Thoughts of Education

From the beginning I want to make a few observations and set a few rules. First observation: You are reading my blog, and in no way am I forcing you to. If you do not like what I have to say, by all means please stop reading and stop thinking about it, I can almost guarantee you that you will have a much better day if it is spent not brooding over some thought or opinion that I chose to voice. Second observation: I am usually not the expert, I am still a student, still have real world problems, still am a man, and in many ways is still am completely capable of screwing up.

                Now for my rules, I have just three: 1) though it should be obvious this is only a blog and not a news source, please do not act like it is. 2) I will be a gentleman if you will, I do not now nor have I ever believe in double standards, let’s play nice. 3) Again though this should be obvious, DO NOT QUOTE ME OR USE ME FOR A RESOURCE FOR CLASS! I am training to be a teacher, and I will tell you now that if one of my students tried this I would fail them on the spot. If you are trying for an “A” go and find a real resource, and use that instead.

                Now what I do love talking about is anything having to do with the things that influence history, including every social issue (war, politics, sex, drinking, love, hate, media, health care, and the list goes on), everything that has ever caused a rational person to cock their head to the side and say out loud “What?”, and maybe most fun; anything someone wants to ask me about. So without further wasting your time reading my rant about my rants, let’s have some fun. Why don’t we start with my feelings about education.

                First off education is very similar to ambition, you will have a hard time getting anywhere without it. The being said there are many forms of education. Some would always equate education to being taught useless facts about subjects they want nothing to do with. This is in part true, education can teach you something. Whether or not you will ever use it is entirely dependent on the kind of life you will lead, for instance, as a history teacher, I will more than likely not be using advanced trigonometry in my classroom. But education can also teach you to be something (Plumber, teacher, engineer, mechanic, so on and so forth). Those of us who follow this train of thought are the people who know what they want to do with their lives and are driven towards achieving that goal. The last way that education can take a rather significant role in an individual’s life is by teaching them how to be somebody, and this is the form of education I most commonly agree with.

                In more recent time I have become increasingly aware of just how much my own style of teaching is a rather inflexible. I a keenly aware that most people have known no particular love of history classes; many find them dull or dry, where others still see as a useless subject as it has little to do with present life events. As such I usually have very few opportunities to change the fact that my students are usually going to have greater interest in the drama involved with teenage romances than with any lecture I can produce. And so to quote the words of the best teacher I ever witnessed "You are free to go to hell however you should so choose". I will present the information to the best of my ability, and do all I can to ensure that they retain it, other than that however it is up to them and them alone. if they cannot be troubled to take their own intelligence seriously, what more is there for me to do in order to help them?