Supertramp + Emerson = Education Reform
In Ralph Waldo Emerson’s brilliant lecture on Education (yes, do click through and read it! Really!) he speaks about how “we sacrifice the genius of the pupil, the unknown possibilities of his nature, to a neat and safe uniformity” and then end up with a bunch of men with “educated minds in uneducated bodies”…meaning, they might have memorized a lot of facts, but know very little about themselves and the world they live in. I think Emerson would be appalled at the current standardization of our public school system, and cringe over the ‘No Child Left Behind’ fiasco.
Hubby asked me a few days ago about if I’d listened to Supertramp in a while. Which I really hadn’t, even though I did listen to “It’s Raining Again” pretty much every day in 1982. So he played “The Logical Song” for me and said, “I think you’ll hear this in a totally different light now that we’re unschooling” and he was right.
This song completely reminds me of Emerson.
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“When I was young, it seemed that life was so wonderful,
a miracle, oh it was beautiful, magical.
And all the birds in the trees, well they’d be singing so happily,
joyfully, playfully watching me.
But then they send me away to teach me how to be sensible,
logical, responsible, practical.
And they showed me a world where I could be so dependable,
clinical, intellectual, cynical.
There are times when all the world’s asleep,
the questions run too deep
for such a simple man.
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
but please tell me who I am.
Now watch what you say or they’ll be calling you a radical,
liberal, fanatical, criminal.
Won’t you sign up your name, we’d like to feel you’re
acceptable, respectable, presentable, a vegetable!
At night, when all the world’s asleep,
the questions run so deep
for such a simple man.
Won’t you please, please tell me what we’ve learned
I know it sounds absurd
but please tell me who I am…”
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We are shut up in schools and college recitation rooms for ten or fifteen years, and come out at last with a bellyfull of words and do not know a thing. The things taught in schools and colleges are not an education, but the means of education. -Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Happily, I am able to present a totally different experience towards learning to my kids. Learning and self awareness go hand in hand…mostly because self awareness drives the learning process. It’s what makes unschooling so beneficial and unique.
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