“You are posting
comments too quickly. Slow down.”
This is a gemini couplet of sentences which appeared earlier today when I perused the Georgian Eye, reading and commenting on other peoples’ posts.
This is a gemini couplet of sentences which appeared earlier today when I perused the Georgian Eye, reading and commenting on other peoples’ posts.
Let me be clear: I am neither so naïve nor such a Luddite to
not be cognizant of the rampant spam-bots bogging down forums and chat rooms
worldwide, nor am I unaware of the (at times) petty, back-stabbing nature of
the written world.
However, something about this line gave me shivers – echoes
of high school, of college, of university. Sit down. Shut up. Listen up. Pay
attention. Stop distracting the class. That’s not important right now. Calm
down. Focus. Your rapid-fire queries
– serious questions, about biology, math, geography, English – even if they
didn’t sound like it, they were poignant, pertinent, perplexing. Your
questions, (however) were not conducive to the learning en masse – schedules and curriculums needed to be met, so the little
things that interested you were caught up as a casualty of education –
something you rediscovered later in life if you were lucky, if not tragically
becoming something you never touched again because the lightning bolt never hit
the same place twice.
Semantic satiation is always a risk when thinking, but fear
of something is a powerfully poor reason to not permit its opposite – true,
inspired, desired learning –
something which school is supposed to instil – beyond the minutia and numbers
and dates you could pick up off the back of a discarded book in a bus terminal.
Do your teachers and professors bring out your passions, or do they just
scribble a mark down for the pedantic pieces of paper – the art piece, the
cabinet – your blood and tears? Did you come to learn – or to
memorize?
