#aplang18plato

From my educational experience at high school, I want real world experience and understanding of what is expected of me to make a living in the world outside the bubble I live in - the one where homework and GPA and grades seem to define your very worth as a person. I want my education to help me to build people skills, presentation skills, and work ethic. I want my education to teach me things like how to get a student loan, how to prepare for college and scholarships outside of SAT scores and being a star athlete. I want to know how to cook food that isn't mac n cheese, how to get an internship, and make a portfolio for colleges that will set me apart. I want my education to teach me how to have fun yet still be productive. I want to learn, to be challenged, to think beyond the surface.

From my education I want to learn about the world and how to live in it. I don’t really care about triangles and momentum, but I also feel like to live my best life I need to learn these things and go through school. What I would learn about if I had no restrictions is cultures and peoples’ stories and new aspects of life. I want to look back on life and have learned more outside the classroom than in it. I want my education to be made up of experiences and conversations, not notes and textbooks. I want my teachers to be everyone I meet who shows me something they have to offer or something new the world has to offer. I guess what I want from my school eduction is just to have more unique teachers who change me in a way that will last longer than the semester. I don’t see a whole lot of value in learning information that won’t help me develop skills or better me, but to be real I'm just going with the school flow so I can go to college and then graduate and make money (I’m really starting to question this now though). So what I really want from my education is for it to better me as a person and let me know when I'm in a cave and reading shadows, or when I’m actually learning things for myself.

Growing up, I was always taught to color in the lines, to walk on the sidewalk, to keep quiet around those older than you. I was told to respond to the name Madisyn, because expressing my blackness in the form of a name, is looked down upon. I was told to speak "proper" when I'm not at home, lest I be thought of as another "Nigga". I was told to go with the flow because it's easier to deny a past that so deeply affects every last living person than to address the issues and face some awkward silence. I was told that my art was ghetto, that rap lyrics pertaining to the plights of the thug were mind rotting. I was told that I would alienate myself if I began to speak the truths of our troubled past. If I decided to stop being afraid of the fear of the people, then the world would fear me. The world that I have been assimilated into, would turn on me. But...

  From my education, I would like to become more conscious, being taught only the truth with all of its imperfections.  I would like to become more self aware.  Additionally, I would like to acquire the tools deemed necessary to live a fulfilling life.  Unfortunately, this is not the type of education I am receiving from school the majority of the time.  Instead, this education must be self-taught.  Most importantly, I want my education to continue on for as long as I’m living.  Throughout my life, I hope to never stop learning new ideas, perspectives, and  wisdom. I believe this can be achieved with a curious attitude towards life itself, questioning everything.

To be honest, my expectations for my high school education are pretty low.  What I would like to get out of my education is obviously knowledge of basic subjects such as Math, World History, English, and Biology.  I picked the classes on my schedule specifically to get the knowledge that I want. I would really really like to learn about biology, and maybe even make a career out of biology. I took AP Biology so I could learn about that, and I chose to take AP Lang because I also want to challenge myself in English and learn about it on a deeper level. Other than learning about English and Biology, I really just want to get good grades and move on with my life. I’m not very passionate about my other subjects. But I don’t just want information fed to me, I want to really learn and feel accomplished afterwards.

If you asked me what I wanted out of my education, I would be led to think that you wanted to know what I wanted it to do for my future. That is the mistake many people make. They fail to realize that none of this is truly preparing us for the future, it is merely keeping us busy at the moment.

I don’t really know what I want from my education. I’m basically forced to come to school every day or I’m severely punished by my parents. I know that the stuff I’m learning is mostly useless information outside of high school and college. What I learn today in school won’t have any effect on my life outside of school. I want an education that I can actually apply to my real life. In college I can get that by specializing in a specific major, but in high school I can’t have that because I can’t specialize my education.

I want knowledge that will be useful to me in the future. I want knowledge that will help me in life. Like how to do my taxes or how to pay bills, not how to solve complex numbers. At this point in life, I want my education to provide information that genuinely entices me, not something a group of people I never met agreed that I should learn. If I knew more information like that, if my generation knew more information like that, maybe we wouldn’t be so worried for the future like so many of us are.