Escape Adulthood

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Is School Teaching Bad Life Balance?

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art by jason based on photo by brandon koger

Life balance is something just about everyone struggles with. Even when things are going good, it’s easy to feel guilty about not giving enough attention to something else. Of course, there are many reasons to explain our current dilemma. The always-on, constantly connected aspect of our culture certainly creates more noise and more opportunities to “do” instead of “be.”

But I can’t help but wonder if a lot of our problems come down to what we were taught in school.

In school, we become accustomed to believing that learning occurs only in certain places and during standardized periods of time.

In school, we focus a lot on irrelevant details (memorizing dates, learning cursive), and virtually ignore the important (how to manage money, how to think).

In school, after kindergarten, enthusiastic learning suddenly becomes joyless work, which we come to believe is our lot in life.

In school, we are conditioned to drudge through the day-to-day and live for the weekends and summer vacation.

In school, we work all day but still need to bring our work home in order to make a good grade.

Teachers have done an excellent job of teaching us some important things, but I fear the institution has taught us some bad ones as well.

It seems to me that a big part of designing the life you were meant to live is unlearning a lot of what you learned in school.

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Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I agree and have thought this way for along time . In addition to unlearning some of the ideas that where baked into me, I try to teach my children to look at things in this manner .”free your mind Neo”

  2. Thanks Jason. Until now I had not made the connection between take work home (after 8 hours in the office) in order to stay ahead of the “game” or to get a good review (becasue everybody does it) and getting trained in school to do homework to get a good grade. Hmm. I have been fighting the temptation for years to work after hours, now I know why it was so hard to beat and why so many people fall prey to this form of Adultitis. (Social conspiracy theorists probably love this stuff!)

    My son, in 1st grade, gets 20-40 minutes of homework a night, which just seems ridiculous for a seven year old. I can’t recall having homework in 1st or 2nd grade at all (but hey, I’m an old fart). I know it is the schools attempt to get parents involved in their kid’s education, but really? At least they do notget homework to do over the weekend (yet).

    • Yeah, I don’t remember having homework in 1st grade either. (And I don’t think I’ve achieved old fart status yet — does it come with a certificate?) My cynical side believes that weekend homework is just around the corner — if it’s not already here!

  4. I am of the opinion that school as we know it today is a by-product of the Industrial Revolution of the mid-1800s. Factory empires needed hordes of workers to move along, and if they could be conditioned and taught the rules since their early life years, then the factory’s sustainability would be secured for years to come. And the system certainly worked for a good while.

    Now that centuries have passed by, the world is increasingly being ruled by knowledge rather than hard, cheap labor, however the school system’s essence has really changed little since those days centuries ago. Those of us looking to become free in life find ourselves fighting against a system that goes against freedom in lots of ways, and in a way few really notice.

  5. School does an awesome job of teaching you to fit in and follow instructions so you can work on an assembly line.

    Josh Bulloc
    Kansas City, MO
    How can I help?

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