Life experience

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Children should not be expected to gain any real wisdom while they are in school. Life needs to be lived in order to understand some things, like philosophy, politics, and law. School can equipt them with the tools to understand, but it can't give them the experience to have insight into very adult circumstances.



I am truly amazed at this somewhat simple truth that I've found today. I wish it were the way things really worked, though, because it was not the way I remember school. I remember school as needling us to do many things which, even in retrospect, were useless to a growing child. We were supposed to remember facts and figures, and commit them to memory in the strictest way, and to have no real mind to explore or question what we had allegedly learned. How can a 15 year old understand the adult topics presented in many books, regardless of whether it's Julius Caesar or Charles Dickens? and yet, we never were allowed (as in our own choice) to read things which were more conducive to the juvenile mind? If we read other material, it was never discussed, and we had to either share only with our circle of friends, or keep it to ourselves.

It's different now. Now, kids can share with an online community of friends, and they can learn through the web circles they make. If they want to share "My Darling, My Hamburger" or "Planet of the Apes" with others, they can. Get away from Tom Sawyer and read Huckleberry Finn instead; read "Sherlock Holmes" and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Let Silas Marner fall by the wayside, and bring "The Outsiders" in, instead!

In Chemistry, explore each element as it's pertinent to our everyday living, instead of expecting kids to recall the Periodic Chart, get them to discover life examples of what each element is like, and kids will remember things easier!

I swear I learned more about Physics from MacGyver than I ever did in high school!

History is one area that I feel is never explored enough. In my first year in college, I took a course about English history, and the professor was recalling all these monarchs, some information that was likely not in regular course books, and we learned more about England in that one course than in 6 years of junior high and high school.

If kids can't feel that everyday life is a chance to make them more inquisitive, and that life itself is the greatest example of history they will ever know, then how are they expected to adjust to the real world from the sheltered existence of school?

Today, I looked at quotes from great people, and learned a little more. I took quotes that in some way reflect my life at the moment, and in so doing, I gained insight in knowing I am not alone in the world with those thoughts--that history shows over and over again that people in other places, other situations, felt exactly the way I do at any given moment. Isn't that just so cool in its simplicity?

[Ricochet21]

1. I agree

I agree

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2. Thanks.

I try. :)