(From http://www.lewrockwell.com/pr/valedictorian-against-schooling.html)
I don’t speak about education much, most of that is simply because I don’t know a lot about it and every family is different, has different needs and the like. However, I was homeschooled and am extremely grateful for that to this day. Two things that it gave me are that I love to read and I think for myself. For these I am forever grateful.
Here are a couple of excerpts from a powerful speech given by valedictorian, Erica Goldson during the graduation ceremony at Coxsackie-Athens High School on June 25, 2010. This speech is a powerful example of how many of our highschool graduates think and feel and it made me think again about how ever so grateful I am for my educational experience.
I am graduating. I should look at this as a positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system. Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am capable of work. But I contend that I am a human being, a thinker, an adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition – a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now I’m scared.
And now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires us.
I encourage you to read the entire speech. It challenged and inspired me to continue being who I am, to read, to think, to learn, to grow, to chase my passions, my desires. And this is a good thing to reflect on for today.
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