Why is school and work (mostly) boring?
As I was listening to an interview of Oprah with Adam Grant in which they debated the impostor syndrome1 I pause and think about the freedom of choice in our learning environments. We call them schools but I look at a job as also being a possible learning space. Why is it so boring to go to school or university for most of us? If big names like Bill Gates and Elon Musk dropped out of school and achieved so much why should us mortals even bother?
The problem that I have with schools is that they rely on a fixed curriculum and so do universities. One big pile of hard to digest fields in which somebody decided you ought to be competent or else….The issue with this is that it is a limited approach. I have found myself numerous times in this situation: I don’t want to read this and I am pissed that it is taking time from my life and from my desire to read something else. So the thirst for learning exists in most individuals but the system manages to destroy it by putting compulsory reading at the top of the priorities. Read this. Then we will test you from it and certify that you have obediently wasted your time with our literature. This is so wrong on so many levels. I find it more exciting to learn when I choose what I want to read based on my interest. Our energy is the most precious resource and we easily squander it in our youth with a plethora of must-read papers handed in by our teachers who have gone under the same treatment themselves.
I pondered about going to art school. I tested it. I have found myself caught in the same crippled system. Doing a bunch of drawings that the teachers want and reading what they want without any prior testing of what I am interested in. I find this method of teaching old and toxic. I really doubt that in 2100 our schools will even look the same as they do now. I strongly feel that the future of learning is the freedom of choice and the only interference should be a soft guiding one. We should test children to see what they like, not if they perform as we have set the bar. Early detection of what someone is particularly gifted at can save years of futile reading and studying, not to mention poor career choices. The paradox is that we expect the same elements of the system who have been going through the same loop to do this: our teachers. I remember one interview of Tony Robbins in which he said that he would rather go to someone who has run a successful company and learn about economics from them than from a teacher who has never had the experience of economics. I believe him and it makes sense. How can we expect from individuals who may not have their calling as a job, teachers, to test children and future adults for more than a standard accomplishment of an academic soup?
The real danger of the current way of learning in institutions dedicated to it is that it kills what could be a genuine love for studying. This is the real problem. A person who has lost the intention to learn anything at all, including things in which they used to find interest, is someone completely lost. Boredom and frustration set it. Reading the next book, drawing the next thing, assembling the future toy is a chore.
The student should have the freedom to tailor their own curriculum and their own readings. Give someone interested in mathematics to read poetry and you will suck life out of them. Give the same list of poetry to someone who loves it , ask them if they like it and you fuel them with life. Such is the power of the right activity. We should stop blaming children and adults because they are bored and not interested and we should ask ourselves why. Learning should be fun. Learning should be a choice. Learning should continue long after the individual has stepped out of the institution. Learning should be the extension of the soul wanting to bring forth the hidden gifts requiring manifestation. We should strive to instill a love for learning, not for grades or for achievement as learning is continual while grades and papers fade away leaving behind a crushed spirit.
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