Education and Dreams
Why the current education system is flawed and why we need to change it.
But it’s absolutely stupid to spend your time doing things you don’t like in order to go on spending things you don’t like, doing things you don’t like and to teach your children to follow in the same track….. so it’s all retch and no vomit — it never gets there.
If you haven’t seen Alan Watts speech “What if Money Was No Object”, I suggest you do before reading this.
Alan Watts said something in particular about the current Education System. He said that as a result of the current Education System students knew what they would truly like to do but had been taught that they will never earn money that way and so they perused jobs that will give them a steady income but not make them happy.
And he was absolutely right. When we were kids we would say that we would like to become Astronauts and Painters and our own bosses but as we grew up we were taught that we needed to be realists and that our dreams would never come true.
Half of the blame is on the curriculum and the other half is on the teachers.
Now not all teachers are this way and I have had a few that told us to stay optimists and to never give up on our dreams but the majority of teachers and not this way. I have heard teachers tell students to “get real” and I heard once teacher tell a student that he will never succeed at anything.
One thing that is extremely detrimental to students are career tests. Career tests attempt to judge someone by a few questions and tell them what job is best for them. While it can help someone pick a job it also tries to persuade them not peruse other paths that might like.
We are taught that the chances that we make any money doing jobs like writing, painting, horse riding, acting, etc… are slim and that we need to peruse “real” jobs.
But to that Alan Watts says:
“And after all, if you do really like what you’re doing, it doesn't matter what it is, you can eventually turn it — you could eventually become a master of it. It’s the only way to become a master of something, to be really with it. And then you’ll be able to get a good fee for whatever it is.”
We need to change the current Education System to teach students that money is not everything. Its better to have no money but to be happy than to have loads of money but to be unhappy.
We are taught that money = happiness and that life = money. While money is a large part of living it is not everything and most definitely not happiness, yet that is what we are taught and everyday they keep reinforcing the idea.
What we as children don’t realize is that money will not give us happiness and then we grow up, get a job and realize that we’re miserable.
In conclusion we need to start training better teachers, start working on a curriculum that encourages creativity, optimism and the idea that money is not happiness and lastly revolutionize the culture that teaches us to think like this!
