At The End of The Day

Recently a student of mine uttered an opinion that sent me spiralling into eddies of heavy pondering, trying to convince him otherwise.

He was not an ignorant young thing, far from it - and yet this rethorical question he posed to the class bothered me because the thoughts behind it might lead him to that direction.

"Why are we studying all of these things? Wouldn’t it be enough to study cost and profit and that’d be it? After all, those are all I need later."

I looked at him, an earnest student who I knew never missed a lesson and study dilligently, maximising his bright minds, hoping to be a businessman someday.

Why?

I beat myself everyday because I feel I can never make any student see that everything, yes, everything you study in your long, boring hours of school will someday prove useful to you.

I am not saying this because I happen to be a teacher - I’m saying it because it’s true. I had difficulties back in school too but even then there were a lot of times where I found myself amazed by the enlightment I acquired through a teacher’s explaination, a paragraph I read in a textbook or a comment made by another student.

Furthermore, there were even more chances where I found myself thinking, "Jeez, I remembered this from Junior High… What a disaster it would’ve been if I’d somehow forgotten it!"

As a student, I was most enamoured by Math. To me it was the most superior subject. In my later years, it has proven a help to many things I endeavour to do. Statistic, pattern even prediction - were I a non-Christian, Math would be my god.

I used to sit blankly during hours of History, Geography… any social studies. I thought them boring, useless and aimless. All the same, I was hungry for things out there - something I always associate with living in the middle of nowhere. I was hungry to know about the world, so I guess information simply came into my mind and stayed there.

I was partly right when I thought social studies taught in school were useless, basing my thoughts on the idea that social conditions change all the time. Yet, those things taught to me in school drew my attention to the changes that happen and kept me up to date with current affairs.

When I first came out into the world, some people would dismiss me, seemingly because of my youthful face or perhaps they thought of me merely as a pretty young thing. Hope I’m not making an ass of myself here.. but true or not, I don’t know; that’s the impression I got.

Still, I found myself able to carry conversations with people, most of the time even able to impress them and changed their opinion about me. And for all that, I give the credit to the education I got at school.

Vive le school!

This entry was posted on Saturday, April 14th, 2007 at 5:05 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.