‘We don’t need no education’

What Pink Floyd immortalised in their classic Another Brick in the Wall, is just 1 of the problems within our current education system today, i.e. that children are all churned out the same being told the same facts etc etc. Do I need to mention any other problems? No, but I will! Homework for children aged 5!? What is wrong with the world?! Let them be children for goodness sake. We are obsessed as a nation with maturity and growing up, and why? I don’t know. I’m not and I for one think childhood should be celebrated and enjoyed. Furthermore, how useful is much of the stuff we’re told at school, e.g. at school we were always trying to find ‘X’, but has anyone in their adult life ever had to find X apart from people in finance and pirates!?!

Ok I’ll stop ranting and get on with my point, which is, that though there are problems with our current education system, at least all children get educated to the (supposedly) same standard, free of charge. In S.A. they are not so lucky and so those who can’t afford it do not go to school at all.

Because of this, the lectures we went to at COTT were V basic and more often than not were things we already knew. Interestingly though, there lectures weren’t in the same style as ours with the teacher imparting you their knowledge, but the whole class participated. Sometimes this meant the lecture went completely off the point! Dom and I also ended up in the role of helping others with their work, e.g. typing working for them, reading through essays, and checking essay plans. We also helped the teachers out, e.g. 1 time Fr.Percy was trying to explain overt investigations and pervert investigations, so we told him he meant ‘covert’ not pervert! Another time Fr.Isias thought transsexual meant beyond sex, i.e. they had transcended gender, and I helped another student explain this wasn’t was a transsexual was at all! And another time, after Fr.Percy spent ages trying to explain something to Gregory, I helped out and Gregory looked at Fr.Percy and said ‘why didn’t you say that to begin with’ and a separate time I helped a visiting lecturer out who got himself in a pickle explaining something and when I helped out he thanked me ‘for getting him out of that one!’

So, on reflection our education system doesn’t seem isn’t completely bad because at least we all learn something!