These days have been weird - out of the ordinary routine type of weird.
It’s 2:14 PM and I haven’t done much as all, I think I got out of the shower at 1:30 something where I used up the last of my Pineapple scented body wash that I got in Hawaii. Tomorrow is Monday which means back to school in a frenzy of AP tests and test taking and in my case - taping together math notebooks and writing a paper about socialist ideas that I may or may not agree with.
Today, like every Sunday, I visited the post secret website to view other people’s outcries that occasionally shadow my own inner feelings. I was struck by one from a professor that said he threw away all his student’s end of the year papers because the lack of originality.
I always wondered if reading the same prompt over and over again made a teacher angry or if they just were satisfied that the student was fitting into the lines and thus, eligible for the real world.
The first time I took my state’s state standard test for writing, I meet the standard, which is all you need to graduate, but I didn’t exceed which is what you need for a scholarship instate. I often wonder if it was because I decided to go out of the box. I knew I had a chance to retake it (and I did, and exceeded J) but I wondered what would happen if I just did something no one expected.
Apparently, I was coherent but no one was impressed by my ideas.
I think that made me sadder then actually having to retake the test. I wanted someone to be like, wow! How clever this was different then all 4085094 tests I just read!
Other tests, I’m not so lucky to try something different It’s a one time deal. I don’t know what they want from me.
Sometimes, I feel like school stifles creativity. If not for homework, would we be creating works of art - compositions inspired by endless sky instead of enclosed classrooms or ideas sprung up from city life instead of just reading about it.
It’s funny to think what changes you. A single second, a 15 year friendship, a voicemail, or a television show.
I went to speak to one of my teachers but he wasn’t there - a meeting was taking longer than he thought so instead I resolved to visit a teacher I’m not even sure likes me. He just continued doing what he was doing and I resolved to sit in the back and pull out some homework but really that was just for show.
I surveyed the classroom - all the walls were lined with colorful ‘things’ to be the most specific. There were cellular respiration diagrams drawn haphazardly with the markers that smell like fruit and diagrams of evolution. A photo of a butterfly changing for a striking cyan to a subdued orange color. It was hard to find the stark white brick behind it all. I realized, he was a good teacher, or at least a person. It wasn’t his fault I didn’t like him or visa versa, he was trying his best and I was trying mine most of the time anyway and sometimes, we all just have those kind of days.
Then we got to talking and maybe it was my imagination but we had said sorry for a few things without literally speaking such syllables.
So, my life got a little less hectic.
Teachers want to see you succeed and I think that if you realize this and keep this in mind, a lot of things make more sense and a lot of things become easier.
When I fill in bubbles and get assigned a number based on how well I did, I appreciate the genius of it all. It all is really such simplicity that makes our society run - how else can you evaluate so many minds? Perhaps, you do need to stick them in a room and explain to them some things and it’s a combination of good teachers, good luck, and good genes and that’s okay.
Maybe, I’m a socialist.
But, I wouldn’t want to discuss politics so close to dinner and words and titles can never even start to scratch the surface.
Then one day I was talking to someone and he didn’t believe you could ever get to know someone fully and completely, even over a lifetime.
What he said made me sad but I realized there was no cynical connotations and that nothing he said was sad at all simply fact. It would be said if we could know someone fully and completely. Then, they stop surprising us and it’s always good to live on your toes because then you’re a little closer to heaven.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwJZJ9GyqKQ
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You're not the only one who thinks that school inhibits creativity. But yes I agree that all teachers want to see their students succeed, but sadly they have their hands tied behind their backs by school rules and standards to which they must adhere. If only school were more like an open playground where students are free to explore their own talents, rather than a mass-production mechanism.
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