What matters school? We can go to school to-morrow. Whether we have a lesson more or a lesson less, we shall always remain the same donkeys.
Carlo Collodi, Pinocchio
Perhaps Pinocchio is right - you learn more things vital for survival outside of school. In such viewpoint, I made a relatively prodigal choice, to pursue education and study deeper. Ever since I watched a documentary on high school education
in my youth, it has been my dream to go to a boarding school, which is strange,
considering my antisocial personality. Somehow I did end up as a student of the
school I admired, but that was quite different from the utopia of school I have imagined.
I guess I were lucky, given a chance to follow the curriculum made by me made for me. Being able to participate in club activities, and choosing subjects I wanted to take. Yet unlike me who had an extremely wide range of choice, a lot of my friends complained about how they could not benefit wholely from what the school provided. For instance, they had to take mandatory subjects which colleges expected them to study. Tests such as KSAT, SAT, and AP were also another reason to limit their selection. Eventually, the results were rigid policies on advanced courses requiring to take a series of subjects mandatorily and homogenization of selection due to strong preferences over the courses to take. Nobody - neither the school or the students - were content on what happened, which was quite the opposite from the original intention.
Talking to my friend on this topic, I began to wonder what made me like going to school. I was not social or idle in class, so it was pretty abnormal for me to prefer being in school. As I searched through my old diary, I slightly found what might explain what I enjoyed going there.
Flashback to class in grade 5. After school class on music. |
My entrance ceremony as the first-grader consisted of the school orchestra, where I first met the beauty of strings and decided to learn to play the violin. I soon joined the orchestra which became one of my prior concerns and hobby in life, shortly after beginning to like classics. I remember even taking after school classes on music and going to concerts, watching and performing, as a member of the orchestra. Comparing what I felt about music now and then, I realized that the difference depended on how I interpreted the subject, which was heavily influenced by the academic focus the education system emphasized.
When we were younger, bigger variety of topics were allowed to seek. There was no limitation on fields of interest: sports, books, games, musicals, and et cetra. In the status quo, the range of choice remains the same on the surface, but when being realistic, there are too many practical burdens to overcome to track all subjects in favor, which would have been the reason to feel that the school was much fun when we were younger. And for me, it was the after school activity that intrigued me.
Sharing my memory with others, I also realized that this experience was not available for everyone. For some of my friends who were never given the chance to seek what they liked or did not know what they preferred, education was more like a path designed for them to follow. Education should provide the opportunity, also for them, to discover what the world awaits with them.