Scribbles | 5SOS

Mikey

a/n: I could not for the life of me find a picture that fit this chapter, so enjoy this shot of adorable kitten

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My dear Mikey,

What even is school?

I mean, there's the textbook definition, the one that our parents and teachers recite to us from the tender ages of 4 and 5 until God knows when, though maybe it's forever if you're one of the unfortunate ones.

It's weird though, because it seems pretty apparent to me that going to school "to learn, enrich your mind, figure out what you want to do with your life, and be successful" aren't even among the top things that a lot of people take away from their school experience. I mean, maybe it is, but it's not what I've taken away.

I'm currently a high school senior, about to graduate from a school system that I have been in since kindergarten, go off to a school far away to live with people I've never met and gain an education in an entirely different way than I've been previously taught. While this should terrify me, however, it doesn't. Why? Mainly because I've realized that the primary thing my school has taught me is how to dread assignment upon assignment, test upon test, homework upon homework, until I can barely breathe anymore. I can't wait to get away.

I understand wanting to "prepare kids for college," but high school isn't doing that. It's giving you tons of work to push you to your limits, which may have some benefits, but not all the time. College is such a different experience than high school. Why pretend that you're teaching us to deal with that? You're going to sink or swim either way, so why the soul-crushing amounts of work, huh? Just because?

Alright.

I think about school more than I think about a lot of things, but it takes a lot more than being cognizant of facts to excel in our current education system. It's a system that is greatly flawed, for reasons social, educational, economic, and even political, that holds kids back from doing what they're supposed to do. What people forget that they're supposed to do: be kids.

The choice is simple: mature quickly and disregard the years of freedom and excitement that should come during the overwhelming experience of adolescence, or embrace this and risk putting all of your grades at risk, thus potentially ruining the rest of your future.

I feel like I've chosen the former, and while I've had some worthwhile experiences during my teen years, I can't help but wonder what else I could have been doing in the time spent worrying about Biology tests or finishing History papers. What is more important in the end?

Yes, yes, you're probably saying that it's obviously friendship and hope that's more important, but what about the future? What about struggling in order to fulfill lifelong dreams that you couldn't achieve otherwise?

It's an impossible choice, especially in systems where kids deemed "smart" are encouraged and pushed to do well while kids who are "dumb" are put in remedial classes and forgotten about, written off as less important. It's sickening.

It's hard enough navigating your teen years with friends, insecurities, and coming into your own as a person, now school becomes another stressful punishment added onto the seemingly never ending list of worries.

The other day I was walking home after a particularly difficult school day, and I couldn't stop thinking about the amount of insane studying that I'd have to do for my finals next week. I wasn't thinking about what kind of information that I might need to know for the future, instead just about cramming enough facts into my head so I could take the tests, and then let that stuff go so I could take more tests.

Finally the realization that had been constantly just out of reach came into my grasp; school isn't about teaching kids facts and knowledge for the sake of being a more well-rounded person or for the sake of understanding the world around us, but instead just so we can continue on to the next level of education. We go through each level, each test, preparing us for what is next to come, but not for what is really real. We learn things in elementary school to go to middle, things in high school to go to college, and then sometimes from college even further.

We are learning to get grades, not learning for life. We're not even necessarily truly learning to move to higher education either, it's just what they continue to tell us. So we submit. We listen. We do what everyone else has done in the past and will continue to do until at least into the foreseeable future.

This bothers me.

I know that not everyone may be in agreement with me, considering different schools encourage different behaviors, whether it be due to specially stylized teaching methods or culturally different beliefs on education, but I feel like at least part of this may ring true for many people.

And then I think of you, Michael. I think of how you despised school, dropped out, because you were written off as unable to think intelligently, your mind filled with video games instead of math formulas.

You chose the road that I didn't, the road that involved fun, and hope and personal happiness. I mean, it was probably quite terrifying and demoralizing to give up the thing that we've been drilled into us is necessary, but that didn't stop you. You were sick of being treated as dumb, sick of thinking that you actually were dumb, and you took a stand.

Things like this remind me that there are multiple kinds of intelligence, and that we spend too much time placing worth on formulas and equations, on memorizing the events leading up to WWI, or analysis of what Blanche's white dress meant in scene 10 of A Streetcar Named Desire. You can know all of these things and still know nothing real about life, so why is this what we classify as intelligence? Is it because it lets us do better on the SATs, have a better GPA, help us get into a more prestigious college? To me, this suddenly seems pretty dumb.

Although I may have taken the road of studying, writing essays, and doing homework, I realize that this is not what seems one person as intelligent over the other. We must try to come to a fuller understanding, to treat people in a way that makes sense and leads to the greatest overall good and leads us to find our own happiness.

And thanks to you Michael, I feel as if I'm starting to understand that more.

Thanks for teaching me something that school won't.

I love you,
M