(
    title: "On Learning",
    summary: None,
    published: Some((
        year: 2022,
        month: 3,
        day: 12,
        hour: 18,
        minute: 43,
        second: 00,
    )),
    tags: ["thoughts"],
)
---
Maria @ tilde.pink writes:
> once kids enter kindergarten, latest in school, there is a set of things that need to be learned, that are deemed very important later on. and so grown-ups try to streamline this into a schedule, a plan, and slap it around the heads of the kids, force them to squeeze through it, because otherwise some doomsday future will apparently happen to them.

I hated school with a passion at least equal to the people in life whom I have loved. But over time as an adult, I've come to believe that it's only one symptom of a much larger problem. Another quote which has stuck with me since I first read it, this time from Drew Devault:
> it starkly illuminates just how successful capitalism has been in corrupting a broad human understanding of empathy. So, I will spell the answer out: why do we have a system which will, for any reason, deny someone access to food? How unbelievably cruel is a system which will let someone starve because they cannot be productive within the terms of capitalism?

Indeed, I felt that one deeply. I am not an unintelligent person. I have always been chronically underemployed and generally get overlooked in favor of much less capable peers who seem to have, for lack of a better way of putting it, better social skills. To be more specific, they generally either lack strong opinions or have no problem with not voicing them, and seem to have a much higher tolerance for bullshit. I, on the other hand, lack the capacity to work under a small minded individual who makes bad management decisions without saying exactly what I think of it. This has not worked in my favor.

I know I'm rambling, but let's stear the threads together a bit. Western society strongly rewards the ability to conform, beginning in school but continuing throughout life. And worse, if you haven't managed to become successful "within the terms of capitalism" by the time you have been alive for a certain number of years you are basically written off.

When I was young, as smart as I thought I was, I did not understand a few key things about myself. I'm on the spectrum. It runs in my family actually. I joke that it's both a superpower and a curse, but when something interests me I come up for air weeks later with at least some proficiency no matter how blank my slate was when starting. The curse is that I lose track completely of anything else that is going on around me. Well, that's part of the curse. Another part is that no matter how genuine I try to be with people they largely get the impression that I'm always pissed off and can't tell if I'm being friendly or sarcastic.

What I would love to see is a world where the inability to tolerate the experience of "getting an education" does not preclude one from being taken seriously or becoming employed in a technical field. The term meritocracy has been quite sullied over the years, but I believe it still has, if you'll pardon the pun, merit.

In the spirit of all of my great rants let me end with Douglas Adams:
> Anyone who is capable of getting themselves made President should on no account be allowed to do the job.

There's a lot more than politics in that quote IMO, because politics and human nature creap into pretty much everything.
