It Begins
This blog will be about my thoughts. More precisely, it will be about those thoughts that I think are significant. I would call a thought of mine significant if I think it get's at the heart of some truth that either is 1) very uncommon or 2) is in some way a big part of life.
Silence
This song captures something I've been thinking about recently. I've been ignoring the ridiculous dull reality that pervades every inch of air on the planet. I feel like The Chaplain in Catch-22.
I relate to the dream in this song. I can imagine crowds and masses talking without speaking or hearing without listening. I'm noticing what I think is a dangerous trend. A sort of perversion of the meaning of fun in learning. From the courses I've taken, it seems that explaining some human-created theory without explaining why that theory is relevant or brilliant is not only acceptable but common place. For example, in advanced math courses there is a special word: motivation. (Just hearing this word upsets me.) It is used in the following sense. To motivate a definition is to provide justification as to why it was chosen. For instance, after presenting the definition of a continuous function, a motivation would be something like saying "Continuity is our best model for things that change gradually, like say the amount of water in a pool that is being filled." It is utterly ridiculous that such a word exists. Whoever thought for a moment that it would be acceptable to just state some definition without immediately explaining why anyone should care enrages me immeasurably. This is literally like teaching history as a bunch of facts. Every single syllable should be heavily motivated. Whenever some subject is being taught, every waking instant of the teaching should be marauded by the questions "Why should anyone care?", "Why was this invented?", "Why is this better than any of the other possible inventions?", "How does this answer some important questions about this topic?" and once again, "Why should anyone care?"
But this isn't the worst part. All this and more could be bearable. The crux of my rage that bellows out of the abyss of my soul like the fumes of a hellish wildfire that conquers a dry forest is the silence of everyone else. How is it just me that is outraged by this nonsense. If it was a us versus them situation (us: students, them: most educators) I could have solace in a collective suffering. But no. It's like it's me and I see crowds that are talking and not speaking, hearing but not listening and I'm thinking I must be weird to feel an urge to revolt against the status quo and demand meaning out of my education. Or perhaps I'm just missing it and it's just there. Or maybe, I'm delusional and what I'm learning is fascinating and captivating and I for some reason just don't get it. It's that. That sense of something only visible to everyone else -- a sound that I can't hear.
And here I am, at the end of the rant. I don't enjoy silence. I made this blog because I don't enjoy silence. And I know I'm right. That too. I know that the world is full of sound and shades and glances. I know what it's like to literally be unable to stop laughing and collapse on a floor or to be stuck inside a book, having left all of reality and time behind. And, I just know that learning is exactly like that when done properly.
