When I hit a certain age I was dragged from my free and easy life of fun - chasing squirrels, watching cartoons and playing games with grandma - into a life they called 'school'. The early days were ok. I remember, probably aged 5, building sand castles and drawing pictures with crayons. I guess I was too young to question things, I just lived in the moment. But as the years rolled on I started to realise the ridiculousness of the situation.
It wasn’t that the school teachers were idiots. But I could clearly see they weren’t teaching us what they wanted to teach us, or what they believed was true or even relevant to real life. They were teaching us what their bosses and what the system that created the curriculum in the first place, wanted them to teach. I realised that the teachers were compromised by needing to earn money, just like all the other adults. Most importantly for me this group of people tasked with ‘educating’ us kids simply weren’t asking us what we thought about things. There was little to no discussion or debate about the validity of the information being presented to us. There was generally just one viewpoint on show.
The classes felt mostly like brainwashing and I didn't like it. I was sitting there, bored out of my skull, dreaming of being some kind of an inventor; designing cars and space rockets and making movies and stuff like that. I was well aware that a time was coming when we were all going to go out into the world and have to earn money, but unlike the real world - without any need for entrepreneurialism, individual thought or even much creativity, the recipe for ‘success’ at school was overly simple and completely removed from reality.
First rule - pay attention to teacher. Second rule - try to remember what he/she told you. Third rule - go over and over this stuff until it could be parroted. Lastly, be a good little parrot on exam day. Adhere to these rules and you’d win. Winning meant being awarded with a piece of paper with a score, per subject. We were told that this was effectively a competition to earn as many high scores as possible, and high scores led to a well-paid job at the end. I didn’t buy it. How could that possibly be true? This, in my humble opinion my friends, was a fraud. We were all being lied to. This wasn’t education at all, it was an attempt at indoctrination.
Far more often completely bored than stimulated during classes (especially when there were none of my favourite girls in the classroom), I dreamt of getting out. I wasn’t much into absorbing any information. It felt hard work to try to cram data into my brain. I wanted to create - to get stuff out of my brain, not into it. I knew that the inevitable was coming (leaving school to go to work) and I wanted to get a head start. I figured it was ideas, attitude and connections that would create success ‘out there’, not school high scores, so I went about nurturing those things instead.
Some classes were a riot, however. I have a very fond memory of one my woodwork theory classes featuring myself and my good friend Stuart Lambert singing ‘oh vienna!’ at what felt like the very top of our voices, over and over again. We loved the Ultravox song that was in the pop charts at the time. Our teacher let us carry on singing, and loved to show us his Star Trek spacecraft that he’d meticulously carved, whenever he could. His creations bore very little relevance to the official curriculum. I think he knew what many of us knew, that the 'education' system was a fraud and it was better to try to have fun and pursue one’s dreams than to take this data-absorbing stuff too seriously.
As soon as I was old enough, at the grand old age of 13, I set about doing a paper round to get ‘out there’. I would wake up early every morning and bike to the local shops. Trevor, the newspaper shop owner/comedian (well, he made me laugh) loaded up wads of newspapers into a big reflective sack and off delivering them I went. It was extremely satisfying compared to school. I achieved my first earnings this way, as many kids do, and it totalled four pounds a week. My very own money! I loved riding up driveways of big houses, feeling the energy of other people’s lives, imaging what happened in these places. I loved slacking off to flick through newspapers I hadn’t seen before (The Sun was a favourite - it resembled a kid’s comic but mixed with some pages of a more series nature, and always a nice bare-chested lady on page 3).
Some winter mornings were very dark and cold, and I was never an early morning person anyway, so as soon as I could I was lucky enough to be able to upgrade my career to working as a shop assistant on Saturdays. I was only 14 but I told the shop manager Michael Day that I was 16. I don't know if he really believed my little white lie but I must have been so keen to work there that he gave me a shot. I was so happy and I really felt like a grown up on Saturdays at that time, working the money till (working out the correct change in my head), dealing with so many different types of customer, learning about the shop's products. It was The Model Shop in Swan Lane in Guildford. We sold model trains, radio controlled cars, airfix models, paints and paintbrushes, glues, balsa wood, modelling knives, etc. I had a particular attraction to one side of the shop which was dedicated to rows and rows of cassette tapes featuring what was fast becoming one of my biggest obsessions... computer games.
I have to agree about the indoctrination camps, I mean schools. The problem I have with a set curriculum is that it teaches that there is only one correct answer so any opportunity for creative thought is removed from the education process. Nice article, looking forward to part 3.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Excellent! Always believed the traditional system of education need to be revamped... This video is one of the major reasons why... 3 hours of schooling per day and still #1 in the world ! Our kids deserve better than rehashed garbage... 'Smartest Kids in The World and how they got there" by Amanda Riley is my favorite book.