Education.
Art : The lineup.
By Sakuan.
What’s education supposed to be like? Why did I not like school since I was knee-high? Was it a me problem? Was it my parent’s fault? Was it my teacher’s? or was it the system? I’ve been in school most of my life, I’m 25 now, there have been both good times and bad times. As for the reason why I didn’t like school, no clue, to this day I’m trying to understand the reason behind that. Maybe it’ll help if I list down the bad and the good things I remember about school. Both the bad and good are subjective, for you, my bad might be good and vice versa, so bear with me. Let me start with the good.
- I loved math class and I always looked forward to attending the class. I’m guessing the reasons behind me liking the class were: I always felt like it was easy, once you knew the formula and how to apply it, everything was clear and simple for me, I always liked the friendly competitions I had with my friends who also liked math, my math teachers always acknowledged the good work I was doing when I did well in an exam.
- I met new and great people throughout my early school years.
- In my early school years, my classmates chose me to be their “leader”, I was a prefect and I won the election through a voting system (democracy), and that felt good, it felt like people actually needed me, it’s a great feeling, at least for me, the feeling of someone needing my help and me stepping up to help them, without asking questions.
- I loved the fact that I was able to talk to people I was attracted to, that’s considerably a good thing, right? I think so.
- Some of my teachers were nice to me, so that was a good thing, some of them saw some potential in me, that was comforting to say the least.
- I learned a lot from my fellow students.
- I was able to play soccer and I loved it.
Funny thing is, everything I’m talking about was all experienced in my early school years, when I was in Kenya. From America I don’t really recall a lot of good things that I got from the schools I went to. It all felt as if I was there just to get the paper then I was out, that was my mentality at the time, I didn’t know too much, I didn’t have a life plan, it’s fair to say that when I was there my life had no meaning other than getting the paper and getting out of there. I didn’t make any friends, by the way I’m talking about the five years I spent in college here in America. My mentality at the time wasn’t really that great in my opinion, my reasoning was weird, for luck of better words. I don’t regret anything I did at all, because I feel like I did the best I could with the way of thinking I had at the time. Obviously if I had the mindset I have now, then I would do things differently, but I didn’t, so I don’t dwell, all I know is I did the best I could with the mentality I had back then.
Did I think I lost anything while in school? I mean…of course, there’s always two sides to a coin, right? The things I lost are mostly dependent on other people: my friends, school mates, or even teachers, but most importantly me. I’ll try to jot them down, jot things that I believe I lost because of attending school. Me losing some of these things isn’t necessarily a bad thing, some of the things I lost were inevitable, I needed to lose them so I can positively go to the next step of my life. Of course, some were bad…
- My way of thinking got sharpened. In that sense, I lost that ignorant side of me, at least some of it, it’s hard to lose a feeling like that fully, it takes time if ever. One example I have for you today is from the high school I went to, from 9th grade to 11th grade, it was an all-boys boarding school, and the population was 95% Muslim, I was raised catholic. I got to make friends who were Muslim, and they were great. I would say those were the best three years of my life.
- I lost a part of my family. What I mean by that is, since I was young, my parents always worked a lot, so we didn’t spend a lot of time together, to make it “worse”, I went to boarding school at the age of fourteen. I’ve spent more time in school than with family. Is that a good or a bad thing? Well, that’s subjective, depends who you ask, a family-oriented person or a scholar, the answers you get might tend to differ.
- I lost some faith in religion. As we know, I was raised catholic, that’s all I knew, I didn’t have any other religious thoughts other than Christianity. When I went to high school, the one that was predominantly Muslim, for the first time, what I believed in was challenged, it was interesting, I then started questioning just about everything, “was it all a ‘lie’?” The one thing I remember always asking myself was, “the bible says, if you don’t accept and believe in Jesus Christ then you won’t go to heaven.” But they’re nice people, they’re my friends, so just because they’re Muslim they won’t go to heaven? That didn’t make sense whatsoever to me. That was the first question, and that opened a door for many more questions, one of the big ones being, “God created Adam and Eve, they had two children, Cain and Abel. Cain killed Abel, and later the Bible said Cain had kids, where did Cain’s wife come from?” With these questions, I started questioning my religious beliefs more and more. Back then, I used to interpret the Bible as literal, I didn’t realize all those stories were symbolic, now I believe these stories weren’t meant to be taken literally, rather they were metaphors of how we should live our lives, at least that’s what I took from it. “There is no way the almighty is going to let three quarters of the world’s population go to hell, right?”
I think school is what you make it to be, I did what I was expected to do, but I didn’t fully conform to what was expected of me, because then I wouldn’t be living life. Sometimes you might want to break the rules, be careful while doing so, remember, don’t be a rebel without a cause.
