My pinhole view of the world
Back in school I learned what I was taught. As I grow older, I realized that my education has some very large blank areas. My worldview was offered through a pinhole and now I realize how little I actually learned. If we look at the high points of a standard high school education, I was taught to calculate the number of atoms in a mall. Or was it molecules? Probably both. I also memorized poetry, in Latin. Serve me not at all in the rest of my life. I can solve simple quadratic equations even though I never used that knowledge again. What I did take away from it was that letters and numbers are interchangeable in certain concepts. As for history, I feel that I learned nothing at all period of value. I grew up in a world that believed that Great Britain was the centre of the universe. And the kings were important. In reality sport really was important was that you could trade things for money. I was taught only to trade money for things. And since i had little money I received few things. I still cannot wrap my head around the idea of $1,000,000 and that you could get there by trading. In sharp contrast others in the world have had this figured out for a very long time. I was given name recognition without being told why those names might be important. Did I waste all my time in high school? No because I learned to play the tuba. One of those life skills that has given me pleasure even if nobody else cares. My sense of geography was centred on Toronto. I know. My fault. There were better maps available but I chose to ignore them because my teachers felt that knowledge would not serve me well. Keep me close to home if you will. Of course, I have picked up little bits and pieces of what makes up a worldview but it has taken me decades. And I have no way to double check what I think I have learned. My time of writing exam papers is over. So if you were to ask me to give you a capsule view of the world it would take you very little time. But I am going to continue to study in my own way. A sense of curiosity.
Read the rest of this entry »posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off on My pinhole view of the world | 395 words
