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from Natural Life magazine,
January/February 2009 If Napoleon Dynamite (of the 2004 film of the same name) was right when he said that “girls only want boyfriends who have great skills,” then I’m surprised my marriage has lasted 15 years. It’s embarrassing to admit, but my wife has already figured it out and swears she loves me anyway, so here goes: I have very few great skills. Ouch… there, I said it. Sad, but true. Now before I go any further, let me qualify my confession by saying that I have now become, in my mid-40s, a virtual skill-learning machine. This past summer alone, I learned how to make homemade pizza, started knitting, took up gardening and taught myself how to play “Hey There Delilah” on the guitar. Not bad for a recovering incompetent. But how did I make it through school and this far in life without learning how to do anything really useful?
Well, let’s think about that. Schools are designed to prepare (read “program”) our children to fit into the world (read “economy”) as it is. And the world (economy) that currently exists is largely controlled by powerful multinational corporations that exert enormous influence over our governments, our schools and even our minds through mass marketing and control of the media. These corporations don’t want people who can actually do anything. They need people who will follow directions, work long hours, put corporate needs before their own and those of their families and, of course, consume. So, is it any surprise that this is exactly what our schools teach: obedience, willingness to put aside our own needs and interests, submission to someone else’s imposed agenda regardless of how meaningless and irrelevant it may seem, dependence on “experts” to tell us how to live our lives? When I think of great skills, or the basic skills needed to live a good, meaningful life, I think of verbs like growing, making, building, creating, playing, connecting – skills that unambiguously add to the quality of our lives.... To read the rest of this article, subscribe to Natural Life's online edition. Jim Strickland lives in Everett, Washington with his wife and three children. He is a community-based educator in nearby Marysville where he works to promote non-coercive learning and the development of true learning communities. Jim invites response from readers who are interested in joining the conversation on integrating learning with the rest of our lives. He can be reached at livedemocracy@hotmail.com. |
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