Sunday, March 18, 2012

The Education Continuum VIACOM'd

{Note - I wrote this post Friday during Eighth Period... I haven't had internet since as I was in West Virginia. I'll post about that next... but as for now, here is a lovely post/rant thingy}


If you were to go ahead and walk in during an English class, you’d probably see some form of the written word being, well, written. Odds are, we would be clacking away at some outdated laptops writing a paper about some old piece of literature, and giving our modernized thoughts on it. What you wouldn’t see is any actual literature being created.

I think it is a major flaw with our education system today that we study works that are out of touch and do not encourage the creation of anything new. However, as my last blog implied, I am not qualified to give comments on this matter.

 I think that we are victims of a flawed system. As a video that I talked about in an earlier post said, our education system is designed to work with the thoughts of the Enlightenment, not two hundred years later in a modern school system.

I believe that if we threw out the archaic thought that only PhDs should write a curriculum, and let retired teachers, or even teachers currently in the workforce write the curriculum, we will once again be on top of the education game.

I bring this to your attention not because I want to have a revolution, but rather to use it as an exaggerated segway into talking about writing itself.

This past Wednesday, our school had a community service day where we as high schoolers gave back to the communities in which we reside. I got to go (huge surprise here) to the Andrew Carnegie Free Library. I organized, dusted and went through their entire {American} Civil War collection, and also cleaned up a hallway or two and part of their storage.

In a period of downtime, I talked to the executive director of the library about the building itself, and if anyone had ever written a complete history of the place. The building is well over 100 years old, and yet she informed me that no one had ever taken on anything of the sort. I have made it my mission to over the next few years publish such a project.

I apologize for the brevity of this post, but I am strapped for time.

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