6-Year-Old Stares Down Bottomless Abyss Of Formal Schooling

Via cryptogon; via The Onion:

"It might be The Onion, but it’s not funny.

Local first-grader Connor Bolduc, 6, experienced the first inkling of a coming lifetime of existential dread Monday upon recognizing his cruel destiny to participate in compulsory education for the better part of the next two decades, sources reported.

“I don’t want to go to school,” Bolduc told his parents, the crushing reality of his situation having yet to fully dawn on his naïve consciousness. “I want to play outside with my friends.”

While Bolduc stood waiting for the bus to pick him up on his first day of elementary school, his parents reportedly were able to “see the wheels turning in his little brain” as the child, for the first time in his life, began to understand how dire and hopeless his situation had actually become.

Basic math—which the child has blissfully yet to learn—clearly demonstrates that the number of years before he will be released from the horrifying prison of formal schooling, is more than twice the length of time he has yet existed. According to a conservative estimate of six hours of school five days a week for nine months of the year, Bolduc faces an estimated 14,400 hours trapped in an endless succession of nearly identical, suffocating classrooms.

This nightmarish but undeniably real scenario does not take into account additional time spent on homework, extracurricular responsibilities, or college, sources said.

“I can’t wait until school is over,” said the 3-foot-tall tragic figure, who would not have been able, if asked, to contemplate the amount of time between now and summer, let alone the years and years of tedium to follow.

The concept of wasting a majority of daylight hours sitting still in a classroom when he could be riding his bicycle, playing in his tree fort, or lying in the grass looking at bugs—especially considering that he had already wasted two years of his life attending preschool and kindergarten—seemed impossibly unfair to Bolduc. Moreover, sources said, he had no idea how much worse the inescapable truth will turn out to be."

Also, here's a non-satirical article that explains part of why I dropped out of college.

At long last, pictures from an amble through Pruitt-Igoe! I took these earlier today.

AND, a video tour(!) (in three parts): Pruitt Igoe, urban forest of weeds.

Follow along as tom learns to use his digital camera. The audio quality is atrocious and annoying in parts one and two, but luckily, I didn't start saying much of interest until part three.

Pruitt-Igoe is beautiful. Hopefully the whole city will look something like this in fifty year's time.

Fox Park Farm, the community garden in my parents' neighborhood where I tend a bed, was featured in a piece by ABC about community gardens in general. Some of the people interviewed are also shareholders in the New Roots Urban Farm CSA.

I uploaded some photos that I've taken of my plot, since I didn't see it at all in the video (it's kind of tucked away in a corner, and it's rather weedy). Some were taken sometime in May, and some are from earlier today. (btw, most photos that I upload come with more interesting commentary in the captions than the sparse statements I've been making here about the photos. Also, I'm linking to web albums instead of posting photos here so that you can choose, based on your internet speed, what you want to spend time loading). Yay for growing things; l'chiam!

I can't remember what keyword search led me to The Open Mind, by Dawna Markova (only the feeling that it was a moment of inspiration, like I had caught a scent on a trail). It describes not personality types but thinking patterns. People learn and express themselves in wide ranging ways. Hence the phrase "multiple intelligences". Hence the industrial education system only working for a select portion of the population. Markova explains what is actually happening differently for different people.

Our brains can receive input in three primary ways- through our eyes, through our ears, and through (the rest of) our bodies. Markova's theory is that as we learn or express things, we move through different levels of consciousness while processing and integrating, and at each level of consciousness (conscious, subconscious, unconscious) we use a different language or modality. Overall, then, there are six possible patterns of intelligence.

For a long time, I've recognized that I am "primarily" a visual learner. Now I understand that "primarily" actually means consciously. From what I have gathered, I believe my thinking pattern to be VKA (that is, visually conscious, kinesthetically subconscious, and auditorially unconsious).

The conscious level is a very focused and narrow level of attention. It operates linearly and is in the mode of making decisions, judging things, feeling certain. The unconscious level of attention is very unfocused, "spacey", broad, nonlinear. It is daydreaming mode, where you are completely receptive, open, and also rather sensitive or vulnerable. It is the source of creativity. The subconscious functions as a kind of bridge between the conscious and unconscious, where you can look at both sides of an issue and see clearly the benefits or the truth of both sides.

I see the VKA pattern at work in me in that I am primarily visual- that is, I learn, understand, remember most easily via the written word or by looking at maps, and I communicate most easily and thoroughly via the written word as well. My unconscious seems to be primarily auditory because auditory stimulation puts me in a very receptive space- so much so that when in a conversation, I will become so engrossed in the other person's words that if they ask a question, or if there is a natural space in the conversation where I would perhaps be expected to say something, I often find myself spaced out, far away from being able to come up with a conscious response. Speaking takes a lot of energy for me, so it is a rather special, sometimes sacred thing. I really enjoy music that has human voices harmonizing, and I enjoy playing with singing, but mostly when I am alone. The kinesthetic subconscious kind of just fell where it fell for me, at least so far. I don't need to move to think, and I don't necessarily need to physically do something to learn how to do it (it's not my conscious modality), but I'm also not super-sensitive to touch- it's not something I shy away from or don't like to share freely (so it's not my unconscious modality either). Well, I do kind of bridge kinesthetically from unconscious to conscious by talking with my hands before I speak. I think Markova describes the phenomenon (which I hadn't paid attention to before) as painting a picture with my hands (kinesthetic/visual) as I fish for the right words (auditory).

Beyond the personal, there are more interesting implications for understanding the thinking patterns of the people that you relate with. It can give you an understanding of why they perhaps come off so strongly with one mode of communication, or why they seem so overly sensitive about a certain way you want to connect with them. That understanding can afford you some measure of compassion and patience and can allow you to tailor your interaction with them so you meet them where they can meet you back.


----

I really enjoy using these typing systems as tools to understand more how I tick. I retook the Myers Briggs and was surprised to find myself being called an ISFJ. I used to think I was an INFP, but I think now that that is what I wanted to be (or what I thought other people wanted me to be). It is also the kind of person I am attracted to. Hopefully, these letters keep changing. I'd like to intentionally get more balanced, especially towards E and N.

I just put a few photos up. You get to see the bike I used for my bike trip (all decked out with kitty litter buckets), and some sweet shots of red earth farms.

I first heard of the Emotional Freedom Techniques from Dan (whose site is under construction right now), started reading the free manual, and stashed the idea way down on my to-do list when the description became too complicated to follow. Then, Aaron brought it up again, and with more urging. So, I finally took another look, and watching videos of people doing it makes it look as simple as it really is.

Basically, you tap on various "energy meridians" (via Traditional Chinese Medicine) while calling to mind some specific ailment. The most important part, it seems to me, is the setup statement at the beginning, where you state (whether you believe it or not) that even though you have whatever ailment you have, you love and completely accept yourself (while tapping the "karate chop" side of your hand).

I've used it successfully so far just to get rid of a headache. I've been getting rid of headaches through non-resistance to them for a while (I usually wallow in the pain for a while before I remember the trick), but this technique seems to speed up the process quite a bit.

There's all sorts of things I want to try it on, though. A lot of these things run a lot deeper than a headache- social anxiety, fear of conflict and disapproval, lethargy, depression, the tightness of my muscles and ligaments, and my inability to gain weight.

There's definitely a lot of hype in the videos, which excites me with the potential here for this to become real folk medicine magic, so I'll report back if I am able to use it to heal more deeply.