Wednesday, April 04, 2007

stupid public edumacation.

Recent issues have brought back memories of my education. i have never felt that i was given a very great education in school. I was never a bad kid, nor did i ditch......but realistically i never really did anything. i feel like i was just passed through, no matter how much effort i did or did not put in. Now that things have come up with Blake's education that i feel are one sided.......i cannot remember ever being given both sides of an argument.

I have always been very conservative. Most of that stems from the things my father taught me when i was young and the basic principals he instilled in me. When i was really young and didn't understand things fully, i remember coming home and saying very Utopian things. Things that I now look back on as naive because i didn't know any better and wasn't taught to think of both sides of things. i just remember very regularly hearing my dad tell me that things don't work that way, its not always that simple. Everything has a cause and effect.

As i got older my views steered very right winged. I became proud of my views and the way i thought. But in school it was always an uphill battle. i felt that i was the only one who ever questioned the things i was taught. There was never a balanced curriculum. The majority of the essays and papers i wrote i would modify the theme and change things around from what the teacher thought, normally with the intention of pissing them off. But the only reason is because of what i grew up learning IN my home.

What if my household was not conservative? I don't think i ever would have had to fight to find the other sides of the issues. Would I have just listened and taken everything in as a fact? Would I have just been a drone accepting everything that my teachers taught me? There was never a balance for me. i cant remember ever feeling like my teacher said something i agreed with. I remember bringing a radio into my class in high school to listen to Rush. I remember being 1 of 3 kids that did not vote for Clinton in the mock elections in 92.

I am not stupid enough to think that there are not more sides to every issue. I understand that other people think differently than i do. They are perfectly entitled to thier views and the reasons they believe in them. I don't expect Blake to have any conservative teachers. I don't care if he does or doesn't. What i do want is for him to be presented with balance. I don't want to contradict everything his teachers tell him at dinner every night. I want him to be thought to THINK. i want him to be taught to find his own reasons for his thoughts, not force fed what his instructors think.