Are you out there?
I want to get this space talking! If you work with young people or have an interest in this, get in touch, A bit about me: I have two jobs at the moment, one working with L.G.B.T.Q young people and the other supporting kids in a mainstream school. Working in a school (as I have done lots in the past) I know the script. Schools prepare young people to be future citizens, thats their role, they gear towards the mainstream. There is a tremendous push for conformity.
Good: respect for authority/obedience to those with more power than you, don't focus on what you enjoy, focus on what will make you 'successful', i.e: owning a large house, marriage, kids, a car, several holidays a year and always wanting bigger, better, more. Does this make you happy? or always hungry, paranoid and insecure? I don't know, i've always follwed my own path and although it doesn't feature any of the above, it makes me happy. Bad: To challenge authority, to follow your own path, to be your own judge/boss, to go for what makes you happy even though you may veer from the 'right path'. What is the risk of this for the future of the workforce? For the future of the economy, for the future of the family?
Goths, moshers, Girls who like girls, Boys who like boys, gender blenders, tomboys, sissy's, rebelious kids, What if they don't grow out of it? One by one, these kids learn the message that these factors dont equate to success in society, one must grow up and grow into the future workforce. Young people are shaped and spun by the education sytem, disipline and praise the tools of the master, until they leave schools as 'young women' and 'young men', all ready for the next stop on the conveyor belt.......
But what of the great people in history, did they obey authority even when they knew that authority was wrong? What if Rosa Parks had kept quite when she was denied a seat on the bus that day due to the colour of her skin, what if Harvey Milk had accepted the view that he did not deserve to live due to his homosexuality, what if the suffragetes had accepted that they were inferior due to their sex, ...... What if these people (and so many others) had followed the rules and not acted? Where would we be now?
What do schools really teach us?
''Don't follow anyone who is not going anywhere'' (anywhere that you want to be)
Good: respect for authority/obedience to those with more power than you, don't focus on what you enjoy, focus on what will make you 'successful', i.e: owning a large house, marriage, kids, a car, several holidays a year and always wanting bigger, better, more. Does this make you happy? or always hungry, paranoid and insecure? I don't know, i've always follwed my own path and although it doesn't feature any of the above, it makes me happy. Bad: To challenge authority, to follow your own path, to be your own judge/boss, to go for what makes you happy even though you may veer from the 'right path'. What is the risk of this for the future of the workforce? For the future of the economy, for the future of the family?
Goths, moshers, Girls who like girls, Boys who like boys, gender blenders, tomboys, sissy's, rebelious kids, What if they don't grow out of it? One by one, these kids learn the message that these factors dont equate to success in society, one must grow up and grow into the future workforce. Young people are shaped and spun by the education sytem, disipline and praise the tools of the master, until they leave schools as 'young women' and 'young men', all ready for the next stop on the conveyor belt.......
But what of the great people in history, did they obey authority even when they knew that authority was wrong? What if Rosa Parks had kept quite when she was denied a seat on the bus that day due to the colour of her skin, what if Harvey Milk had accepted the view that he did not deserve to live due to his homosexuality, what if the suffragetes had accepted that they were inferior due to their sex, ...... What if these people (and so many others) had followed the rules and not acted? Where would we be now?
What do schools really teach us?
''Don't follow anyone who is not going anywhere'' (anywhere that you want to be)
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