Education

Education? What is education?

I had an English teacher in University that told me that education is what you've learnt after you leave school. I liked that. What I learnt from school was not what they were directly teaching me, e.g English, Maths, Science, Music etc. What I was learning when I was listening was mainly about the system of things. You know, like listening in on what the teachers talk to each other about and how friends react to each other and such, kind of like a ninja's job. I loved playing and I still do. I loved seeing what I could get away with, without getting into trouble. It was mostly about laughing. Laughing was most probably the main reason why I am still alive today, or more so the want to laugh and have fun. If I learnt anything from school that was worth value, it was how to cheat, without cheating. Mr. Dobson taught me that. I'm sure he was an artistic pot head.

Here's my explanation of the word education:

The word education came from the latin word educare, which means "bring up", which is related to educere "bring out", "bring forth what is within", "bring out potential" and ducere, "to lead".

So I guess education in the broadest sense is any act or experience that has a formative effect on the mind, character or physical ability of an individual.

But... technically speaking, education is the process by which society deliberately transmits its accumulated knowledge, skills and values from one generation to another.

Scary huh. Especially if those values are money, jobs, building society and corporations, governnment, religion and such.

I like fun, but this life is not about fun. It's not even about laughing. It's about suffering. It's about bearing the pain and having the will to fight on. I guess realising that is one of the crossing lines to becoming an adult. If you don't cross that line, then you are still a child. That's what I've been taught anyway.

Today I will "teach" the last lessons of all of my schools. That's right. I teach. I love my kids dearly. Every single one of them. Unfortunately I'm only an assistant teacher. The teacher next to me is there to be boss and to use me as they see fit to produce a reasonable lesson for the kids. That's the rules. Fortunately, some of those teachers don't care too much for the rules.

We had an interesting lesson today. We gave a handout asking; "What is the most important for you?" The students must answer with the template; "?? is the most important for me because..." There are six choices:

(1) money
(2) studying
(3) family
(4) good friends
(5) health
(6) having fun

We gave the demo on stage. I was asked. I answered, "Life. Life is the most important for me because..." Then I realised that life wasn't one of the options. Then I thought, yeah. That's kind of cheating. All of those options are to do with life. Then I started wondering why love isn't on there. Are kids minds too young to understand the concept of love? Can they not be allowed to define a word that allows them to express the warm feeling they feel from their mothers and fathers, brothers, sisters, friends, relations or strangers? Or is it open to too much speculation and debate? And while I was standing there, showing everyone a dumb look on my face, my teacher snapped me out of it. "Aroniiiii... are you ok?"

"Yeah, hahaha!", I just realised that I'd been standing there in thought for too long.

Out of all the options, I chose number 6. Having fun.

"Having fun is the most important for me because... because we are the only creatures on this planet that are capable of laughing and that may be the only thing apart from forethought that makes us human, and not just animals."

Of course some people would beg to differ but it was a spare of the moment answer. I murmured to the students "Should get a hundred points for that one." They were laughing cause they had no idea what I said. From the expression on teachers face, I was surprised that she took that all in until she said "Really??? What about monkeys? I think monkeys can laugh too!" It became kind of funny to me and I started laughing until the kids started laughing too because of course monkeys can laugh :(

Yep. Is there a prefix that can give education an opposite meaning? Like evolve becomes devolve, cool becomes uncool etc.

If there is one, I think that definition should be heavily used for the description of the cog called the governmental education system and also as an explained definition for many other education programs. I mean there are good schools out there and plenty of places to get good information eg. the internet and libraries; just, the guys in power are funding schools that reduce our options in life. They reduce our possibilites. The most memories of my childhood education and most of my friends were memories of being told what we couldn't be because of our crappy grades. I failed school completely. I smoked too much pot and drunk too much alcohol. It was more important to have fun. I have no regrets. Learn from me, it's more fun :) Then again, I don't have much to teach. It's all out there on the net, on tv, in books, in music and most importantly, in people. Go find it.