The following is a short reflection I wrote exactly three years ago today, when I was working in the public school system.

Now that I have been out of that nightmare for awhile, where I watched as kids had their souls sucked out of them, or the attempt made, at least, by the “system” and the zombies who work for it, I am now on the verge of leaving even the kindergartens and preschools where I currently teach, some of which are privately funded.

These last weeks are stretching on like years. I’ve tried to bring a soul, compassion, and energy to the kids, and I have, but ultimately at my own expense. It is too emotionally taxing. The kids need their parents, their communities, and freedom to explore and play. Sadly, in the neurotically fast-paced, fiat currency, war racket, government parasite-funding societies in which we live, these kids are dumped off early, picked up late, and taught in the time between that their interests don’t matter. They are taught that mom and dad and the community, and the sunset, and the sky, and flowers, water, and grass, are just peripheral, largely unimportant characters in a devastatingly boring play called “how to be obedient.”

This play takes place every day at school, and then at home, in the form of homework, as well. These kids are taught furthermore that this thing called “learning” only happens at school, and though it is crushingly boring, should be viewed as exciting and critically important, and that, if they do not view it in this manner, something is wrong with them.

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February 25th, 2015

I don't like people reading over my shoulder. I have to (am supposed to) read over people's shoulders every day, while they are trying to focus and think.

You cannot grow a carrot by pulling it up out of the ground to check on it every day.

School often teaches that the things that are actually important to us are unimportant, and the things that we are naturally most interested in are at most side notes, or at the very least, an outright waste of time.

Our own methods of study, seeking knowledge, and play, are then deemed as either distractingly peripheral, or "useless," and we are instead bade, indeed bullied into, the acceptance of a popular myth--namely, that the suppression of our own natural and razor-sharp abilities, and the subsequent trade-in thereof at zero interest for second or third-hand knowledge about matters we are not interested in, is a good thing.

"Knowledge" which is so often passed down to us it would seem from a variety of strangely passionless and benign individuals known as "educators."

~*~

~KafkA

!

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Graham Smith is a Voluntaryist activist, creator, and peaceful parent residing in Niigata City, Japan. Graham runs the "Voluntary Japan" online initiative with a presence here on Steem, as well as DTube and Twitter. (Hit me up so I can stop talking about myself in the third person!)