Brayn Time

Here 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. : )