And another thing about school...

Back when I was in grade 8 we started a new subject at school. It was called Counseling. For those unfamiliar with the subject, it’s basically one of those useless ‘voyage of self discovery’ subjects that us scholars listed under the broader ‘Fartarse subjects’ category. It didn’t take much for a subject to fall into the fartarse category, the criteria were simple:

1- No studying required 2- Walkover teachers (the kind you …well, walk all over…) 3- No exams 4- Lots of group work 5- Minor contribution to ones report card

A few other subjects that I considered fartarse were religion, history of art, computers, art and sports (all sports… no exceptions). I’m drifting… in any case back in Counseling classes, we were encouraged to think out of the box. In scenario X your preferred response would be ‘______’ (insert well thought out answer here). We’d answer a whole bunch of random questions after which our scores would be tallied and we were placed into categories similar to the fashion in which a farmer would grade his… potatoe crop for sale to different markets (hmm… struggling to think of a nice analogy here).

These magical categories were supposed to give you a better idea of the carrier path you wanted to take. For example, Jane scores xxx points! Well done Jane you are an Eagle/Ant/Fish/Dungbeetle. You should become a Doctor/Accountant/Social Worker/Plumber… Good luck with that! Byebye!


WTF!


It just pissed me off. Who was the arrogant piece of kaka that came up with this system and why did this person think that they could predict and guide the life of a 13 year old towards success by asking random questions and scoring us on our answers! We were kids, we had dreams, we had something to look forward to and that was already the best incentive for working hard and reaching our goals! Everything was going fine till we took your Satan spawn questionnaire and some A’hole decided “No, you wouldn’t make a very good aircraft pilot, maybe consider working 8 to 5, six days a week behind a desk in a small office counting stuff…”. GRRR!!!

Go AWAY! Just LEAVE! …and take your stupid questionnaire with you sadistic, dream shattering Hitleresque commie’ bastard!

If you are a kid reading this post (or adult that has fallen for that commie’ bastards trickery) take my advice: You have a brain! Just do what you want to and don’t let other people (especially those who haven’t a clue who you are) have an effect on your life decisions. If you don’t know what it is you want, simply pursue the truth… the rest will follow.

I finally understand

Let me take you back to when you were in high school. For me this was over 7 years ago (crisis!). How well do you remember your English lessons? I personally remember spending many an English lesson slumped at my desk waiting for something really exciting to happen (it never did...). Sure we had a great teacher and my mates were very entertaining (...behind her back) but I still recall pondering about the point of it all.

This is my mother-tongue language, I KNOW HOW TO SPEAK IT!!! Why, oh why, do I have to analyse crazy e e e e Cummings poems? What's the point of a book review? How will interpreting the lyrics of an Enya song affect my life for the better?

I picked up and read some of the 'greatest' English literature, (works by Shakespeare, J.D. Salinger, Chinua Achebe, Paul Theroux, J.M. *spit on the floor* Coetzee, John Wyndham... ) or at least that's what they told me. I did feel somewhat dissapointed that this was the best that was on offer. I didn't enjoy many of the set works and found it difficult to stay awake while reading others. Still, I persevered and basically put in just enough effort to get 60% for all submitted work.

This did come back to haunt me when I applied for tertiary education after matric. I was somewhat surprised to see that mathematics (the other subject I thought very little of... just get a calculator man!) and English were awarded more credits (used as entry criteria for various courses).

I only really understood the methods behind the madness after going into third year and postgraduate studies. Communication is EVERYTHING and therefore English is EVERYTHING! The better you are at communicating your point across to others the greater the impact you have on them. Once you have honed this ability, success (in whichever form you percieve it) will undoubtably follow. The best way in which one can hone this skill is by learning how others managed to do the same i.e. reading the works of great writers (however boring or pointless they may seem). These people are geniuses, if you can't appreciate what they do then you cannot begin to understand the delicate art that is communication.

As for the seemingly random poetry analysis, book reviews... these were tools used to open our young minds to something even more important than effective communication. Thinking! Back then we all (and when I say we all, I mean "I"...just in case my generalisation doesn't apply to the masses) took things on face value "it's written down in this text book, therefore it must be right" . We were not, as I once thought, being forcefed boring time-consuming crap to keep us occupied while our parents were at work (although that definition still applied to subjects like Counselling , P.E. and Religion). We were actually being taught how to look for deeper meaning. Theories are just that, they aren't right or wrong, merely some guys opinion. We weren't just being taught to question the theories put forward by others, we were also being motivated to come up with ideas of our own.

I wish someone told me all of this when I was still at school. I would have spent far less time faffing around, doodling in the margins, setting things alight, plotting how next to pick on the red headed kid...