school interviews

I asked everyone that I interviewed the same question: What do you think we expect of school (or specifically the public school system) and how does that differ from what it actually delivers?

I first interviewed my mother, Nancy, who is a social worker. She said that we expect school to educate, socialize, and discipline children. For its actual function, however, she felt that it more often beat the creativity out of students and institutionalized racism and sexism, and mechanized the learning process. She added that schools still do succeed in teaching, but the methods used are more often dampening to intellectual curiosity.

I then interviewed my aunt Joanie, who is a public school social studies teacher. Her idea of our expectation of school was the same as Nancy's, but she said that they actually serve as training camps to brainwash children into not seeing the injustices of society. She also felt that they marginalize children by race and class, and even serve to weed out children of different backgrounds.

Next I interviewed my mother's friend, Ro. She said that we expect schools to educate students enough to go to a good college and/or do well in their career. She said that what they actually do is fill students with adequate knowledge in the "classic subjects". She added that while it may not be intentional, schools often favor males in math and science and females in the more artistic subjects.

The next person I interviewed was my other mother, Paula, who manages a day care center. She said that the goal of schools is to socialize children, educate them in the basics that will enable them to lead happy, productive lives, and teach them to problem solve. She said that most schools probably try towards this goal, but some fail.

Last I interviewed my uncle David, who is a photographer. He said that schools are supposed to educate you, adding "everybody knows that!" He said that they also aim to civilize or socialize children to meet the standards of society. He said that the main downside to the current schooling system is the marking system, which makes children care more about passing than learning. It also trains people to be reward/punishment driven, instead of teaching them to think for themselves. Although, he added, that works fine for some.

What I get from this is that a lot of people see something wrong with the school system, mainly that certain children are favored and that it discourages creativity, but only some think this can be fixed. Those that think it can be fixed see it as an intentional attempt to let only the children that fit into society's mold be successful, while those that say it will just slowly make itself better see it as an unplanned defect in the system. I personally don't really think of it as an intentional attempt to keep children down, just because I don't think people are organized enough to pull that off. Discrimination and brainwashing definitely happens in some schools, but I don't think of it as a product of the school itself as much as the teachers. If a single teacher wants to discriminate then they will do so, and that will be a problem within their classroom, but I honestly don't think that there is any conspiracy for the purpose.

2 kool 4 skool (a segway)

My main questions about school:
~What are the benefits of the modern structured school system?
~What are the downsides?
~How did this system originate?

My main thoughts on school:
My main problem with school as we know it is that the level of specification seems a little limiting. I, for example, would like to be a scientist. In the 1500s, "science" was a job. But nowadays, there isn't to be involved in more than one field.

Another thing I have a problem with in school is the perception of the relevance of the topics. At least once a month in math class Beatrice raises her hand and asks when we are ever going to use anything we are learning. But actually, I intend to use that stuff a lot. In fact, if I'm learning anything I'll never use I'm learning it in this class (sorry Andy, but my thing is objective evidence. I'm not big on the idea that 19 high-schoolers can come up with much accurate information by sitting around and pointing out stuff that bothers them.).

Overall, I view school in two ways: As something that needs to be done and dealt with no matter how annoying, and as a source of information or a stepping stone. I have some big ideas, but I know I'm not getting anywhere with them without education.

The coolest phony bastard on the planet

Ta-dah, my long awaited art project!
click for full size and better quality, or go here.

Guess who it is! Hint: check the title. That's right, it's everyone's favorite teen-angst-er, Holden Caulfield! I originally intended to make a video of someone dressed up as Holden in front of the museum of natural history singing this song (actually, I've been intending to make that video for a while), but I didn't have time.

What I wanted to address in this piece was our cool unit's interest in being "real". In Catcher in the Rye Holden is partially so depressed because of his failure to find anyone "real", and we discussed in our cool unit how in fact being 'real' doesn't seem to be possible. Holden supposedly gave a personality to the flavorless, phony generation from whence he came, so he seemed like an important figure in the history of "cool". In the video I also wanted to draw attention to the complete conflict of taste communities-- as seeing a white literary character preforming this would be ridiculous.

There wasn't much of a process to making this, other than looking up different interpretations of what Holden looked like and trying to put them together. I went to a lot of effort to make him seem tired and grimey, because that was the vibe that I got from him reading the book, but I still wanted him to look young, because him being a teenager is the only thing that made his angst cool.

Making art seems to be cool in society right now, but I think it really depends. I'm all for expression and art as a vector for that, but to me personally it doesn't matter unless you have something worthwhile to say. screaming is still screaming no matter the finesse, it's saying something important that makes it worth the noise.