Thursday, July 26, 2012

High School

The smell. The disapproving whispers. The horrendous food. Certainly such a prodigious academic location would offer something more profound to our erudite minds. Maybe. Maybe not. It is doubtless that high school at minimum sets the mood for one's intellectual appetite to be whetted. Many a futures have been swayed by the things learned in secondary schools. This does not seem to support that they are the least bit efficient at fulfilling the overall purpose of their very existence. Even a device as broken as this is incapable of holding back those striving to achieve excellence.

However, I will, without further ado, get to the point. The point being there is no point. To high school. The fact of the matter is that the  information furnished by high schools is trivial. Placeholders to what the future will hold. While overlooking the odd anecdotal case, there have never really been any true scientific revelations that have sprung forth from the bowels of one of the 17,000 high schools in America. While one may posit that I would be missing the point, as it were, of high school, I would dare to submit that it provides pupils with nothing more than a platform upon which they may refine their study skills before really beginning their education. A high school diploma may be earned with a disgustingly tiny modicum of effort. It's value is that it allows you to give college a go.Which to present day, the only merit I can award high school is that it will end. It will cease to be, and something of actual value will fill my time.

As I see it, high school is a metaphorical gas station in our road trip of life; a necessary step to getting to your destination, but has little to no affect on what you actually accomplish upon your arrival.

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.1~

Monday, July 23, 2012

The Morality of Teaching.


Directly below these words is a picture one of my friends posted on Facebook, and below is my response. This fits in well with the theme of Morality, so I thought I would bring it here.



"Not that they don't study. That percentage of students that don't try will stay within a insignificant bound throughout the years and won't fluctuate all that much. However, based on the specific teacher, there will be a difference in how effectively that teacher inspires kids to learn. If a teacher is really ineffective, then a higher percentage of kids will be choosing failure over the input of effort.

Now I don't believe that anyone has ever really blamed the teacher specifically for children failing a class. Failure is expected in any given course. If everyone is passing with ease, then the teacher isn't attempting to challenge his or her pupils. So the teacher must ramp up the curriculum and then inspire the children to benefit themselves.

So your picture is correct in the fact that it is silly that we blame teachers for kids who are intrinsically self-destructive and aren't motivated to learn, but it is addressing the wrong issue entirely. Just as not all children can pass a class, not all teachers are good at teaching. Many are horrible. If one doesn't do a job to a high enough standard to deserve pay, they shouldn't have a job. But I fear that in the current state of things, teachers are practically promised job security despite their performance. Which isn't deserved. You are addressing the wrong issue entirely."




stet.

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.1~

Journaling

After perusing my old journal entries, I received a super intense wave of nostalgic excitement. I remembered, for the most part, all of the events I had written about nearly a year and half ago to obviously just over a month ago. I remembered why I felt the way I did, and it was just cool to see how much (and little) that I have changed into who I am today.

It is interesting to see myself not a current snapshot, id est what ever my current emotions may be, but as a true fourth dimensional being. All my emotions and thoughts in their irrational and rational undulations alike, all neatly (and messily for that matter) recorded in Evernote or on the pages of a black spiral notebook on the bottom shelf of my bookcase. A surprisingly dynamic concoction of thoughts and emotions that often surprises even me. Most of my written rampages still hold true to this day. I feel the same things about certain issues today, as I did whenever I wrote my thoughts down, which is comforting to think at least I'm consistent in my insanity.

Food for thought, my friends.

 ~V 1.1~

The Quandary of Morality

What is morality? Is it something that we can grasp? It is something easily defined and is there a clear line drawn in the metaphorical sands of ethics?

These are some very powerful questions I've been toying with in the past weeks. I do believe there is a God. I do believe there are some very important things that we cannot do because they are innately wrong and can be easily discerned to be right or wrong. Things such as taking something which doesn't belong to you or lying.

Now I will step back and ask how do we view right and wrong? I will venture to say that an activity which is nearly always "wrong" isn't wrong itself. The context of the situation is responsible for the transition of morality. Some activities, such as rape, will be permanently wrong. After much pondering, I have never been able to devise a situation under which a rape could benefit someone. They may force themselves to grow into a stronger person, but that is not a benefit of the actual evil itself, but rather of the individual choosing to be positive no matter what they are facing.  But, for many things, doing wrong isn't always wrong.

I think the only real difference between the right and wrong would be the object of the benefit and the target of the misfortune. When a soldier jumps on a grenade to save his friends, his actions are said to be good, because he choose to sacrifice himself for the benefit of others. He received the bad and others received the benefit of prolonged life. Good.

Therefore, according to our current hypothesis, we can judge the right or wrong of a specific action based on how it will affect others. In this way we can now see that stealing your sister's pack of cigarettes would ultimately benefit her, despite the theft required for the benefit to come about. So would this then make the act of thievery a morally right thing to do? I think so, but for some reason I still cannot view the actual action of removing the cigarettes from my dear sister's possession as a "good" thing. Those are her cigarettes. I do not own them, and therefore should not endeavor to do so, without the permission of my sister. But I would be adding years to her life if I could succeed in motivating her to quit.

Now let us enter the mythical realm of the hypothetical. Let us pretend for a moment that I am driving a bus full of school children across the Alaskan wilderness in the dead of winter. A blizzard is mounting and I am running low on fuel. If the bus were to run out of fuel, all of the children and I would freeze to death within the hour. We haven't passed a gas station in hours and then out of nowhere, we happen upon a unheated store. The owner's car is sitting outside, and he is just about to leave. Let's also say that we know the store owner lives almost an hour away. If I were to stop and steal the store owners gas so that I would save the lives of the children, but also certainly kill the store owner, because he then would not be able to make it to the safety of shelter, what would be the proper thing to do? Would the right thing to be the action that gave the most number of people the biggest benefit? Or would the fact that I would be stealing from that very unfortunate store nullify the benefit? I don't have the answers. I don't know what is the right thing to do.

I thankfully believe that the world is never nearly that dramatic, but I think that often the black and white line of morality is severely muddled both by our perception of what good and bad will occur based on our actions.

Food for thought, my friends.

~V 1.0~

 //If you have any topics you would like to see me write about, drop me a comment\\