The Tool of the Gods
I’ll never forget the day I dropped out of graduate school. I had already completed the course work for my Master’s degree and was ready to write my thesis. But one day I had an epiphany, a word I learned in college by the way. (and haven’t used since)
I realized that for me, school was a complete waste of time and that I wanted to pursue filmmaking instead. My family freaked out of course. Quitting so close to the finish line seemed crazy. But to me, the only thing that was crazy was having gone to college in the first place. So I became a dropout and a filmmaker.
I’ve never really trusted school. From kindergarten right on up to university level, school always felt like a scam. There was a strange, artificiality that just felt wrong. So I’ve always been deeply suspicious of the educational system. I knew what it claimed to be and what it claimed to do, but I never bought it. Those claims always sounded like false advertising.
A recent blog of mine dealt the with the fashion industry. I called it a machine designed to shape society. I sometimes think that the educational system is designed to function in much the same way. Granted, one purpose of so-called education is to teach the fundamental knowledge we need in order to function in life; reading, writing and arithmatic; the “basics”. But these basics are actually a very small part of what education is all about. There’s a whole other curriculum being taught.
We’re born into this world with a precious, powerful gift. It’s called imagination. Like a magical wand, imagination can be used to open doors to endless possibilities. We may be born with legs, but it’s imagination that gives us wings. Imagination is the one tool that enables man to be a god. Or course, we don’t live on Mount Olympus. We live on a plantation.
Maybe the real purpose of the educational system, from kindergarten up to the university level, is the continued production of the worker class. Visualize a long stream of smiling graduates with diplomas in hand… all seated on an endless conveyor belt. The widgets of tomorrow. And the single most important first step in building a good widget/worker is the removal of the imagination. Imagination is for gods, not beasts or drones. Efficient workers have no need for imagination/wings. Maybe schools are just behavioral training laboratories where students learn the skills they’ll truly need in society; the real basics:
1. Performance of meaningless tasks
2. Memorization of useless information
3. Blind obedience to authority figures.
No wonder big business and major corporations have traditionally been the biggest donors to education. If you’re having trouble understanding what I’m saying here, maybe it means you’re “educated”.
In all fairness, most people aren’t meant for godhood anyway. So removing their imagination is like removing their appendix. It will have no negligible effect. In fact, most people are probably better off without wings. Some people are perfectly content to answer the questions.
Hopefully, other people will continue to question the answers.
Posted on Friday, November 26th, 2010 at 11:19 pm. Filed under: Random Ramblings Tags: education, imagination, school RSS 2.0 feed.
The Tool of the Gods
I realized that for me, school was a complete waste of time and that I wanted to pursue filmmaking instead. My family freaked out of course. Quitting so close to the finish line seemed crazy. But to me, the only thing that was crazy was having gone to college in the first place. So I became a dropout and a filmmaker.
I’ve never really trusted school. From kindergarten right on up to university level, school always felt like a scam. There was a strange, artificiality that just felt wrong. So I’ve always been deeply suspicious of the educational system. I knew what it claimed to be and what it claimed to do, but I never bought it. Those claims always sounded like false advertising.
A recent blog of mine dealt the with the fashion industry. I called it a machine designed to shape society. I sometimes think that the educational system is designed to function in much the same way. Granted, one purpose of so-called education is to teach the fundamental knowledge we need in order to function in life; reading, writing and arithmatic; the “basics”. But these basics are actually a very small part of what education is all about. There’s a whole other curriculum being taught.
We’re born into this world with a precious, powerful gift. It’s called imagination. Like a magical wand, imagination can be used to open doors to endless possibilities. We may be born with legs, but it’s imagination that gives us wings. Imagination is the one tool that enables man to be a god. Or course, we don’t live on Mount Olympus. We live on a plantation.
Maybe the real purpose of the educational system, from kindergarten up to the university level, is the continued production of the worker class. Visualize a long stream of smiling graduates with diplomas in hand… all seated on an endless conveyor belt. The widgets of tomorrow. And the single most important first step in building a good widget/worker is the removal of the imagination. Imagination is for gods, not beasts or drones. Efficient workers have no need for imagination/wings. Maybe schools are just behavioral training laboratories where students learn the skills they’ll truly need in society; the real basics:
1. Performance of meaningless tasks
2. Memorization of useless information
3. Blind obedience to authority figures.
No wonder big business and major corporations have traditionally been the biggest donors to education. If you’re having trouble understanding what I’m saying here, maybe it means you’re “educated”.
In all fairness, most people aren’t meant for godhood anyway. So removing their imagination is like removing their appendix. It will have no negligible effect. In fact, most people are probably better off without wings. Some people are perfectly content to answer the questions.
Hopefully, other people will continue to question the answers.
Posted on Friday, November 26th, 2010 at 11:19 pm. Filed under: Random Ramblings Tags: education, imagination, school RSS 2.0 feed.
All content © 2012 by Miko Montgomery