November 05, 2005

Lamenter Lamenting Laments

So I have been very disolusioned with school as of late. I am just so tired of worrying about how fast I'm reading my books. School just makes you churn out a bunch of assignments who's merit is not based on quality, but whether or not you can make the dead lines, and how many famous people you quote.

In my labs, I'm required to cut and paste data from one exel sheet into the next exel sheet of stat formulas, then I answers a few uncreative questions, and at the end of the year I am expected to know how to do all the work on an exam.

One profesor forces attendance by the use of pop-quizes. It's worth 5%, and there are five in the year. They are based on things going on in the news paper, and require no critical thinking where I must apply real life to theory in the classroom.
I must answer cryptic questions like "Water, water everwhere, but not a drop to drink. Where am I?" and "I'm Jack Layton, what am I yelling at Martin about?" or "I talk soft, but I'm not soft about this issue:". Sure if you read the paper in the morning these are easy questions, but I don't read the paper. More to the point: how late did he stay up writing these questions?

I don't have anything interesting to say about my pshyc class, but it is equally unstimulating, and makes me wonder why the fuck I bother getting an eduaction. I would be just as happy do some go-fer type job, than be what ever it is that edu will get me in the long run.

This all arises from my activism course. It's voluntary, and despite competing obligations, I still manage to go, if only to listent to the speakers. One in particular, a prof in woman's studies spoke on feminism. This for another day. What stuck in my mind was that she had recently seen a talk by someone else on University, and she breifly mentioned how he said we have to question our school system. At first, I thought, gee no, school's great. But really the more I thought about it. There is just a billion of things wrong....

(for jen)... billions, and billions, and billions of things.

School tells me the pop will stabalize at 9 billion, or ten, depending on which expert you ask.
School tells me there is oil for years to come, others say this comes at the cost of peace and the environment.
School tells me school's about learning to learn, or it's playing a game, or just a peice of paper, or the best experience of your life (wasn't that highschool?), or a great institution. These all depend on who you ask.

If you ask me, schools a lot of things. Mostly, bullshit, high prices and assimilation.

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