betterthinkers

This is an experiment of satire. Below, I am trying to write in the Nietzschean form, or at least how Nietzsche comes across to me. I am no scholar of Nietzsche. It seems poetic but incoherent, kind of how most existentialist or continental philosophy comes across to someone who studies in the analytic tradition. Anways, in true Nietzschean (again, as I read him) I attack a prevailing belief of the day. The idea of teaching 21st century skills as a way of liberating the child from hard work. Teaching 21c without content knowledge from specific disciplines. I repeat: This is just for fun.

The big issue with all this optimistic 21st Century learning hoo-ra-ra and pessimism towards the “learning factories of the past” is that is it is largely based on mob-like, morally intuitive thinking. It is based on faith grown from irrationalism and ra! ra! ra!

It runs on the assumption that our trajectories have led us up to these great moments. In the current state of our championed present day, we are now smart enough to deeply realize that the past would apply many atrocities to today’s learner. Luckily, today’s learner does not live in this time. Yes, now, we have a real chance to make the future amazing for young learners.

And so some posit that everyone has the right to learn what they want. Everyone has the right to feel ok. Every young learner has the power to change the world. They have the right to envision their own future.

I do agree to some extent.

But…

I just want to make sure that we do not put the cart before the horse. That when that horse and buggy do travel the bumpy road of life, that perhaps young learners should not expect to have their cake and eat it too. Perhaps they will have to acquire the ingredients and tools to bake their own cake. And as they are eating it, and washing it down with milk, the road will be bumpy and some of that milk will spill. If that horse has to push rather than pull, blindly creaking forward, even a paved road can’t help the young learner from crashing into the ditch of unmet expectations. 

The world can be rigid. By learning to dance, we can make it less so for ourselves. The more responsible you are, the better equipped you will be to chisel out a meaningful existence. In the least, you have a right to a chisel, young learner. A proper technique on how to wield it, is where i come in.

“Something might be true while being harmful and dangerous in the highest degree. Indeed, it might be a basic characteristic of existence that those who would know it completely would perish.” – Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil

Impulsive expectations can corrupt this ideal of agency. As the adult, I have to ensure that your agency stays firm for when you really feel compelled to lean on it in the future.

Whatever you envision your future self to be, be sure it stays connected to some of the good of today. Even if that good is a painful but necessary growth-inducing discipline. Do you possess foresights gained by the fully grown? No. But the seeds are there.