mega rant on schools and drugs and brainwashing
ADD i feel was one of the big drug movements... back in the early 80's when they (teachers being the primary person to "diagnose and reccomend treatment) reccomended ADD drugs to every kid who wasnt a perfect student... 10years later the meth epidemic explodes...
School and stimulants go together perfectly... schools are set up to indoctrinate a productive workforce in capitalist countries... i honestly learned almost nothing in school till at least junior high... nothing of great importance but random history and some earth science trivia knowledge... i feel that schools arent really about teaching and educating, rather a "pre-habilitation institutution"...
Childrens brains are sponges... capable of absorbing a lot of input... they also have relatively short attention spans and need fresh information all the time... how many times do we all remember being little and adults would be talking about stuff and one would say "should they [referring to us, the kid(s)] be hearing all this" and one would say "aww its fine they dont know what were talking about"... but we knew exactly what they were talking about.. and knew what word they were spelling when theyd do that... lol... and kids ask all sorts of questions... tons of them, constantly, about every possible subject... this is because they are always hungry to learn...
But what happens in school... you study one boring subject at a time and move at a snails pace and never move on to the next thing until youve practiced it for a week or a month or semester... most kids have the basic idea of almost anything you explain to them, the very first time they are shown... they wont be an expert, they will still make mistakes but they know the difference and want to be good at this cool new thing they learned and be motivated to practice and perfect themselves... but instead of moving quickly thru the lessons and letting the kids get excited about the next thing, they just sit there and tell them the same thing over and over and over and then male you practice it over and over and over...
Thos brings me to my second point... assume you happen to understand the lesson well, you practiced it a couple times and it all makes sense and the instructor says
"yep perfect"...
Typically the very next thing they say is
"now heres some more for you to practice on"
This always irritated me to no end...
"why the eff do i need to practice more if im already perfect at it?"
"Can you give me he next lesson and let me see if i can figure out how this ties into it?"
"No?!? Why not? Ive got this part done perfect, you said so yourself, and you also said we would get to use this to learn more stuff once we got good at this"
"Ok then can we pretend i didnt come up here and ill just go back to my desk and draw or read till your ready to show us the next part?"
This was about the time they would give me an ultimatum like
"You can either go sit and do what i told you to or you can go to the principles if you keep arguimg with me"
I was sent to the admin office many times in first thru third grades for these sort of things... usually 2 to 4 times a month, sometimes that much per week lol..
4th grade i was transferred to another school because all of the teachers considered me a problem... they said i had no respect for authority and was adhd and could never stay focused on my work... i got excellent marks in every academic subject, but invariably would get "needs improvement" for; follows directions, attitude, makes use of time, effort, and working well with others... the last one i never quite understood, i thought i did... i enjoyed collabotating and idea sharing and trying to utilize individuals strengths and figuring out the most effective method to overcome their weaknesses and not make them feel bad for not being good and putting them on the spot, even as a young child i could see that making someone practice something over and over and over when they dont actually understand it doesnt help them learn... they might memorize that specific thing, but that is relatively pointless for basic gradeschool stuff... teach the fundamental idea and then move quickly on and demonstrate its practical uses and make me see some more advanced stuff and get a feel for the bigger picture...
It sucked moving to a diff school i thouht, because id known all the same kids since kindergarten and they were my only regular friends (it was a small rural school, only one class per grade 1-6) so basicly everyone in my class was somewhere between "best friend" to "pretty close friend that i invite to birthdays and get invited by them... in fact the class as a whole was great, nobody hated anyone or bullied or picked on anyone... everyone more or less looked out for their fellow classmates and there were no "weird kids" or anything...
When i started 4th grade it was a city school and there were certainly more individual circles of friends but i had no issues with anyone else and made friends pretty quickly... for the first month or two i thought it was great... i had all these new friends with new stories and subjects to talk about and the teacher was male which was the first one ive had by then who was... he kinda looked and spoke like my grandfathers friend who was fun and funny so that helped me not get as bored so fast, and id also started figuring out not to do anything better or faster than anyone else, about 90% was good enough to not get noticed for slacking or given special atention, but also wont get you given extra work or errands or some other special punishment for overachievers...
This kinda backfired on me tho... i would end up skipping over tons of stuff and just give the answer... especially math, but really anything where they wanted to see every step along the way and you had to put it in the specific format or whatever that they taught us last month or semester or year or whatever... "if the answer to the question is correct, what difference does it make what method i used to produce it? I shpuld get extra credit for doing ot in my head" they said they wanted to male sure i wasnt cheating... fair enouh isuppose... till i get a bunch of crap marked wrong on the next one and its not wrong and i showed every single step of how i did it... well it turnsout that my steps and methods were not the same ones they wanted, they wanted it done the exact way they showed you... "but the way you showed me was back when you first showed us and we didnt understand what it was for and it hardly even made sense the way you explained... you talked a whole hour about each step... i listened and studied and practiced and came up with my own personal method based on your teachings as well as others, i figured out the best way for me to do it, ill show you every step and it may not be your way but if its correct and does the same thing then you cant say its wrong!"
I kinda gave up on school... do just enough to get by and never ask questions...
Just like most jobs, keep doing this over and over, dont question your employer, if you get done early then do something extra, dont try to make it special or better, just do it good enough, and the promotions that end up giving you twice as much work and "more responsibility" and whatnot but only pay a fraction more...
Cannabis
