Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Thursday, July 10, 2008
Friday, June 20, 2008
Wednesday, June 18, 2008
Tuesday, April 8, 2008
The age of learning
A part of me wishes i had been born in another era. lots of people say that, some people want to live in the middle ages, others in the colonial days. for me, the time I wish for is much more recent. I am sure that to some extent, my perceptions of it are twisted by flawed history dolled out via television and movies, but I know that to some extent, it existed.
what age is that? it is the age that gave us the people that sent us to the moon, built the skyscrapers, launched aircraft carriers, dug a tunnel under the english channel, and built a better mouse trap. Certainly, many of these things are relatively recent achievements, but the people who thought of them, who *really* worked out how to do them, came from a generation that was brought up with education as its flag. It saddens me now to see how young people, even people my own age, are totally disinterested in learning. the who cares attitude. there was a time when a field trip at school was a great adventure, now, it is lame, considered boring.
Personally, i would love to go tour a breakfast cereal factory, or a shoe factory, or go see where they produce macaroni, or stamps, or light-bulbs, or toothpaste. Please, tell me more about how a pneumatic nostril hair clipper works, I would LOVE to know! I get a real kick out of learning new things, out of finding out how something works, or learning the history of a place. if I had to give myself a title i would want put on my gravestone, I would like "the learner" I will never get tired of learning things.
But it seems, that very same desire, is skillfully beat out of children by the age of ten. I don't place the blame on the teachers, they have that same love I do, at least most of them do, but you can only do so much with so little. and by that i do not entirely blame the budgets of schools, or the educational system. I don't know who to blame, but somehow, we have devised a means to slaughter basic interest in the workings of the world around us in so many people.
perhaps, if we are fortunate, we can bring ourselves back into the age of learning, craft another generation of people who take apart all their toys to see how they work. I hope so.
what age is that? it is the age that gave us the people that sent us to the moon, built the skyscrapers, launched aircraft carriers, dug a tunnel under the english channel, and built a better mouse trap. Certainly, many of these things are relatively recent achievements, but the people who thought of them, who *really* worked out how to do them, came from a generation that was brought up with education as its flag. It saddens me now to see how young people, even people my own age, are totally disinterested in learning. the who cares attitude. there was a time when a field trip at school was a great adventure, now, it is lame, considered boring.
Personally, i would love to go tour a breakfast cereal factory, or a shoe factory, or go see where they produce macaroni, or stamps, or light-bulbs, or toothpaste. Please, tell me more about how a pneumatic nostril hair clipper works, I would LOVE to know! I get a real kick out of learning new things, out of finding out how something works, or learning the history of a place. if I had to give myself a title i would want put on my gravestone, I would like "the learner" I will never get tired of learning things.
But it seems, that very same desire, is skillfully beat out of children by the age of ten. I don't place the blame on the teachers, they have that same love I do, at least most of them do, but you can only do so much with so little. and by that i do not entirely blame the budgets of schools, or the educational system. I don't know who to blame, but somehow, we have devised a means to slaughter basic interest in the workings of the world around us in so many people.
perhaps, if we are fortunate, we can bring ourselves back into the age of learning, craft another generation of people who take apart all their toys to see how they work. I hope so.
Monday, February 11, 2008
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)