There is not Enough Freedom in School

One time when I was in grade 12 we had to do a presentation on a theme based off of our two independent novels so I chose the generic theme of freedom. I began my presentation by asking people to place a dash on a scale of 0-10 (0 not free and 10 is very free)I drew on the chalkboard of how free they feel. It was a really good visual to see how free people felt. Most of the dashes were around the 6 mark.

I asked the class some leading questions and the one leading question was "Where do you feel the least free?" the class almost immediately responded with saying "school". I astounded my english teacher.

As a teacher I would think it would seem quite frightening to hear this. At first it does not seem like a big deal but in the terms of liberal education it becomes an enormous deal that students feel the least free in school.

Liberal education means questioning everything. Putting everything up for question and allowing freethinking to happen. If people do not feel free in a classroom, liberal education is not going to flow easily.

If there is a place for voicing your opinion and bouncing ideas off of other people, school should be this place. Especially high school. High school is when people are figuring out the world and who they are and who they will be in the world and if they are spending 8 hours a day in a building that doesn't have an atmosphere that encourages freedom of ideas or freedom in general we are just going to mass-produce chunks of people and not individuals.

Although, is this not what we are doing with the world? Creating stereotypes for people to fall into in order to better classify the earth, especially in the terms of consumerism and culture.

Anyways, I have a theory on why students feel the least amount of freedom in school.

1) Too many rules. High school is filled with a bunch of useless rules that intimidates students. For example: not wearing hats in the halls. This rule is so useless and I am pretty sure the only reason it is still around is because it gives authority figures a reason to assert their authority. This leads me to my 2nd point.

2) Too much authority. Obviously for safety reasons teachers and principals need to have a degree of authority over students but when a student walks into a classroom where they are instructed lessons and not encouraged to join in conversation equally with their teacher and classmates, they are not going to be successful in thinking freely. I had an amazing teacher once who was able to do both assert her authority over the class while also encouraging class participation. How? She didn't take bullshit and had a tough exterior but was also understanding and showed a great deal of compassion. She was also passionate about her subject she was teaching. She encouraged conversation by refusing to continue until people replied to her questions. She used group-work more than once a week to encourage classroom relationships. She wouldn't force you to work but would encourage it. It was the perfect amount of authority.

Anyways. This is just what I think. We need freedom in classrooms to be able to actually learn without bias. This is the gold nugget all teachers should strive to capture in each and all of their lessons, classes, days, and in their career. It is very important that students both get the factual material but also are given the chance to speculate it freely.

What do you think? Do you agree with my theory? What do you think about freedom in schools/classrooms?

I'd love to hear in the comment section!

I don't know anything

"I know that I know nothing" - Socrates

In my english and philosophy lectures the concept of knowing nothing and accepting your ignorance. I was perfectly okay with this concept and let it sort of sit in my brain for a while until it hit me.

We actually really know nothing. Well, at least I do not know anything. Mark Edmunson's essay Why Read? which we read in english, essentially stated that one must abandon their past to fully examine a text. We must admit we know nothing, that we are ignorant. It also has a concept of "knowingness" which is essentially what is expressed by academics, they seem to know everything but they really know nothing. This concept is also explored in Plato's "The Apology".

After this sat in my brain for a while I finally absorbed it fully. I absorbed the concept that nobody really knows anything over a year ago. We can't be certain, we can only be almost certain, or likely. But what hit me was that I admire academics way too much.

I see people, maybe not necessarily famous academic geniuses, but teachers, professors and authors as these super geniuses. They get paid to tell me things and they earn money off of the text I am reading, so they must be right, right? Wrong. I was aware of this concept previously too, I just never made the entire connection until this week. Thanks brain.

But academics can't be trusted. Well, they CAN be. But they shouldn't be.

Also, you are not an academic who knows everything if you just know one thing. People frequently feel they are educated in all things when they are experts in one thing. I am really pushing "The Apology" on you, now. I love Socrates. So many people get annoyed with him. I just love dialectics.

Anyways. Don't trust academics. Listen to them without bias and then question the shit out of everything they say. That is my advice.

Don't even listen to me. I realized with my blog I try to be one of these "knowing people" when really, I also know nothing. I just hope that I am somewhat interesting enough to spark people's interests in some academic topic or even a tidbit of my life that can conjure a discussion or just a thought in your mind that keeps you going.

Also, I am still gathering traffic to my blog. So thank-you, traffic that somehow found me when I am never posting. I want to post at least weekly. I just find since I have started university it is so much harder to sit down and actually write out a full blog post. I will try my best. I promise. I also don't make promises, but I'll make an exception for my lovely corrupted readers. I mean, my lovely skeptics! XOXO;)

No, I did not just sign my blog with "XOXO;)". I take that back! Oh well.

The 4 favourite lessons of mine I didn't learn in high school (Ideas for HS teachers!)

There were many great life lessons, not just subject-related lessons I learned in high school. I found I had learned many things outside of high school that I felt should be taught in high school.

This is a compilation of those lessons:

1. To Question Everything
None of my teachers ever told me to question things.  I am not sure where I picked up this lesson but I think it is extremely necessary to be taught. It should be taught not to accept everything as is, to question the books you read, the people you meet, the lessons you learn, everything.

By questioning things you start to learn. You broaden your mind and you are able to get an open-minded perspective on the world.

"The important thing is to not stop questioning" - Albert Einstein


2. The importance of health and physical activity
Sure, the importance of health and physical activity was discussed a little in some of my classes, specifically grade 9 gym (and gym only has to be taken once in high school). Since you only need 1 gym credit, you don't need to keep taking it. You don't even really learn about eating healthy or how much exercise you really need.

There is no doubt to how important being healthy is for the mind and for the body.

To the best of the ability of the instructor, lessons on being healthy should be offered. Obviously not all courses are tapered to display traits of healthy eating or how to work out, but some courses like Biology, Gym, Foods, etc., can be altered.

3. Money Management
I used to be horrible at managing my money. I am slowly becoming better because I have been learning how to organize my money and budget it out so I don't overspend and I can afford the things I need. This was never taught in high school. I still don't know how to do taxes! Nothing about money is ever taught in school, except how to count it. Some people don't even know this! When I used to work at a Cafe many customers informed me I am the only one who could count back change in my head.

If I had it my way, there would be a half credit mandatory course on money management in high school.

4. Reading Skills/Active reading
Sure, we all know how to read (at least where I went to school). We know how to turn pages, look at the words and then we know how to use chart paper to display our knowledge of the book. But never once did a single teacher mention the words "Active Reading" to me. Active reading needs to be taught. This is a big issue, especially since in university/college everyone has to go learn on their own without a teacher holding their hand and most of this reading is from a textbook. Active reading shouldn't just be taught in an english classroom with a fiction book, it should be taught in all classrooms with non-fiction textbooks.

To those who do not know what Active Reading is, check out this link.

I hope this can help some high school teachers and curriculum creators to gain some wisdom into the eyes of what really needs to be taught in our high schools.



Are there any lessons you wish you learned in high school?

The struggle between reality and creativity

Lately I've been thinking about how my beliefs and thoughts are quite rational, logical and real. Quite often my beliefs correlate with either/or:

A) Doubt/Having no Clarity

B) Reality

I consider myself to be a creative person. I like writing, coming up with ideas, I love comedy and art. I would never consider myself to be realistic. Recently I noticed that I actually am realistic.

I'd say this time last yearish I wasn't realistic. By the end of August last year, I decided I didn't want a job, I didn't want to ever have to work or do anything. I soon justified that with wanting to go into politics or being a teacher, because those are actual jobs I'd want, but I just didn't want to do the pointless work towards them (school, elections, studying, etc).

I understand that to get to where you want to, you have to follow society. I can't be a complete non-conformist, nevertheless, I still think I am.

I have figured out that although life itself has no meaning, that society has given life meaning, in very VERY stupid ways. But yet, I adhere to some of these stupid ways because I like them. I keep being a non-conformist and a nihilist by only adhering to the things I like... which I like because I like them, not because society told me to like them.

Back to my point. I am an atheist because I like reality. I don't believe in myths, I like history, myths in history are interesting, I just think all of the theism in these myths are bologna. I consider most religious texts to be stories, fictional, possibly myths, containing bits of truth written from that point in time. Yet, I do not know there is a god, and so I believe that.

I guess it is not necessarily a struggle between reality and creativity. It's just that since creativity is generally associated with being more flexible and go with the flowy, while I am not that. I am realistic about many things.

I think they are sort of two different things. Creativity is fine as long as it is art or ideas. As soon as you put creativity into things like math and history, you run into trouble. You need reality to balance out the creativity. Reality and creativity need to collaborate. Sure, draw a picture of a dog with a horse head, but don't write a non-fiction book about it. Go ahead, write a history book, but don't get creative, history is done, history is known. That is called historical fiction.

I don't know. I just think being realistic can be also very depressing, which is why people like to be creative. I want to run for city counsellor at a young age, and it is highly unlikely that I will get the position. Many people will say "Don't think that way, because then you won't achieve anything!". I am being realistic. There is a chance, certainly there is. Anything is possible. Literally anything can happen. It is just unlikely. I don't think anything is impossible or certain. That's why I am a skeptic.

Skepticism is also associated with being more depressive and negative. But you know what? That is the reality. Question things. You must question things or else change doesn't happen. Some strong societal influences need to stop being positive and ignorant and need to get skeptical and question all good things and look for the good in bad things. That's the only time when being positive is okay. Looking for the upside in every bad thing, and the bad in the right.

This is why I am an (agnostic) atheist. I question everything. Well, not everything, just within realistic proportions. But I questioned the existence of god, rather than adhering to society's generalized belief there is a god, and I arrived at the answer that god probably doesn't exist, although since I am skeptic, I believe anything is possible, so I have to stick that little agnostic before atheist, even though I really want to be a complete atheist, I couldn't be a skeptic and an atheist, that just doesn't make sense.


Nice run-on sentence up there, eh?

I just realized how all of my beliefs sort of connect.
I am an agnostic atheist because I am a skeptic and I am a nihilist because I am a skeptic and non-conformist and I am a non-conformist because I am a skeptic and nihilist. Sort of. There are lots of reasons, it's just my beliefs instead of being scattered and unjustified are sorting themselves out without me even realizing it until now.

Weird.

I guess my point, since I have digressed so much in this single blog post, is reality and creativity should work together and support each other. Reality is important and creativity is important, and although they should "work together" they shouldn't be combined in the wrong context because that brings us to lies and things like the idea of god, which for this reason, society believes exists even though it doesn't.