I was for a long time a “product” of my schooling. I rolled off that production line as well as anybody could have. The kind of schooling I received as I grew up, was a product of the beliefs and understandings of the existing culture.
Culture is the “environment” one grows in – at times nourishing and at times (many times) it causes us to overly prune and shape one’s direction and amount of growth to conform to the “pot” one lives in. And I was what I consider “overly pruned”. But here’s the sad part about my own early schooling, after my teachers(some of whom were very good) quit pruning me to fit properly into the prevailing culture of the time, I took over from them! In my ignorance, lacking the capacity to develop disciplined, independent thinking and a deep level of inquiry, I continued stumping my own growth and continually pruned myself to conform to what I thought I should become.
I turned out to be no more than a manager and technician of beliefs and practices designed to perpetuate the status quo. My questions were not rewarded and I experienced the wrath of my principal many times for introducing “off limit” topics. My schooling had nothing to do with building capacity to think on my own or adapt to complex challenges. This was a system that pumps out people who may be able to solve a given math problem using equations and formulas, but have no idea how the formula was developed, lacking the ability to see beyond the surface – to what’s underneath. This was a system of schooling that teaches us that we are workers and consumers not citizens, because it has been overly influenced by the elite of the corporate and industrial world. This was a system that is based on pumping out widgets for a factory world that no longer exists.
In my later years, I have focused on de-constructing some of the learning I have experienced from my early “schooling” and taken advantage of life learning by travelling, stretching myself through extensive reading of diverse fields of study across cultures, time and fields of endeavour. I have taken responsibility for educating myself. I have learned the value of deep inquiry and the value of challenging a culture of comfort, laziness, ignornance and reliance on others to make our decisions. I have fallen in love with angry but truth-seeking prophets such as Chris Hedges, Naomi Klein, Howard Zinn and John Taylor Gatto, I have sought out and found wise mentors who also seek truth and embrace reality (as messy as it is). I feel liberated and strong in this new kind of learning. I am hungry for more.
