end, have concluded that what this prophecy is trying to get across is that the world will go through a spiritual and mental change that will subsequently alter the way we think. Such change will accordingly take place beginning December the twenty-first of the year 2012. There has been some speculation that the world will go through a phase of complete darkness for three days during December the twenty-first of the year 2012, during which the type of light we perceive is uncommon to any type of light we have ever received, thus affecting our spirituality and mental progression. My only fear of this belief becoming a reality is that a great deal of people who have been misguided into believing the world will come to an end, will subsequently enter into a phase of mass hysteria when they begin to notice unusual events taking place, thus resulting in a world of complete chaos.

The idea of giving this belief such degree of importance may be foolish, but the idea of dismissing this belief without chance for consideration is blatantly stupid. No one truly knows where life is going to take us, but if we are given the privilege of being warned upon an event of such magnitude, it is our duty to at the very least consider the likelihood of this belief. Regardless of the likelihood of this prophecy, it would be considerably astute to be in the right mindset when and if this might take place.

- Fernando Cervantes

Tagged , , , , ,
Dec 14 2012
Leave a comment
Education, School

My school phenomenon: Students go blind

School indoctrinaition. Students with yellow smiley faces.

School indoctrination

Image source: http://logical-critical-thinking.com/human-thoughts/indoctrination-is-bad/

Finally I find a topic that I can ardently talk to you about. A topic that really intrigues me… After about two or more weeks of not having done that.

Why haven’t I been publishing any blog posts lately? You might ask. (Except for the one about looking forward to the future, which I had already written a long time ago but simply reposted on here).

Well, quite frankly, I am very confused. It’s just so hard for me to accept the fact that schooling is not an education at all. I think it is extremely insane to waste so much time completing too many good-for-nothing assignments which, in my opinion, are totally pernicious to the mentally sane smart-working individual. That is what’s been keeping me awake at night. It has been making me wonder what I was thinking when I first started this blog called BraynTime. Do I really believe that I can help —change— anything anywhere by posting, or “exposing“, what I believe to be an arcane truth? Uhm, yes, I think so —so I should give it a shot. But, would it be better if I just shut up and… “get it over with”? Uhm, please excuse my vague but sincere language; Hell no!

No. I can’t help it. I have to at least say something, or what’s more, do something! Why? Because I feel it’s right. I think it is the right thing to do, for me to speak up. So I think that’s enough. You get where I’m coming from. Now lets stay on topic.

Why is it that school blinds us from seeing the reality? Why is it that we don’t question anything we’re told by the school faculty? Why is it that [no one!] demonstrates any interest in exploring anything of the things we are pseudo-taught? These and other questions bother me a lot because I don’t seem to find an answer to them.

Did you get that? I think you missed it. I said “I don’t seem to find an answer to them.” That’s not really true. I have found one answer, which is that Students go blind. Students are blind! They’re blind! That’s what I have seen.

Now, notice I said “they”, of course. I am not blind. I am not like them. How can I make such a claim? I learn. I do, I make, I explore, I question, and I speak up. Schooling is not educating at all. I wouldn’t know any better if I didn’t study apart from school. My vice is not buying clothes to look good, my time doesn’t go to waste playing video games, my conversations with friends aren’t about sports, actors, tv, or any of that, my life doesn’t revolve solely on school. Instead, I invest my money on books (non-fiction on web developing, programming, psychology, etc.), I enjoy reading everyday, I like making websites and programming, I watch/take online tutorials (YouTube, Udacity, Coursera, etc.), and I play the guitar (I just started, I’m learning). Oh, and I have this blog where I love to write and I also have a social network that is in its infancy by the way, just saying, no big deal [cough cough:].

Do I need to explain to you more about that? If you think so, just follow me, this blog, sign up on BraynCity, all of that. Otherwise, I truly hope that with my little bit of experience writing and with my fervor about social entrepreneurship I was able to explain what I wanted.

Finally, the $16 trillion dollars question is this: Is what we’re experiencing a deliberate dumbing down of America? Or is it just benign neglect? Please, somebody tell me. If I know the answer to this question I can either stop fighting a pointless war, which will allow me to do and enjoy what is most important to me, or I can increase my efforts to help change others’ pernicious mistakes, which will not be easy at all but will surely be worth doing.

Tagged , , , ,
Dec 11 2012
Leave a comment
Society

Do something, help someone, and look forward to the future

I’ve always looked forward to the future. Good times, bad times, ecstatic moments, really bad obscure times. The future always has an opportunity for everybody to be better than they are today. There’s always an opportunity for us to get to do something that will make you feel better. Not just something that will make you feel better, something that can change your life and other people’s lives. There’s always something that you can do right now that can potentially change your future. Be it studying, working, talking, telling your loved ones that you loved them, and a lot of other things. Just think about it, couldn’t you tell your mom, or your dad, brother, sister or whoever you love that — you love them? Do you think that would make them a little bit happier and remind him of what they have and why they do what they do? Do you think they would feel better to wake up the next day and get up and go to work, feeling that they are there because they want a better future for you and for themselves? Could you do something that would make you a better, more prepared person for the future?

Personally, I always have something to do. There is always something I want to do. I want to learn, learn, learn (I love learning about a variety of unrelated things so that I am not totally ignorant about any topic and if tomorrow the whole world changed I can contribute to any need that may arise). I also want to work on a variety of things that can make me a better prepared person for tomorrow. I don’t know how tomorrow will be. I may wake up and find that everything is the same manner as the day before. Or I may as well wake up and find out that I need to go somewhere else, as that is the way it’s been for me. Always moving from place to place, leaving friends and family behind. There is always something else I can do. And, so far nothing seemed so promising such as this social network I am trying really hard to create in order to provide everyone with a place where they can collaborate, learn, help each other and become better person(s). I am now looking forward to not only -my- future improving, but my family and friends’ future, teenagers’ (like me) futures, and well, the nation’s and humanity’s future. This is something I -can- do right now. This is my way to pay back to the world for all help that I’ve received.

What can you do? How can you make the future better? How can you change somebody’s day, mood, or life? There has got to be something you can do. If you don’t think there is, just take a look at all the websites and the people out there ready to help you. There is plenty of people that would be more than happy to help you with something you’re working on, something you’re struggling with, or just something you want to do for joy. That is exactly what I am talking about. The kind of help that I’ve received. I guess suffering is good. It must be a good thing, because it changes a person. It makes you look for help. It forces you to look forward to better times. That is what’s happened to me. Always, always, there is hope in me. Although I fall, even though things feel the same the next day, it sure was an exciting ride. Everytime I moved, from Mexico to Houston, then to Wallingford (Connecticut) and back to Houston I had fun. It was really exciting. Life is really exciting when you look forward to the future, to what’s coming next, and when you’re just getting prepared for it. Prepare for tomorrow. Do something now, right now. Because you can, you really can. Everybody can, it’s just that we forget. And some people don’t know that.You know. So do something! Because the only thing you can receive back when you just try help someone, is a reward. A very rewarding feeling that you get that is worth more than anything else money can buy. So… I leave you with that in mind and it is up to you if you really do something or not. Thank you for caring about what I have to say and, I leave you with a song that hopefully will inspire you to take action, now. (attached)

Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Dec 07 2012
Leave a comment
Uncategorized Quote

- Bryan Dimas

School is like religion: They both give you a false sense of certainty. The latter you can’t prove, and with the former you never know.

Dec 04 2012
Leave a comment
Uncategorized

What I Learned in School by Being Tardy

Image

Image Courtesy of: http://i1.cpcache.com/product/689214997/youll_be_late_anyway_wall_clock.jpg?color=NA&height=460&width=460

On Tuesday November 27, 2012 I was tardy to my first class of the day since I overslept. I generally work late throughout the night so I am plagued with fatigue the following morning. Usually I end up getting to school on time (albeit it’s only by a few minutes), however this day I was very late.

In my high school we have a policy where being tardy ends you up in something called “Tardy Sweep”. This wonderful place is usually held in the school’s cafeteria while it’s emptied out between classes. There’s generally a few other students there, and we’re all required to sit a couple of feet apart so that we don’t speak to each other. We’re all required to copy a sheet of paper that has all the rules we have to follow while in tardy sweep. That’s all we’re supposed to do. Copy a sheet, word for word, every time you’re in tardy sweep. There’s no encouragement to do your homework, catch up on assignments, etc. There’s no hope for productivity, just an hour of utter boredom. So I, against school policy, decided to read a book on innovation in business.

I read about ~20 pages of the book called, “The Innovation Secrets of Steve Jobs”, by Carmine Gallo. I actually learned a lot in those 20 pages. Including how innovative customer service experiences in companies such as Apple, Zappos, Geek Squad(prior to 2002), etc. can bring a company into the limelight and stand out from well established competitors. I also learned about how employee behavior can implant a company’s image onto a customer, and how this may or may not allow the company to have recursive sales.

Of course this was just the 20 pages of the book I read while in Tardy Sweep. Now if I had been in my class (which was ironically a business class) then I probably wouldn’t have learned at the level of detail and given the array of examples. In my business class we rarely look at things in an innovative way. Instead we’re learning principles that seem to be written by a theoretical politician. For example, we learned that a successful entrepreneur is usually in their mid 30’s, even though Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, Elon Musk, Larry Page, and Bill Gates were in their 20’s when they started, and many more successful entrepreneurs start earlier than their 30’s. Our business teacher hasn’t even owned/started a successful business. So a lot of times his thoughts and teachings are generally opposing to current day business leaders with actual experience in innovative companies (you know the ones that continue to produce jobs).

I find it a little ironic that by going against the school’s system I end up learning more about real world business than if I were to have gone to my class. It’s also quite ironic how I had to deliberately break a rule (by reading a book) so I could learn something worth my time.

It’s quite frustrating how the school system interferes a lot with my thirst for information and hunger for knowledge, when it should be supplementing it. I just wanted to let you know that there are many students such as myself that have grown tired of the school system because of it’s inability to keep up with the rest of the world and it’s inability to make knowledge open and useful. Maybe they should let us read books more, I’d really like that.

Tagged , , , , , , ,
Nov 23 2012
Leave a comment
Education

To the few good teachers: Thanks.

I think Thanksgiving makes a good day to present you with the other side of the coin. I want to let it be known that there are  a few good things happening in school.

Despite of all the detriments of schooling, despite the system not helping at all, and despite of what I previously said, sometimes I enjoy attending school. Yes. Sometimes we actually learn in school! Can you believe that?

Every once in a while, we get lucky and there’s some knowledge spill over from the teachers stepping out of the torpid curriculum. Real knowledge is not only outside of the curriculum, but it is against it. We’re not supposed to learn about newer theories proposed in physics for example (as minutephysics on youtube commented). And we’re not supposed to learn the “real truth” of what the U.S. Government does either (as we sometimes learn in government class). Learning pure truth is forbidden in school, yet it spills over once in a while. For this, I thank those teachers. When you don’t care whether or not something is allowed, real learning will take place.

Just about everyday, I see my Pre-Calculus teacher and the other math teacher next door teaching with such fervor that it’s almost convincing that we’re really learning something useful (not saying that math isn’t useful, but the way we are taught). I have the best math teacher in the school. He is strict with us doing the work, but he still manages to make the class fun–ish. I feel grateful to have him as my teacher and I am glad to have teachers like him in my school.

Every time there’s a chance, some of my teachers play videos or movies that teach us something related to the class. Those videos (or movies) tell us WHY we need to learn what we’re being taught, and show us the different ways in which (HOW) we could apply the knowledge we were supposed to have recently acquired. This is something I -love-! I love when teachers do this. In Physics, for example, my teacher played the show Destroyed in Seconds from Discovery Channel. It was really interesting, and it was about what we had just learned about in class! I love being shown the very few connections school has with the real world. These and a few other things that I will tell you about on a future blog post give me hope in that change is still possible.

In conclusion, I do not totally detest everything that goes on in school, we do learn something occasionally, and I thank those teachers who actually teach something useful.

Tagged , , , ,
Nov 15 2012
Leave a comment
Education, School

Scholastic Indoctrination

We grow up thinking that by going to a reputable college we will be prepared for anything that life will throw at us, and we become accustomed to the fact that he who does not attain such education is despised by the majority as an insolent fool. While this may seem like a clever way of maintaining people on track and making them contribute to society as a whole, this method of achieving societal collaboration has very intricate flaws. Such flaws are commonly unseen by the average, typical person, yet they require an extensive degree of attention. These flaws are preventing us students from preserving that desire to learn that we are all born with, and are instead making us believe that creativity is irrelevant and unimportant, and that collaboration is immoral.

High school education is considered an essential part of the scholastic vocation, but is it really giving us the appropriate skills that are necessary for a successful life? I don’t think so. School has a way of doing things that is obnoxiously deplorable. Such system forces students to not think for themselves, and instead only follow instructions, as if we were robots or machines awaiting for our next order. This has had a profound effect on my education, as I have been forced to acquire my own way of educating myself. This would not be such an ineffectual way of achieving things if it wasn’t for the certification faultiness that self-learning carries. The problem with self-learning is that it is very often seen lesser than a college degree, and therefore does not rightfully certify you of the skills you have acquired.

To further prove my point of how inefficient scholastic education is, I have been part of a high school computer science course for nearly three years, and have observed that the curriculum of the course is not designed to efficiently teach students and promote their creativity and ideas, but instead it focuses to meet the standards of attaining high grades on tests and assignments. This is forcing us to cram in all of the information we acquire the day before the test in order to frivolously obtain a high score on the test, and then forgetting it the next day. This path lacks the essential connection that gives us humans the desire to continue learning and does not leave room for the curiosity within each of us to spark. Such connection that would integrate our problem solving abilities learned in class, and apply them in our real lives. Students do not sense the satisfaction of the beauty of learning something new, but instead only sense the stress and frustration this practice carries. Moreover, computer science assignments follow the same principle of the curriculum, which would make perfect sense if it wasn’t for the faultiness of the curriculum itself. This principle limits the perspective, and overall view that students should be able to attain by completing a more diverse type of assignments. We are obliged to think within a box, and complete only those assignments that are approved by such curriculum. This not only gives us a vague understanding, but also affects our problem solving capabilities, as well as our divergent thinking abilities. It is crucial to emphasize the fact that we students are being forced to stay within the realms of scholastic indoctrination, and are forbidden from expanding our vision in this faulty system of education.

School needs not a minor change, it needs not a major change; school needs a revolutionary change. It is only idiotic to sustain such a faulty system that is only destroying divergent thinking and creativity. Students should be able to obtain a flawless education. We are not only fed up with scholastic indoctrination, WE ARE SICK OF IT. We were not raised to be like machines, we were not raised to be like sheep, so why do we keep promoting this? This form of education is not the preparation we students deserve, it is the line that forbids us from attaining our true virtue, the virtue of education.

- Fernando Cervantes

Tagged , , , ,
Nov 12 2012
2 Comments
Education

We Try to Attain Liberal Goals with a Conservative Vision

“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.” – Frank Zappa

      It is interesting to speak to someone who has a conservative mindset on life. They tend to fear change and can’t seem to accept new ideas. Yet, a lot of them grew up under a liberal mindset. They looked up to social leaders such as Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr, and Rosa Parks. These leaders of course are rebels and very liberal, and yet we are usually taught about them by people who are conservative and don’t really have a grasp at what it takes to be liberal.

      I believe that the core of the desynchronization shown above appears because of the lack of understanding. Many of these people that teach us about these liberal leaders don’t really understand how liberal leaders think and see the world. These common people that teach us about leaders aren’t usually major leaders themselves, instead they’re teachers, parents, and the like. Although they can tell us about these leaders, they can’t emulate how they thought. To them these leaders are almost a distant fable, not a reality.

      What’s really important to understand is how these men and women become conservative over time. How they appear to be liberal at youth, yet they grow to become conservative. It’s because they never really were liberal at youth, sure they may have grown up in the 60’s or 70’s, but that doesn’t necessarilly mean they were liberal at heart. More likely they were emulating a liberal on the outside, because that’s how teenagers are expected to act. Whenever a demographic is portrayed in a certain manner, a lot of times people in that demographic emulate that externally. This is because they want to feel belonging in that demographic, they, like any human being, want to feel understood and to form part of something greater. Then as they get older they conform to another demographic. Usually leading them to the typical life of going through education and pursuing a career, and later having kids. They fall under the system of society and to feel a part of it they continue the common system of thought and stick to what they know. They don’t open their mind anymore to ideas and creative thoughts, because that’s no longer in their demographic.

      The real problem arises when these same men and women contaminate the youth. It’s when they speak about the great influential minds and spirits that make our world better, they sabotage and belittle the youth when the young minds try to emulate the free thinking of the great leaders of our history. What appears to be the problem is people don’t always act like who they truly are, and don’t understand what exactly is happening to them and around them. Instead, most people like to wrap a common cultural veil around themselves, and deep down they remain naive and a bit apathetic to the real world, how things work, and what they can amount to. The core problem is misunderstanding. People misunderstand the true deep sense of what they are trying to emulate with their cultural veil. However people aren’t innately so. Instead, people have a brief moment of insight whenever they see an amazing figure or idea, it is when they listen to other opinions and other people at the wrong time that their purity gets distorted. It is evident that we need to maintain a society where children are free to emulate these great leaders, and allowed to emulate their roles and visions. Children and teens need to be encouraged to understand these people of great movement and thought for who they were. To understand them through their own eyes and to apply that knowledge to current problems facing the world.

      As Leonardo Da Vinci said, we must act upon our knowledge as knowing is not enough. We must allow and encourage our students in school to act upon the knowledge of great revolutionaries, and show that it’s possible for anyone with the proper level of ambition that they too can solve our problems, that anyone with the will and passion can solve problems and create a better society and world for us all to enjoy. So that we can thrive, and not just survive.

- Rakshak Talwar

Tagged , , , , , , , ,
Nov 10 2012
4 Comments
School

No! I refuse to complete such an insipid assignment for a meaningless grade!

i refuse, imageHere I am sitting in my English class, watching the others jot down whatever comes to mind about the book we supposedly have been reading for a couple of weeks. I’m not doing it. I refuse to do it, and here I’ll tell you why.

What are we supposed to learn in English? How about… English? How about reading and writing? How about learning something that will actually be useful in our lives? I really want to improve on my reading! I really want to learn how to write effectively! I love reading, I love writing, and I want to do something useful. I want to contribute to the world. I want to be able to express what I feel effectively. I want to make this blog informative, invigorating, and at the same time, a new learning experience for me. What are we doing in class, then?

This is a high school English class: The district dictates which books we must read each year according to our grade level (freshmen, sophomores, juniors, and seniors) and how many. That establishes the core of the curriculum. That’s it. The rest is the exact same shit every year. The class consists of tests, “comprehension quizzes”, tedious assignments, insipid papers we have to write, and sporadic vocab words we have to memorize. Does this sound like an education? What are we being taught? Will we, by the end of the year, have improved any skills at all? Do we even have any skills already? Are we being just occupied with extraneous assignments? The answer to that last question is: Definitely! Totally! Evidently, our poor brains are being inundated with garbage.

Ohh… no. But do not tell this to a teacher! They will immediately contradict anything you tell them. They will defend their job with such fervor that they’ll make you almost believe what they’re saying. They will remind you of what you are supposed to know already. They’ll come up with every excuse to defend what they do. Teachers…. will… blame you. Teachers will blame us if we tell them we don’t know how to do something. They do that all the time! Teachers blame us for not having retained information from last year, two years ago, or kindergarten or whenever. I blame them for being so blind! Are you kidding me?! Noo! We are not going to remember everything they tell us, everything sporadic that comes up in a quiz, everything we were shown once in class. Much less, remember everything we do in every class every day! Wake up! Please… Don’t be so ignorant. It’s perfectly normal to not remember everything we are told forever you know. It’s called retroactive interference. We have “difficulty recalling old information because of newly learned information.” If we are given a test every week in every single class all year long on things we didn’t truly learn in the first place, things we merely memorized in order to get a better score, we are bound to forget it after the test. We’re not going to forget everything though, we’re too smart we can’t help it, but most of it we will. Especially because we’ll never encounter it again, ever. Take chemistry for example, it’s a useless piece of cheese cake (for at least 98% of us) isn’t it?

Seriously, that it is the reality of schooling. But, what do the conformist morons think? (conformist morons = people who think school is doing alright or aren’t doing anything about it) What is their point of view? What is their excuse? I think there is something that is covering their eyes, keeping them from seeing the reality. I know what it is. They are victims of the lying experts. They are the prey of those in power. They form part of a large group of misinformed citizens (ridiculous).

Basically, I think school is a beautiful lie. School is a lie because you really could think that schooling today is not too bad if you’re like former President George W. Bush and infer that “Childrens do learn” just by looking at some of our tests’ scores. Of course, we do recall a lot of information we are given at school. That is learning, right? We are learning something, right? That’s funny because again, it’s useless! For example, what can you “learn” from a US Government book that is 10 years old?! (Which is what we are currently doing) It’s absurd that we are expected to memorize 30 or so vocabulary words for just one test (we get a test every week). We are lucky if we get a B+ on one of those tests, and it’s an ‘honors class’. The average is around 73 on tests like that.

To further prove my point, here you can see what it is that we’re supposed to learn.

This course continues an emphasis on advanced reading strategies and composition techniques integrated with a study of selected British and other world literature. Selections include fiction, poetry, drama, literary nonfiction, and informational texts. Using the writing process, students work on refining their skills in composition and developing mature grammatical and stylistic features. In addition, students are expected to demonstrate proficiency in writing for varied audiences and purposes. Students also review and refine research skills through a variety of research projects. Multiple in-class writings require students to practice their thinking, organizational, and communication skills. Opportunities to practice listening/speaking and an emphasis on media literacy are inherent in the course.

Cy-Fair ISD ”s Course Offerings and Descriptions

As you can see, what we are supposed to learn is alright, I would say. What we actually learn is nothing. We learn nothing besides how to do crappy work. We learn nothing besides how to cheat the system in order to get by. We learn nothing besides how to make trashy products. That is we do at school. Anyone who disagrees, please explain. I didn’t think so. Just pick any school, go there, and you’ll see what I’m talking about. So what is happening? We are supposed to learn so much, but then what? Who’s to blame? What I think is: What a cynical system. What a piece of rotten meat.

So now I’m at home. I’m back from hell. I feel liberated. I made it another day through school. Now I have to resume my day-to-day operations. That is, I’ll finish writing this blog post (because it’s so amazing), I’ll do some programming (because I love it), I’ll learn how to write better, read, and so much more (because I can). Time is never enough for me to learn, engage, and create. If today or tomorrow was the end of the world I would go to the library. I’ll have books and I’ll my laptop with internet connection.

School is so out of touch with reality. It’s insane. It really is like a factory — because they can’t make us think inside the box, they instead put us inside the box. Then they ship us out. Destination: Unknown.

In conclusion, I’m not going waste my time on that insipid assignment I’m supposed to do in english (which is “to waste your time because there is nothing else to do” by the way). The reasons are many. The reasons for doing it: Because it’s for a grade? Ha–ha–ha. Please… I know better than that. What will I do instead? I will do what I absolutely love and am passionate about: I’ll learn and create. MY destination: Success. : )

Tagged , , , , , ,
Oct 25 2012
Leave a comment
School

Have you ever met a teacher who teaches?

Picture of a typical teacher giving an insidious lecture
Image source: http://www.norcalblogs.com/post_scripts/bad-teacher.jpg

“You might want to pay attention today, because everything I tell you will be on the test!”

That is what our teachers tell us in school every single week as we take notes off of some banal powerpoint. They are only telling us a bunch of mundane information worded in a very specific way — the way it’s going to appear on the test. That… is… insane. It is mere cognitive murder in action right in front of our eyes.

In school, all our personal interests/intrinsic motivations to learn are being diminished by the information overload that we receive continuously. Teachers don’t teach, they pseudo-teach. They are making us believe that we are learning something that will prepare us to be “good citizens” and that it’s all important in the real world. They are full of it. To put it nicely, I simply think school is a beautiful lie. It is a lie because after we seemingly absorb much of the information we are presented, we are bamboozled by the scores we receive. “What did you get?” is always what we ask each other. Hey, who can we blame us for wanting to do better than our friends, or better than we did before? It’s ok. Just memorize this part, and this other one, and you’ll pass the test with the score you would like.

No, not me. I’m not buying it. I absolutely do not believe in test scores. I repugnate tests and test scores, I abhor being lectured like I am in school, and I hate being labeled. Labeling is what testing is doing. By giving us a ‘bad grade’, they are not teaching us anything. It is NOT motivating us! It is not! Please stop the stupidity! That’s a purely idiotic concept of teaching by testing! It’s destroying us inside; our brains, our hopes, our natural desire to progress. Schooling is purely insidious. That is what I have seen; what I believe.  Don’t you think? Or am I wrong, and that’s “just the way it is”?

On the other hand, testing can become a vicious cycle. As one receives a grade that surpasses all your friends’ grades, or a grade that will make you -feel- smart, it leaves a sense of satisfaction in our extrinsically motivated self. Of course it feels good to get “a good grade” because you’ll have a better grade than the rest of the people in your class. It’s progress right, and you got that grade because you understood what was on it. Wouldn’t you like to get a good grade? Would I like to get a good grade? Sure! Yes, why not. Ok, then, I just got to put off doing what I love to do and what I have to do outside of school for later — because I have to finish that one hundred and two questions review, and then the other fifty questions practice sheet today. Oh, and once I’m done with it, I just have to really deprive myself from any other activities that could cause any retroactive interference due to the overwhelming amount of information that I hope to retain until tomorrow for the test. Ahh, not too bad. It’s just school. Of course, it’s history (US Government). Well, let me tell you what I think: Screw that! (Laughs) I’m not just kidding here. It’s insane. Insane, meaning it is not sane for me to cram that much information in for just one test for one class.

In addition, what I get on the test will probably bring my grade up in the class, thus increasing my GPA. That in turn will make my college resume look good, and increases my chances of getting into college. This side of the story to me is more sound — the most valid reason/excuse to “just go with it” all throughout high school. For instance, when some people—after a lively discourse about schooling vs education— finally tell me this (that high school is just a place that leads to college), I agree with them and we are done talking soon afterwards. It is true, if you look at it that way, but what would it be of school if everyone did just the same always? How much worse could it possibly get over time if we don’t do anything about it? Are we really that careless about the future? Am I just going to sit there and not do anything about it? Will I just say “Yeah, that’s the way it is. It’s school.” just like everyone else and be like them? Let me think… Done. No. I can’t just try to ignore what is happening to me and millions of other students like me. I am seeing it every single day, not including holidays and weekends. I am living it everyday. I can’t take it! I’m not like them.

To sum up, I want to illustrate what I believe is real teaching, and not just an insidious one-way information transfer from lecturer (teacher) to student. Simply put, … Wait. There is no simple way to solve this. It isn’t that easy. One thing that I feel very strong about though is considerably reducing (slash exterminating) the insane information overload presented to students in school in the form of TESTS. By doing this, it will give everyone more time to do more, it will reduce the detrimental pressure put on teachers and students alike, and it will give us freedom — freedom to achieve our full potential currently limited by an infamous scantron and a number two pencil.

Tagged , , , , , ,
← Older posts
Follow

Get every new post delivered to your Inbox.

Join 197 other followers

%d bloggers like this: