A Few Thoughts on (Mostly My) Education

I’ve been thinking a lot about my experience in school recently and about what I’ve learned, aside from the coursework. Mainly, I’ve thought about the education system, compared with the many years that I homeschooled, (which were the fundamental years of my education, and the years that really shaped how I think). Up until this past September, I’d been homeschooled for my whole life. Technically, I suppose this is my 4^th year of high school and combined with the fact that my parents actually started “officially” educating me a year later than normal, the result is that I’m taking a year of “normal” school at an age where I’m older than any of the other students I’ve met. Since I’m spending a school year in “the system,” I feel that I’m finally allowed to comment on what I’ve seen and experienced, and the problems I have with the school system. I could go into the question of whether standardized testing is an accurate way of evaluating a student’s learning (my view: it isn’t), and I could go into a discussion of the school system’s poor attempts to take different learning styles into account, but I want to write about something completely different.

I had a pretty great childhood, and I certainly don’t take it for granted. Ever since I can remember, I had a lot of freedom to spend time doing things that I really wanted to do. I could learn about what I wanted to learn, and explore things that interested me. As far as my parents were concerned, so long as I was learning and exploring, it wasn’t a waste of time. I was about 14 when I started to seriously focus on music and theatre. I disciplined myself to diligent piano practice, started taking lessons for flute and voice, began composing music, and co-founded a youth theatre company with two driven friends of mine. As you can imagine, this didn’t exactly leave a lot of time for studying the provincially-prepared course load of Math, English, Social Studies, and Science.  It’s not like I was completely ignoring those subjects though. I plodded along through a math textbook, read and discussed great Classic literature, discussed current events with my family, and learned a great amount about the environment around me, (the perks of having a botanist for a father!). But I invested so much time in my arts studies that there simply wasn’t time to fill the government’s requirements for what constituted an education.

Fast forward to where I am now. I’ve cultivated skills in the areas I plan to pursue after high school, but I don’t have the courses required to get into post-secondary. No problem, that’s why I’m doing a year in normal school, simply to crash my way through some 30-level courses. Sure, I may be older than my fellow students, but I don’t regret a single minute of my education prior to this year. The school system is very heavily oriented to getting students their high school diploma and pushing them into a good university so that they can get a good career and make good money. Teachers often talk about how you should get a good career in something you love doing, but how can you possibly know what you’re passionate about if you haven’t been given the freedom to thoroughly explore your interests? I see lots of students and friends finish high school, and then either a) come to a stop and realise that they have absolutely no clue what they want to do, and/or b) go straight into University, not in a program that they’re really excited about, but rather just settling for one that seems okay. Bearable. Something that sounds relatively interesting, and would appease the parents. There are exceptions of course, students that have managed to find something they truly love doing, despite spending the majority of their childhood in school, but they do seem to be the exceptions.

            I wish that wasn’t the case. During the K-12 years, at an age when one doesn’t have to worry about paying the rent, affording food, or affording your electricity, I wish that every student could have the opportunity (as I did) to spend their childhood discovering what they loved, not to pass a test, but to cultivate a genuine love of learning and to figure out what they really, truly want to spend time in their life doing. For me, an extra year of high school is a small price to pay for spending my K-12 years figuring out what I’m excited about and what I’m interested in pursuing. If the school system spent more time allowing students to figure out their interests, and spent less time on exam marks, I believe that we’d have many more happier people spending their time on pursuits that fill them with joy, rather than drifting aimlessly through years of their lives spending money and time on post-secondary degrees only to realise that they weren’t all that interested in them in the first place.

News

Hi. How are you? Life is really good with me. Like, really good. I'm just really, extraordinarily happy right now. Not because of anything in particular, but rather because of a combination of smaller things that have happened or are happening in the future.

Things that have happened since I last blogged:

The Wizard of Oz. I auditioned for a large community theatre production of The Wizard of Oz. The audition went really well, I thought, and weeks later, I found out that I had a callback. Went to the callbacks, and then the waiting began. The day that my dad and I (and two good friends of ours) left on a backpacking trip, I got a text from my mom saying "call me!". I called home, and found out that the director had called, and I was cast as the Tin Man! You guys, you have NO idea how excited I am! It's 16 shows in December in the largest theatre I've ever performed in (it's got a balcony!). I guess this show is kind of this years "huge annual Christmas family show" so it's usually sold out and really popular and stuff. It'll be great. Tragically, the man who was supposed to direct it suddenly passed away, but the assistant director has stepped in to direct and the show is going ahead. This may sound silly, but I'm also pretty excited to do WoO because when I was younger, The Wizard of Oz was actually a really big part of my life. I was kind of obsessed with it for a number of years, and when I was probably about 9, I had this big elaborate plan to mount my own production of The Wizard of Oz. I had the script ready, I'd contacted many of my friends to be in the production, and had double-cast myself as both the Wicked Witch of the West and the Tin Man. To this day, I still don't know how I thought I could manage that. :D But it's kind of cool, years later, to be indeed be playing the Tin Man in a much bigger productions (we're going to have flying monkeys that fly, people!).

Backpacking. As I mentioned, I went backpacking with a friend of mine from Scouts, his dad, and my dad. Great trip. We didn't have the best weather for the hike we wanted to do, and consequently had to change our plans a bit, but it was still a great trip. Backpacking is amazing and I look forward to many more trips.

The Fringe. I had the pleasure of being part of the Fringe festival this year in a show that I wrote the music in. (I think I've mentioned it before. One of my friends "concieved it" and wrote the book, then another friend of ours wrote the lyrics and I wrote the music). We got good reviews (my first ever reviews!!) and our last shows were sold out. We even made some money! Hurray!

I got my learner's license. Finally.

I also have applied for 5 jobs and haven't heard back from any of them. That's an achievement, right?

My most recent big news is that I'm going to school this year. Which is a big change for me, since I've been homeschooled my entire life. The school I'm going to allows lots of flexibility, and is self-directed. I can work at my own pace, and I don't have to "sit in a classroom", but I likely will have to be there (I haven't got my time-table yet) for regular school hours. It's crazy, but strangely, I'm really, really excited. It'll be a change, which will be nice. Not that I was unhappy homeschooling by ANY stretch, quite the contrary, but I was just looking for a change of pace, change of scene and a good way to get these courses done. And I'm taking French, and possibly Italian and Spanish, so I'm very excited about that! It just feels really right for me at this point in my life.

Lots more has happened, but this is long enough for today. :)

This summer has been fabulous, but I'm looking forward to jumping into new adventures. And I'm looking forward to blogging again!

I don't know if anybody reads this blog anymore, but if you do-thanks! If you read that entire post, survived, and are still planning on reading my blog, you rock and I love you.

Take care,
Dan

Obama's message to students

Y'all should read US President Barack Obama's address to students about education. You can read it HERE or watch it on below. (his address starts 2:30)

What have I been up to lately?

Well, for starters, I'm writing a whole bunch of music for a youth production of The Tempest with Celsius Youth Theatre which is the theatre company that I co-founded. I'm writing a fair amount of music, in a relatively short time, so it's rather challenging, but hey, deadlines are good. We're having some live musicians that will be playing the live music on stage with the production, so I think it will be really great. We have 1 bass guitarist, 1 classical guitarist, 1 violinist and 1 recorder. Funky combo, huh?

I'm also doing some reading. At Kelsey's suggestion via the comments section, I'm reading How Doctors think by Jerome Groopman. I'm finding it really interesting, and I'll be sure to post a review once I'm finished. I'm also reading Richard II by Billy Shakespeare. I've only just started reading it, but again I'll post a review when I'm done.

BOOK REVIEW: Outliers, by Malcolm Gladwell

Okay, so I recently read Malcolm Gladwell's most recent book, Outliers. I'm a big fan of Malcolm Gladwell, and although I often disagree with what he says, I find his books very interesting and thought-provoking. I've read all of his books (The Tipping Point, Blink, and Outliers), I've definitely agreed the most with Outliers. It's worth reading. It's all about success and what makes some people successful. "Oh no!" you probably are saying. "Not another book about being successful!" Actually, this one is really good. I'm not going to go into much that he says, so you should just read it.

Anyway, a couple things that he says is that to be successful in your field, you need 10,000 hours of experience, and you need opportunity. So basically, you really just need a lot of hard work to make you an expert, and you need opportunity.

Thats all I'm going to say for now, because I'm tired, just had a full day of auditions (from the other side of the table! Ahh!) and I want to go to bed now. Good night!

I think that one of the most important things that I've ever learned is to be proactive. If you are familiar with Steven Covey's book The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People (Or his son Sean Covey's book The 7 Habits of highly effective teens, which is more interesting, haha), then you should be familiar with this already. Being proactive is all about the idea that you are in control of your reactions. In the entire universe, you are the only thing that you can completely control. The weather, traffic, your dog and other people are completely out of your control, yet we spend so much time and waste so much energy thinking about them! Bad things happen to everyone and the only difference between people lies in how they deal with them. Think of it this way (this is my favourite analogy): A reactive person is like a can of soda. Shake them up a bit and open them and they'll explode. A proactive person, however is like a bottle of water. You can shake them up as much as you like, but you aren't going to get a reaction out of them. Being reactive is like handing you remote control to somebody else and say "Here, change my mood anytime." You aren't in control anymore. Somebody can say something rude to you and you'll react, just like that. Reactive people are easy to manipulate and control.
Being proactive though, is a lot safer and gives you the power. People can insult you, but you get to decide if you are going to be affected by it or not.
Being proactive is harder at first. What something bad happens, it’s so easy to retort, fight back, explode, give the finger or insult them. What I do, is take a deep breath, and ask myself "Do I want to let this affect me? Am I going to let this wreck my day?" Then I respond diplomatically and let the issue float on by. It’s not a weak thing to do, it’s the opposite. You’re choosing to be in control of your emotions. And it shows strength, big time.

I'm not sure whether that post made sense or not, so comment if it was unclear and I'd be happy to clear anything up!

No, wait, comment whether it made sense or not!

How to be selective about what you read, and why.

I have recently been rather busy, and I've been feeling like I haven't been having enough to really read the books that I really want to read. In the precious time that I do have to read, I want to read great stuff, soI've made some criteria, for selecting material.
I'll start with why. I've heard that the brain retains everything you hear, read, experience etc. and it affects us unconsciously. I'm going to try and find a link to an article, but until then...
If we retain every thing, then thats great for all the great stuff, but what about the bad media? We are retaining all that too! Thats not so great! So I've decided to be more selective about what I read and make sure I'm not retaining any junk!

So heres the criteria that I'm going to push a book through.

1. Reputation. Do I know any one thats read it? Did they have favorable reviews? Even they didn't like it, I'll still ask if it was well written and if they think its well written.
   
2. Did they learn anything? If they didn't learn anything, I will definitely reconsider if its worth reading.
3. Relevancy. Is it relevant to where I am in life right now, what I'm interested in at the moment or whats happening in the world? If not, it may have to wait.

I'll likely keep refining this, but its just a basic idea. And this isn't set in stone. Just because it doesn't mean I won't read it. I'm just trying to be more selective, so that I'm only reading the best.

-Dan