What school feels like to me
You don't have to read this, really...less known respond to it.
It is the first of August, and today I remember all the Augusts of my life. They always felt very sad because I knew that school would come and take the music and the joy of life away from me.
As a small child, school was simply something that took me away from my Mom, who made summers happy and meaningful.
Later, school was a place where friends seemed to lose their benevolence, as they lost their "innocence," whatever that meant.
Still later, high school was a place where teachers didn't have to understand education to teach us students; as a result, a great many educators proved to be bitter, tired, uninterested people who made learning a bureaucratic vocation instead of a natural progression of mental frutition.
In college, school was a place where people would go to great lengths to make the world a confusing, harmful, undesirable place, at a time when cloaked villains damaged countries and killed thousands.
And throughout these times, school was always a place where music slowly, slowly, slowly, died.
In high school, I watched musicians in their most happy state become foolish and angry at the world due to an environmental and developmental atrophy that seemed to grip my peers. In college,...well, music was a prescription...it was a requisite...it wasn't a method of healing people or giving something back. It was whatever noises you can sell to an audience that will keep you going.
Yes, Augusts are sad for me...the music in me just dies...and I know that the life of the world around me will disappear soon, as it does every fall.
But this time, I will be the teacher. I'm the one whom the children fear in a few weeks. I am the person who will make life as depressing for kids as it was for me. As much as I want to make children happy, I'm convinced that there will be something that will frustrate and cause children problems. Classrooms are not classrooms anymore...they are cells within a funded institution for the sake of manipulating children like so many factory materials, the finished product of which is anyone's guess.
I've always felt that I had to compromise my enjoyment of teaching and education, just to get a vague sense that the kids enjoyed themselves. I love it when children are happy. I am depressed when they are depressed...I am at peace when they are at peace.
Again, not really sure why I'm writing this.
It is the first of August, and today I remember all the Augusts of my life. They always felt very sad because I knew that school would come and take the music and the joy of life away from me.
As a small child, school was simply something that took me away from my Mom, who made summers happy and meaningful.
Later, school was a place where friends seemed to lose their benevolence, as they lost their "innocence," whatever that meant.
Still later, high school was a place where teachers didn't have to understand education to teach us students; as a result, a great many educators proved to be bitter, tired, uninterested people who made learning a bureaucratic vocation instead of a natural progression of mental frutition.
In college, school was a place where people would go to great lengths to make the world a confusing, harmful, undesirable place, at a time when cloaked villains damaged countries and killed thousands.
And throughout these times, school was always a place where music slowly, slowly, slowly, died.
In high school, I watched musicians in their most happy state become foolish and angry at the world due to an environmental and developmental atrophy that seemed to grip my peers. In college,...well, music was a prescription...it was a requisite...it wasn't a method of healing people or giving something back. It was whatever noises you can sell to an audience that will keep you going.
Yes, Augusts are sad for me...the music in me just dies...and I know that the life of the world around me will disappear soon, as it does every fall.
But this time, I will be the teacher. I'm the one whom the children fear in a few weeks. I am the person who will make life as depressing for kids as it was for me. As much as I want to make children happy, I'm convinced that there will be something that will frustrate and cause children problems. Classrooms are not classrooms anymore...they are cells within a funded institution for the sake of manipulating children like so many factory materials, the finished product of which is anyone's guess.
I've always felt that I had to compromise my enjoyment of teaching and education, just to get a vague sense that the kids enjoyed themselves. I love it when children are happy. I am depressed when they are depressed...I am at peace when they are at peace.
Again, not really sure why I'm writing this.