Part 3 - The Meaning of Life

Sample:

Capitalist (do they even exist?) - Money

Westminster - To glorify God

Humanist - Form meaningful relationships with others that bring meaning to your life.

Several million players - 25 killstreak (tactical nuke, of course)

Many others, of course. As they say, pick one.

(Assuming there's no difference but even if there is, who's to say what's the meaning of life?)

Part 2 - The Opiate of the Masses

(Not religion. Religion makes everyone miserable.)

Sex.
Drugs.
Dreams that you're worth something.

Part 1 - The Human Condition

1. While the nihilist writes his specious magnum opus (On his Dell Laptop, no less. Wifi courtesy of Starbucks)

2. The six year old Somalian dies of diarrhea

3. His parents are bittersweet in his death (one less mouth to feed)

4. The guard plays Snake on his pink Nokia Phone (this I am not making up)

5. I earn as much as my colleague who went to study engineering for 4 years overseas. (Hah)

If emotion rules your life, you're pathetic.
If it's logic, you'll convince a few people and then what.

6. Said nihilist shoots himself in the head.

7. An aid worker talks to the family of the dead boy, telling about her life. She lived with her parents in a small apartment. In the morning the cars in the highway would fill the air with a constant drone and nearby there is a bakery which makes the nices bread so she says. They smile and nod and think would it not be nice to live in such a place.

FYI

Looks like my lycaphim@gmail.com account has been compromised; following up with Google to recover it.

Ignore the spam coming from it. Sigh.

Re-education

Most people are happy to lament about the state of their country's education but are usually more hesitant to offer a solution. The solution most of my countrymen can think of is learn more. This usually involves sending their children (or themselves) to tuition. I have nothing against tuition, but of course it's a telling sign - when you go to tuition, immediately you are saying that school isn't enough.

The problem is I don't have much experience with the public schools of my country. I've only tasted such a school for about 5 years, before leaving to my "own" school. Still, I do wonder what is the answer to the question of "How should we educate our children?".

I venture to offer a reply that quite a number of people would have a hard time with - there is no one right way. It's safe to say that every human is unique. I would carry on to say, ergo, no human can be taught (or more accurately, learns) in the same way.

But this is the whole idea of schools. To sit a group of people in a classroom and have them hear the exact same thing. I think this is untenable. So to this I offer a few suggestions:

Let people choose what they want to study - When it comes to college or university, this is a given (except, perhaps for those with pushy parents). For primary and secondary, lots of questions will be asked on this. I admit, there should be some "compulsory" subjects - I can think of basic arithmetic and languages. But every other subject should be optional.

In my experience, going without school allowed me to pick up subjects that I would not have otherwise learned - such as IT (a hobby which now happens to be my job), theology (hah), philosophy and many others. I studied those things because I wanted to.

Rethinking exams - For many their whole education builds up to a few days where they take a series of tests, supposedly determining their future. I dislike such an idea of exams - even as I think that exams are a necessary tool for evaluating students. We should not shape our education around examinations. Nor should we judge students entirely by those exams.

I think we can learn from the trend to assess students based on both the results from their assignments and examinations (the course I'm currently undertaking is almost entirely based on assignments alone). While some deride this as a lowering in standards, I think it's important to remember that the so called pinnacle in one's education, the PhD, is not gained by answering a series of objective and subjective questions.

Institutionalized education, I suspect, leads us to compartmentalize our learning. We go to school, come back, study a little and relax. Once school is over, learning is over. For me, I'm twenty years old and I'm not even started.