I pretty much hated all of school. I was a bright kid, but I also had a knack for picking up on what it was the teacher wanted. I’d sit through class hours at a time diligently taking notes. I’d pick out the key points of what the teacher was looking for and had a pretty good idea of what was on the test. Just a matter of memorizing a few key points and some methodology for problem solving. Nothing out of the box mind you, all problem solving in a school environment has a specific method. I have to admit I really disliked it when a teacher gave us a project that was too open ended, or where we had to come up with too much of our own content. It became impossible to figure out what they wanted. All I wanted was to keep my head down follow the 80-20 rule, get good grades and get the heck out of there. I understood I wasn’t really learning, I’m just going through the motions to get a shiny degree so I can land an equally stifling job where I make the big bucks.

I do keep up on my own education outside of school. Where I can decide whats interesting and work on constructing my world-view as best as I can. I spend a lot of time trying to separate objective reality and my subjective experiences and piecing them together and trying to figure out whats going on in this world. Most of my personal education simply comes from reading a large cross section of books and working hard to keep an open mind. This site does seem to do a good job of lending some ideas, and proposing some interesting reading material. I’ll comment often, I look forward to your replies.

One thing I’ve learned so far is that it seems most conducive to give the person who assigns your grade or the person who signs your pay check whatever it is that they want. Keep a nice shell of “good” student and “good” worker, with a rather strong core of the real self. Then search far and wide for people who do appreciate the real self.

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Thanks for telling the story.

And I don’t know why I’m adding this, other than that it’s true: I think I’ll regret never working in a school you lead. That’s not smoke, either.

Another great post!

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The thumbnail version of the story was when I visited the computing lab where a bunch of Year Sevens were working on their “personal research projects”. A number of them had been Year Sixes in my 2006 class and I just wanted to see what they were up to. To my surprise one of my brightest and most receptive (to self initiated inquiry learning methods) ex-students was cutting and pasting slabs of text out of Wikipedia into a powerpoint. I expressed my surprise that he would choose to construct his project in a manner that seemed regressive from his 06 work and he just said to me quietly (paraphrased and subject to faulty recall) so his current teacher wouldn’t overhear, “Mr. Wegner, I like what we did last year and I liked having so much say over how I did things. Believe me, if I had my own way, I’d like to be still using those ideas and skills. But it’s easier and less hassle to do what the teacher wants, in their style, instead of trying to do things my way.”

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