I almost lost it today on a couple of occasions for almost no reason at all. Well, not true, but it's just a matter of having unresolved issues piling up...I felt myself going during one of my 8th grade lessons. It just hit me that I didn't want to be doing anything at the moment and it was useless, being an information conduit. I guess it was just the manifestation of my frustrations with the HUGE 8th grade curriculum on the human body.
And at home, Jenna left a copy of her LSAT study book, so Nanosh and I have been leafing through it. And I've been realizing how hard it will be to return to the States. The LSATs are about time management - calculated down to the second. You are basically supposed to demonstrate your cool under pressure and how efficient you can be. What kind of priorities are those for a thinking, feeling system?
I guess it's difficult to be inside a dysfunctional subjective system and judge a function objective one. But I feel like there must be some middle ground. There must be a general system that is not so heartless and still fair. I feel like this is the American ideal of old, lost among price wars and pure capitalism. And the Europe that created such an ideal, experimented in their colonies (like America, Mozambique) to varying results.
It seems that here, the ideal is survival. Traditions have been replaced even on the very basic level by colonializing powers' traditions, and thus have gone the traditional jobs, economy, etc. So a subjective system exists because those who have, want to keep having, at any cost. And the educational system, adapted poorly by many suffering countries, keeps the poor, poor. It's an objective attempt, but only the shell of an unfeeling, meaningless system.
This was my reaction at seeing a lesson summary for 8th grade geography that discussed the climate changes in low-pressure air masses. From experience, my 10th graders have trouble describing what a cloud is. What is it that they're LEARNING and not just memorizing? I looked at my own lesson and asked myself if I was in fact just another information conduit or something more.
Peace
John
