Passionate About Education

I helped a friend’s daughter with her maths homework the other day, problems to do with finding the angles in triangles, and I found the experience far more gratifying than I thought I would. Partially because it’s quite cool to see the gears click together and the machine of understanding start running in her malleable little mind but mostly because I got a muffin and a glass of wine for my efforts.

A few days later I saw a midshipman’s workbook at The National Maritime Museum with a problem to do with ships travelling at different speeds and, um, wind directions and, globes…  Suffice it to say that it was also to do with angles and triangles. But I noticed the glaring difference in the problems of this long-dead midshipman and those of my friend’s daughter were that only one of them had a clear purpose. When presented with “if we know angle A in an isosceles triangle is 72 degrees then what are the angles B and C?”, well we get 54 degrees and don’t we feel richer for that knowledge? I have unlocked the secret of the triangle, society can no longer hold me back. However the midshipman solves his problem and all the sailors on his ship no longer have to resort to drinking their own urine and eating rats because Africa isn’t where you thought it should have been. Result.

If only Billy had been able to work out the Angles ‘B’ and ‘C’! In retrospect we might also question why we left the navigation around these rocks to a 12-year old. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

OK, it’s a rather crude comparison but it highlights a problem with education in that we are trying to cram knowledge into children’s heads whether they want it or not. I believe that children, and people in general, will learn best if they want to learn what’s being taught; and what better way to get them to want to learn than to fire them up about a subject. How the hell is anyone going to get really excited about the angle ‘B’ in an isosceles triangle? Even if the angle ‘B’ were to explode in a Michael Bay film as Megan Fox ran away from it in slow motion it would still be boring.

I went to a very good school, with an almost universal spread of very good teachers, however I experienced something at the age of 14 that altered my education dramatically. Now I love history; I find the whole thing to be like a long elaborate story filled with twists and complexity too bizarre to be believed. In Year 9, we would pick the GCSE subjects which would determine which A-Levels we went on to do which would determine which degree we would pursue which would determine which future career path we would progress down: Yes, 14 is the perfect age to determine your entire future; it’s a wonder I’m not the swimsuit calendar photographer/national boob inspector my 14 year old self would have chosen… But anyway, at the age of 14 we got a new history teacher. I remember only one thing about this woman; that being a lesson where she had the class memorise the names and years of the Chinese dynasties for a test (90% pass mark). Then, when the entire class inevitably failed the test, she made us all resit the test throughout our lunchtime. Twice. As a result I did not carry on with history and ditched it once I hit GCSE as I believed this was what further history lessons involved; my entire passion for a subject destroyed by a single prosaic teacher who was too mindless to take a list of meaningless words and dates and turn them into something vaguely intriguing.

First Emperor Qin Shi Huang – Ignore his irrational fear of sea monsters and his army of 8000 terracotta soldiers, his dynasty ruled from 221-206 BCE; that’s what’s important [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

As well as taking any joy out of learning we also have the tyranny that is the hierarchy of importance for academic subjects. We all know that science and maths are most the most important subjects, because, well, reasons. This is followed by the humanities, which just manage to look down their noses on the arts which your parents know will never get you a job. Depending on the school, Physical Education slots in anywhere from the very top to the very bottom. Then school finishes and it all goes to pot as scientists hold no power at all while rich white boys with degrees in the classics from Cambridge tell us that global climate change, economics and human decency aren’t actually things.

Now I think this quotation sums things up very nicely; it’s been attributed to Einstein, and as much respect as I have for the man, it’s quite doubtful he ever said it:

“Everyone is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.”

I think every person on the planet has the ability for great things, in fact, to probably do something better than anyone else. Few however, will ever get to discover that talent that sets them apart from the population. That may be because of having never been able to ever try the harp, to grow a vegetable, or to learn what quantum mechanics is (a chap on holiday once lectured me on how quantum mechanics is unlocking your psychic powers which isn’t even a little bit right) but it may also be that memorising knowledge in which there is no interest actively turns children away from that joy of learning. Imagine what a world where everyone found their genius would be like; scientists progressing human thought to new bounds, musicians and dancers entertaining us with unmatched skills, craftspeople and artisans creating objects of beauty and people in Human Resources… Does anyone actually have a genuine passion for human resources?

This man was lucky enough that he was able to discover his passion for shafting the poor whilst studying History of Art at Eton. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]

So go out, find your passion, pursue your dreams, learn for the joy of learning, spread your interest to whomever you can ignite the flames of intrigue for, and never work another day in your life*.

* “Find something that you love to do and you’ll never have to work a day in your life”
– Almost certainly not Confucius

Would you like to know more?