the value of nothing

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, we live in a world where people know the price of everything and the value of nothing. 

Of course, these kinds of sweeping generalizations are overstatements. But still...

In the last post, I was lamenting about students and their problematic tendencies. This is the time of year, however, where I begin to get a better sense of them. This is in part because they are frantically trying to figure out what to do to improve their grade - even though it's way to late. But also, I am doing the chapters I enjoy the most, that I know the most about, so I soften and they soften. I get to know and like them in the final hour.

This will be no surprise to the 2 people who read this blog, but I think our educational system is completely bogus. I had a student come to me yesterday who cannot pay attention in any of her classes (maybe ADD, maybe internetitis) and has no everloving clue what she wants to do with her life. Her parents are funding her education and are forcing her to pursue nursing even though she has no interest in it and is not passing her first biology class. I asked the basic questions of a struggling student - "What makes you learn best?""How are your note taking skills?" "How do you study?" "What interests you?" - all met with "I don't know." She confessed that she doesn't know what she wants to do, but nursing ain't it and she doesn't know how to figure her life out. I know that these sound like "first world problems." However, *I* wouldn't want her as a nurse. Would you? 

People are funneled into college and university as a presumed next step. Many of them are bad at it and many have no interest in what they're learning. This is in part because of a broken and standardized school system. This is in part because we ask 18 year-olds to choose their life path when they don't know themselves. This is in part because university is a total holding pen for a reserve army of labor that will continue to be stupefied, pacified and saddled with debt up their patooties. Makes for a good and docile workforce, dontchathink?

The whole of the employment system is fucked. Every aspect of it. University is a corollary to it. I wonder if part of my distaste for what I'm doing lay in the fact that I simply do not recognize its validity any longer.