“Education is not the learning of facts, but the training of the mind to think” Albert Einstein
Sitting today in front of my daughter’s High School, I have an opportunity to listen to my playlist, alone, at peace… As loud as I like😏 Love these special moments with myself and IMO they are not nearly enough… I need to spend more quality time with Me! But to get back to the point (you see that?? 🤪I got to the point in less than a paragraph!) coincidentally the poem playing on the way to school is by Suli Breaks, love the song, always inspiring: Don’t let exam results determine your fate.
Coincidental, because my daughter is busy with her final exams in her final year… Who am I kidding.. Everybody that knows me, will tell you I don’t believe anything happens by coincidence 🙄 (yes I play Randomnautica as well…) In short I am one of those annoying, flaky old weirdo’s, who believe everything is connected and nothing is random, singing kumbaya after a long day of hugging trees…you get the image. In the poem Suli says “….Exams are society’s methods of telling you what you’re worth…” I get this and agree. It coincides with my view on today’s twisted world. Grades implemented by society, determines your worth, respect and success as an individual. You have to study hard to get a degree at a good university, otherwise you might end up as a cleaner or shop assistant…With Corona, lockdown and quarantine those considered worthy with the highest salaries, were sitting at home because what they do, is not…not essential actually, not needed? Ironic…
Look, I’m not one of the best mothers – a shady past, a mouth that would make a sailor blush, eccentric (in the weird way, not the arty way) and a memory so shoddy, that I forget to make supper at times…and then of course I support ideas, like in this poem. According to the discipline-loving militaristic Boomer community, my ideas about education and careers are bad parenting skills. But you see, the problem is that the world we inherited is a cesspool of greed and twisted values created by our love for money and more money! We have to change something in the way we have been doing things and if that makes me a bad mother – then so be it.
I have seen all the things my daughter has to study and nowhere in my 44 years on earth, have I applied the shit I learned in school expect for the alphabet and arithmetic… Hey, I get it. We have to learn some basics, like reading, writing, simple maths and to understand how living beings and the world function… But 12 years of studying it? And if you get a degree, it’s an even longer period of study…and we all know you need a degree to get a good job and ultimately a good salary. The whole capitalist lifestyle can be compared to a beast with glowing red eyes and smoke trailing nostrils, dragging it’s front hoof on the ground, head down and ready to charge, destroying everything in it’s way…destroying the forests, the oceans, the air, the land…the world, to get more, always more…because you know, 🤷🏻♀️ CPI and inflation is always increasing which results in an increased cost of living! Just that phrase says it all!! ‘Cost of living’ – how much it costs just to life, to be alive. Seriously?
I say again, we need to change completely. It will take a long time and I will not see it in my lifetime, but poets like Suli and weird mothers like me have the ability to plant the seeds of change. Maybe we should start where it all begins in how we educate our children. How we assign worth and ultimately how we distribute wealth. Take only what you need and give the rest to others (Boomer in the back shouting ” You’re a Communist! Damn Socialist!”) I am not a communist, but you have to be honest and admit that in this quarantine period, we were carried by those getting the lowest incomes and yet considered essential…the cleaners, the shop assistants, the rubbish removal guys, the drivers, warehouse workers, nurses etc. I leave you with my favourite part in this poem.
So this one is for my generation,
the ones who found what they were looking for on Google,
This one’s for my “failures” and “dropouts”, for my unemployed graduates, my shop assistants, cleaners and cashiers with bigger dreams,
My self-employed entrepreneurs, my world-changers and my dream-chasers!
Cause the purpose of “Why I hate school, but love education” was not to initiate a worldwide debate,
But to let them know that whether 72 or 88, 44 or 68,
We will not let exam results decide our fate
Suli Breaks
