What I Am Reading

"As I got older my ambition began to boil and my fight with the education system intensified. I wasn't the only one who suffered. I would look around the classroom - in the dismal stillness of a teacher's droned lecture, or worse, as the scratch of pencils made the only sound - to see dozens of kids in slow atrophy. Of course, there were those who didn't mind it, or were too young to question the system, as well as those who seemed to actually thrive in the structure - watching them made me feel all the more dysfunctional. What was it they had that I lacked? However, I wasn't alone in my struggles, and over the years saw many brilliant and creative young minds bounded by walls, rules, conformity, and endless boredom. Artists, musicians, athletes, farmers, and free spirits of every kind of been hammered into submission by and archaic, outdated system. Even today it kills me to watch kids drag through school during the years when they should be out in the world, experiencing and learning. What does education do? As Thoreau famously answered: "'It makes a straight cut ditch out of a free, meandering brook.'"


Can you relate to this? I sure can.