week one

After the last session of class, I realized that I had no clue about exactly what I was getting myself into when I decided to be a History major. I had gone into this department thinking that it all was going to be like what I had enjoyed in high school; learning about history with the teachers basically feeding students the typical story-esque lessons of what happened at D-Day and during the Civil War. I had never really contemplated what I was going to school for or how school was preparing me for my later life. Our "conversation", for lack of a better term, during the recent lecture was a bit of a revelation. The discussion of different theories of how school was using the banking system and the institutionalization of the school system to basically turn young people into drones who are force-fed historical facts and dates without much room for critical thinking or discussion, which in turn leads to people being bred for "cubicle" jobs where they take orders and deal with deadlines and so on, led to a lot of reflection on my part. Thinking about this over the weekend has led me to believe that there is a lot of truth behind those theories. I believe they have affected me personally as regards my ability to discuss things intelligently at times. I sometimes find myself in a conversation with someone where I struggle to speak my mind on some aspects of things, fearful of saying something that might be completely wrong or of being corrected by my peers. I believe my apprehension does have a great deal to do with the way the school system is set up. The lack of encouraging individuality and creativity in class did much to hinder me, deep down, when it comes to these facets of learning and life and really contemplating it for the first time has helped me realize some important things. It's very self-limiting to believe that speaking up and saying something that may be incorrect is worse than not expressing myself at all in public speaking situations. Although it may still take me a while to be comfortable with opening my mouth and speaking my mind, thinking about it definitely does help me begin to be more open about expressing my thoughts and opinions. On the other side of the argument, I also think we can at times delve too deeply into the belief that schools just teach students how to conform into normal, non-interactive, white-collar jobs. In some cases, I think it is necessary and helpful to provide students with a structured learning environment, to give them a solid educational foundation to build on as their minds mature through college and they begin to develop confidence in expressing their own opinions on different subjects.