It’s interesting that even talented kids, like this one, speak out against the education system…and the teaching of Shakespeare, even though he is funded by the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Mind-Blowing Synchronicities
aliens in the bsckyard
The Shift: Reports from the Mystical Underground
White Crows
Kids will always complain. But having taught high school in both western and Asian systems, this kid would probably complain a lot less if he saw what kids in Japan, Korea and China have to put up with. In class by 7.30 a.m. Text books stacked two feet high on the desks. Forget about “analysing” – the kids there would give anything to actually get to analyse something! No, they sit there reading the texts books out loud to memorise content; sometimes by themselves, sometimes as a class (and 70 kids in the class in China). School ends at 5.00 p.m., but there is no rest. Many are back in class at 7.00 p.m. for review, homework and study. Many others are in tutorial centres till 10.00 p.m., and then when they get home may study yet again to get a heads up over the competition. In Korea there is saying that 4 hours of sleep makes for a fine student. And all this may begin as young as two years old. At that age in Hong Kong kids are being taught interview skills so that they can get into a ‘prestigious’ pre-school or kindgergarten. The hierarchical nature of Confucian societies is such that everything is about “face” and making connections with people in power. If you get a bad score in your high school final tests, you have basically ended all realistic chances of being “successful” in life, at least in the conventional sense of the term in those societies. So when I hear kids in Western education systems saying they are being “repressed” because they have to do stuff they don’t like, I just roll my eyes. They have no idea how lucky they are.
School put me off Shakespeare (and much poetry and other classic authors) – especially the analysing and this was many years ago, so perhaps nothing much has changed. In saying this I am concerned about the education of today. I want my grandchildren to be inspired.
Just had an interesting sync after commenting here,I went over to Mike Clelland’s site where he had just posted a story about his friend Mac and a book of his old webposts from Mac’s “Posthuman Blues” site –
https://hiddenexperience.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/posthuman-blues-now-available-as-book.html
Mac passed away in his sleep a while back,and this book is an attempt to keep his work alive.
So “Young poet speaks out…” seems quite an apt description for Mac as well.
It’s funny how you follow the skull story in your previous post with this Shakespeare story.Just before turning on my computer I found my Alex Grey ‘Skull/Fetus’ necklace
https://shop.cosm.org/skullfetusnecklaces.aspx
which I had packed away before moving rooms.It now hangs right next to my computer.
The skulls of your last post and my Alex Grey post both remind me of the scene out of Hamlet where hamlet is in a graveyard holding the skull of Yorick.
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/25500.html
” Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rims at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft. Where be your gibes now? your
gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment,
that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one
now, to mock your own grinning? quite chap-fallen?
Now get you to my lady’s chamber, and tell her, let
her paint an inch thick, to this favour she must
come; make her laugh at that. “
Opps!
” Alex Grey post ” should read ” Alex Grey skull”.
you either create a better mouse trap,,, improve an agricultural process,,, invent a less costly portable port a potey,, lower the cost (energy) of desaliznation,,,, enigneers with imagination!!!!,, serve and enhance humanity,,, short of that you just like part of me and nost…… blahhhh angst