First thoughts on school

Questions:

1) How do schools control/ discipline students? Are the students even aware that they are being controlled?
2) Do school's actually help develop our thinking or does it hinder it? (somewhat rephrased from what Carrie said)
3) Why is it that students create personal masks and roles while in social scenes such as school?

Experiences:

1) Actually getting to know the teachers after school is over and having a good time because of common interests. Hanging out after school in the teachers rooms and playing cards, talking, ect.
2) Having part of your mind on school and whats going on in the classes and what we are learning but the other half focusing on social aspects, like friend dramas. It's kind of hard balancing the two together, usually for me one wins over the other unless I have a good handle on it.
3) Actually learning and enjoying school. Usually its boring and everyone is tired and we just copy off the board onto our notebooks without really learning anything. But there are times where the class' get interactive and its enjoyable to learn and the students actually learn something. This year in science is very fun because the course is more interactive and we actually get to be hands on, Andy's class is also good because we often to go the roof, break out of the class room setting and sit as equals in a circle sharing our ideas.

Ideas:

During Friday's class Beatrice had a good theory about how high school is like a big kid day care center. I find this very interesting, in a way connecting to Rachel's idea that school is like a breeding ground. "The government uses schools to civilize us"(Rachel). Most of our lives we either in schools or office buildings. All a way to keep us as they want us. They send us to school where we learn a set curriculum and they hope we go into office jobs. Forever living in a box and being pent up like animals. This would not be the first idea you would think of when you think of school. You would usually think of a place that gives you a great chance at a good education. Yet there is not much choice in it. School for children and young adults is not optional going back to Rachel's idea. School stops kids from running wild in the streets. Though if there wasn't any school, many kids would not know what to do. There is not much for kids to do in the real world. We can not get jobs, we can not live on our own with out a source of income. Playing video games and spending times with friends may seem like a very good idea but after a while doing that day after day will get boring.


I remember one day I was upset because I was fighting with one of my friends. I came into school upset and through most of the day I could not concentrate with other things. I also noticed subjects like math and science made my mood worse because when I didnt't get something it got me more frustrated. I guess the funny thing was recently it was happening more often because once we solved a problem another one came back up, it was like we were going in circles. School did no pose much of a distraction because we often saw each others in the hall way and it was either she was ignoring me or I was ignoring her. But english class and history class were nice because it was a break from writing off the board and actually get to talk about ideas and less formal in a way.