All My Soul

Cannibalism Essay

       Once upon a sunny spring afternoon, I was investigating the plot of a movie that was recommend to me by a friend. Wikipedia was my chosen research source and while reading about this movie, I found a side link about cannibalism. Intrigued, I clicked it. After reading part of the way through the article about cannibalism, I found and followed a link to the Donner party, read that article, and returned to the initial article. I discovered another link that led to "The Silence of the Lambs". I read all the way through that article (along with the articles for the other movies in the series, and another on Hannibal Lecter) before returning to cannibalism again. I spent a good 6 hours in this Wikipedia wormhole, all the while wondering why I was so fascinated with the topic.
      After much consideration I realised why I found it so interesting. It was because, after looking closer, I see cannibalism everywhere. At church, I see true spirituality being devoured by pretense and expectation and falsified faith. It appears with my friends, where people long for belonging so much that they consume true friendship. It demands attention in education, the true pinnacle of cannibalism, where real learning is made an example and slowly devoured for the sake of uniformity.
      Educational cannibalism suddenly became intensely fascinating to me. Looking back on my education, I can see it more and more. The first cannibalistic experience I remember was when I first started kindergarten. I was already reading at this point, and I wanted to bring books to school to read. My teacher would not allow me to bring books to class because reading above my grade level was out of the question. My education was already trying to consume me and my thirst for knowledge. I spent all of my first year of schooling learning what I already knew. This was the beginning. 
Educational cannibalism continues into my high school years.
     I have always loved english. I've loved the romantic aspect of the language, poetry, and books. I've loved it so much that in junior high I began writing and performing slam poetry in my spare time. But when I got into my junior year of high school, english became all about the critical aspect.  It was suddenly about learning to surgically dissect the language, to take it apart piece by piece and consume it, like an animal with its prey. Enjoying english became out of the question. My teacher once spent a good amount of our class period talking about how much she disliked poetry as it was "useless". My previous enjoyment of the language became invalid. My knowledge was not enough to sustain me through the class. Where I had previously thrived, I now struggled to keep my grades up. I was being devoured.
       Teachers have told me that my opinions are wrong, my sources questionable, my interests invalid. They tell me that I should be worrying about how to pay for college, what will look good on my applications, and which of my interests should be forgotten because, "...they will never take you anywhere in life".
In this sense, my formal education has cannibalised many of the things that I truly wanted to learn, and devoured much of my personality. Formal education demands that we either become the same, or suffocate.
       After thirteen years of this, I've come to one very strong resolution: I would rather be devoured than give up the knowledge that I have worked hard to gain. Knowledge is not just power, it is everything and nothing is worth the sacrifice of it.