How what we learned in school sabotages success today
School taught us a lot. Turns out quite a bit was bullshit and they conveniently left some kind of important events out (Tulsa Riots?). And we might still be operating under an outdated model based on propagating a hyper-capitalist industrial complex that no longer exists. But I digress...
School was where we learned social cues and how to meet expectations and saw how structure was comforting. It was also the beginning of indoctrinating us to the most banal and wasteful practices in inefficiency; busy work.
Teachers would call it homework yet the only purpose was to provide a task. Not one to help us achieve any greater level of understanding but instead a task that told the world at large (administrators, peers, parents) that the teachers themselves were doing their jobs. After all, how could we possibly learn from spending 8 hours in a classroom. We must absolutely go write some fill in the blank platitudes taken directly from the text at hand rather than actually comprehend something. And don’t get me started in workbooks. What a colossal waste of time those were.
As a result, I was an average student. I did very well on testing and writing so progress wasn’t an issue but my desire to be a good student was killed at quite a young age. I was contemptuous of many teachers for what I felt was a meaningless assignment of work. School stifled the one thing it was meant for, learning.
Admittedly, this has a lot to do with my own persona. As someone who despises dogmatic discipline meant for no other task than compliance, homework for the sake of homework is anathema to my being. So I strive to only apply tasks to my practice when they are applicable and needed.
I’ve had clients ask for extra homework when they have yet to even establish competence at the basics. This idea that they need to be extra busy in order to do well is a symptom of school age indoctrination. A desire for novelty without competence is also a recipe for disaster. Which is why I often see these desires from people who have “tried everything” without success. Rather than working to better understand simplicity we search out something new to satisfy our curiosity. There is so much to learn in the pages in front of us yet we insist on filling in a workbook with wasted words and time.
Stop searching for more if you haven’t yet conquered that in front of you. Being busy is not a badge of honor, it’s an inability to be mindful. Be better at what matters and you won’t have to ask for extra work.