One of the Ancient Greek meanings of word school is to rest, leisure and errr to have fun. Now as you know, being a parent it generally is the polar opposite of this or at least your child thinks this. As for our kids, well 3 out of 4 ain’t bad as meatloaf sang, well he didn’t quite sing that but you know what I’m saying.
Child 3 has the problem with the education prison. He simply burns out very quickly and we can see it, we actually gave him a day off this for it this week.
You see the thing is, is that he is very switched on and ultimately I think that he knows that 90% of the stuff he is learning about is ultimately pointless, add this to the fact that in the UK we have gone down the route of building new schools with big open spaces which are like amphitheater’s. This is perfect for the increasing amount of kids with sensory issues…….NOT. Again these designs where poorly thought by a desk jobs worth.
What are my thoughts on school?
Schools have 2, maybe 3 good qualities. Quality numero uno:- you learn to learn. Yeap, once you have mastered the basics of mathematics and English, well a lot of everything else as I have mentioned is almost pointless but you are learning to learn. With the internet and things like you tube and obviously outstanding blogposts like this😉 you have all the tools for life at your fingertips for whatever subject you choose. Schools can condition ourselves at a young age that the concept of learning is required.
Quality number two. The social aspect, That fine art which western society is slowly slipping away from, talking to each other and making physical friends (of Course BeingDad is your friend as well). I think that this speaks for itself. Humans are social creatures and I personally think school years are extremely important with these social building blocks. Once you have close friends at school, you develop an almost un breakable bond with them.
I literally bumped into one of these friends who I had not seen for over twenty years recently and with in a few seconds, well school yard fun was like yesterday again. We loose this as adults. There is also the opposite of this unfortunately and that is bullying, it still happens in this day and age possibly in some respects it’s worse as the torture can carry on outside of school due to social media. As a parent, thankfully at the moment we have not encountered this. We have open book policy in our house where we discuss everything, drugs, sex, you name it and it’s an open discussion so I’m hoping should it ever occur then we will face it full on after all a problem shared is a problem halved. If you are alerted to this, needless to say the school should be contacted immediately.
The Fear Bubble
Ant Middleton is a former elite soldier and marine. He is now a popular figure on UK and Australian tv. He has also wrote a few books, one of which is fear bubble. In the book there is a section where a student is struggling with his exams, these tests are simply on the kids mind all of the time, so much so that the poor kid can’t function. He reached out to the soldier via social media and the author give him the advice of the bubble. You only have to worry about things when you are in that bubble so when watching tv, playing soccer or having tea simply switch off. When you are studying or at school, then it’s the bubble, attack the bubble then. We tried this with our third child. Sundays the shoulders would drop and any one of a number of illnesses would come on. I simply said “ look, your not at school now. You are only at school when you walk through them gates and then just take it lesson by lesson” I go further by saying “when you walk out the school, that’s it job done”. It seems to have helped.
Quality number 3 again can swing both ways and that’s because it does teach discipline. It does give kids a routine and there are rules. This helps for the foundations of a civil society because if kids didn’t have rules well have you watched Lord of the Flies?
These are the good points of education, I could go further into each quality but I thinks that’s enough for this post. Please feel free to comment. If your a teacher then what are you thoughts? I have a massive respect for you guys.
Education will cover blog post 5 and 6 because they are the bad and ugly side of schools/colleges/universities
Until the next post see y’all later
BeingDad
BeingDad 