Triumphant in Your Mind of the Logic that You Hold

Those are lyrics from Mumford & Sons' "Where are you now?". And I kind of apologize for not posting on Friday... I had a severe case of writers block mixed with post-midterm brain fried-ness. I'd say it's real, but I haven't consulted my doctor yet on that.

So what I want to talk about is one of my fears. I'm afraid that my generation here doesn't think. Now, this may strike in one of a few ways. Considering you are reading my website, it might strike you as an "okay, what do you mean by this". But to the majority of people who don't read this site, that sentence would strike you as, "and what? Why do I need to think?"

And what scares me more than anything is that that is the majority of my generation, the ones that ask "why do we need to think?". When I pitched the idea of this post, as I occasionally do, to my father he brought up a song that had a line of lyrics that went something to the tune of "thinking is the best way to travel".

It is my thought that an emphasis from society and popular culture that 'someone else will always do the thinking for us' has poisoned into our lack of the need to think.

So I guess another question is, what is thinking? Dictionary.com defines it as "to have a conscious mind, to some extent of reasoning, remembering experiences, making rational decisions, etc."

My mind then wanders to that Sir Ken Robinson video about the current education system, and how the rise in standardized testing is parallel to the rise in medication for ADHD med prescription. He brings up the conclusion that the education system is not only not stimulating enough for its subjects, but the system itself does not work.

Being on the inside, I concur that the system doesn't particularly work for me. Since I'm 'gifted' I'm taking five honors-level classes, but in my personal opinion, I've learned more with my experiences at WYEP on random Saturdays than I have anyplace there.

Again, I recommend his video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zDZFcDGpL4U and John Green's TEDxIndy talk on thinking outside of the box called the Paper Town Phenomenon: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1mUDw0sRZV0. He says it much better. Draw conclusions as you will, Rant Over.