"Life After School"

Life After School
A Different Look At Life based on
My Ishmael-Daniel Quinn read online:

This book was very eye opening to me to hear thoughts that are so close in mind. Mr. Quinn talks about not being able to open up in school. To always be on strict and regulated rules instead of pursueing the true reason for learning. This book kept my attention all the way throught it was ironic and funny. It had a good meaning that was very easy to relate with.
This is a quote by Quinn, "What one sees first is how far short real schooling falls from the ideal of 'young minds being awakened.' Teachers for the most part would be delighted to awaken young minds, but the system within which they must work fundamentally frustrates that desire by insisting that all minds must be opened in the same order, using the same tools, and at the same pace, on a certain schedule. The teacher is charged with getting the class as a whole to a certain predetermined point in the curriculum by a certain predetermined time, and the individuals that make up the class soon learn how to help the teacher with this task. This is, in a sense, the first thing they must learn. Some learn it quickly and easily and others learn it slowly and painfully, but all eventually learn it. "

My first reaction was that it was interesting to read because it's true, I have heard many instructors discuss this issue during classes. When the teacher would start finding interesting ways to get us to actually learn about something, it's those topics that I remember. I don't remember learning anything of use from the test's and worksheets we were forced to fill out. I sat in class and wondered why we all had to learn the same things and weren't even given much room to pursue our own interests or explore the things we would soon be faced with in real life. It hardly sounds like an Einstein, Ghandi, or Edison would come from a institution so concerned with uniformity.

This makes another point though, about how little we retain from school, and how useful what we remember is. In other cultures, children learn useful skills, learn to create and how to live productively. When you graduate from high school it's a whole different world- we learn how to listen and do what we are told, and to not think out of the box-cause you don't get good grades when you work outside of the guidelines-it makes a lasting impression, we do things the same way we've always done them and rarely try to do anything different.

"In societies you consider primitive, youngsters 'graduate' from childhood at age thirteen or fourteen, and by this age have basically learned all they need in order to function as adults in their community. They've learned so much, in fact, that if the rest of the community were simply to vanish overnight, they'd be able to survive without the least difficulty. They'd know how to make the tools needed for hunting and fishing. They'd know how to shelter and clothe themselves. At age thirteen or fourteen, their survival value is one hundred percent."
"In your vastly more advanced system, youngsters graduate from your school system at age eighteen, and their survival value is virtually zero. If the rest of the community were to vanish overnight and they were left entirely to their own resources, they'd have to be very lucky to survive at all."

In conclusion, this is probably the reason there are now classes that offer skill's such as cooking, help you learn how to dress and act for a job interview, and give you advice on creating a budet. These classes are viewed as the easy A's, and yet students fail them every year- and have no clue what to do when they get out of school and try to make it on their own. I related to this story because I didn't learn very many valuable things from school that has to do with most day to day living.