the timboucher experience

This is yet another great passage from Metahistory, on a page called Imagination Freed.

The way we are “educated” as children, narrows down our inner telescope. We are manipulated into narrower and narrower fields of vision. This is done by various forms of interdiction like “Stop day-dreaming,” “Stop imagining things,” and “You are making things up.” Then come the long and tedious school years, when the child is taught to become bored with her own mind. Hence she shuts down the cries of her heart that tell her that what most adults say and do is crazy.

I love that, especially the part that I put in bold, about how school effectively teaches people to be bored with their own mind, and that learning is a despicable chore, only to be accomplished under threat of punishment, and only at the lowest most incomplete and impractical level. It seems like this is the one lesson most people never manage to forget.

I’m not really sure what makes me different though. I’ve always had an absolutely voracious appetite for learning that I’ve just always let run totally wild as needed. It’s served me pretty well, I think. On another page at that site, they have a cool quote from TH White’s The Once and Future King:

“The best thing for being sad,” replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, “is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails. You may grow old and trembling in your anatomies, you may lie awake at night listening to the disorder of your veins, you may miss your only love, you may see the world about you devastated by evil lunatics, or know your honour trampled in the sewers of baser minds. There is only one thing for it then — to learn. Learn why the world wags and what wags it. That is the only thing which the mind can never exhaust, never alienate, never be tortured by, never fear or distrust, and never dream of regretting.”

• Breathalyzers in schools
• Is Self-Taught Better?
• You know what else sucks?
• Making it up as you go along
• Skilluminati Speaks!