School

It is very easy to disucss public education in terms of black and white but it is of the utmost importance to be realistic about it. Two of the most common complaints argue that school systems are almost always biased in the subject matter that they present their students and that students learn things that "we wont ever need in life and that are stupid and boring". While the former is a true statement that cannot be avoided, the latter is practically irrelevant.



There are clearly myriad biases that alter what students learn in school; writers of textbooks, historians, administrators and teachers all bend information in their own ways. I believe it is fair to say that these biases are most prevalent in the subject of history. History can be told from many viewpoints and will always be twisted to manipulate readers' minds to favor one side or another. Inevitably every country's education system will create self-appeasing biases because they wish to instill nationalism in their future generations. The trend whereby either everyone does something or nobody does something is also prevalent in history biases. Just as a CEO cannot begin to think of the people rather than progress because his or her company would crash, a country cannot begin to present information as a complete truth because its citizens would probably recognize the attrocities that were left out of the history books and question everything their government told them and subsequently become outraged/rebellious. Because of this fact, it is not evil but rather necessary that we put an "American bias" on our history. Now this is not to say that we should be lying to our students but rather highlighting events that make us look favorable. Nationalism is important because it makes people want to continue making progress in their society and defending their society. Now, this is not to say that what is learned in school is the only source that fuels nationalism- there are others, but what children learn while they are growing up may very well be the greatest contributor to nationalism.



As for what we learn in school, there is a misconception that what we learn in school pertains only to the subject matter that we are presented with. However, it is not only what we learn that makes school valuable, but also it is how we learn to learn. Our schools teach us information as well as the tools to learn. For example, many people express discontent with learning higher levels of math because they are "useless". These people, though, do not consider the many people who pursue careers in which these math levels are quite relavent. They also fail to consider that all of these levels of math teach certain skills that are quite necessary for higher levels of learning. Said skills include applying formulas and logic and are useful in the fields of economics, political campaigning, law and many other widely practiced professions. Math is not the only subject that teaches learning skills; English teaches analysis and under-the-surface rhetoric and history teaches us memorization while arts/crafts and sciences often teach us hands-on learning.


Although school may present us with subjects that may not seem to interest us, how are we to know what we should learn when we are said to be incapable of truly thinking for ourselves until we are 18? Therefore, school's purpose is to help bring out our potential passions and to teach us how to learn.

Moderation

Whereas some people believe that a realist view implies pessimism, it is very important to keep an optimistic yet realistic outlook on life. To view the bad things in life as ways of juxtaposing and giving value to the good things in life is to live a fulfilling life and it is by this principle that I've been trying to live.

There is, however, some difficulty when one lives according to this rule. Just recently I was having a "bad day" and I accepted it as necessary for the value of my good day. But, in doing so, it became in itself a good day. Moreover, I found that after I accepted this day as a bad one, the bad events of the day hardly passed me by while the good ones stuck out (even though there were far more bad events than good). I realized that my optimism had changed this bad day into a good day and my seemingly solid motto became a sort of paradox. How can one truly experience bad days with such an optimistic outlook? One might answer this question with pesimism but a true pessimist cannot experience truly good days.

Although optimists can experience better and worse days, their relative scale is much more narrow than a person who has a balanced outlook on life. Now all of this might be pretty obvious but it just goes to show that a life lived in moderation is always better and more fulfililng than one lived in deprivation or excess.

Applying this new principle to the previous example of good and bad days yields better results; only when one truly experiences bad days and good days can one know the true value of a good day without falling too far on either side of the spectrum.

When one applies moderation to just about anything in life, one subsequently finds better results than far on either side of the scale. If one doesn't eat enough, one does not have enough energy or nutrients whereas someone who eats too much becomes fat and may weaken his/her heart. Even with something like money (which most people find best in excess), moderation is the best way to go. Scarcity of money leads to poverty and the obvious problems that accompany it. Excess of money, on the other hand, often leads to depression and unhappiness. Finding a balance between the two will provide the most benefits.

On the Subject of Religion

I would like to start off by stating my advocacy of the movie Religulous; I strongly recommend it to everyone. The film expresses satirical resentment toward religion by explaining that religions have major flaws and holes in their theories that most people do not acknowledge. For example, he describes how almost every religion has an almost identical story that fits the format of the Jesus Christ story of the virign birth and etc. Bill Maher makes many valid points and his general thesis that religion will lead to the downfall of mankind is, for the most part correct in my opinion. However, I do not think abolishing religion would accomplish anything because (as was illustrated in the South Park episode where, in the future, otters fight not over religion but over the name of their atheist establishments) our petty disputes will inevitably continue because that behavior is clearly in our human nature. On the other hand, religious extremism should indeed be supressed because some literal interpretations of relgious texts can lead to absurd acts of violence.

As for me personally, I am surprisingly not religious at all but I relate most closely to deism and/or agnosticism. Deists believe that a God created the earth but does not intervene with its affairs and therefore fosters no organized religious "faith". Agnosticism (which is composed of many more specific branches) generally asserts that the knowledge of God, the afterlife, the beginning and the end of the world are unknown and impossible to ever know. This approach does not answer the questions that people want answered through religion but it takes the most logical approach and does not make the "leaps of faith" that religions make.

Another possibility that I find plausible is that god is our free will and train of thought. If, as so many claim, I have the total freedom to choose to do whatever I want, the only way God could interfere would be if he simultaneously exists as the paths people take in their minds to make decisions and thoughts. This leads to a pressing question that I often consider: are peoples' trains of thought what allow for creativity and unique decisions? If everyone took the same paths when thinking about things, wouldn't they all lead to the same conclusion and wouldn't new ideas cease to exist?

Thus concludes my first thought. Apologies for spelling mistakes.