Students go to school seven hours a day. Those who are involved often spend another hour or two at the school, practicing sports or participating in a meeting. Then we go home, and have hours of homework. Such large chunks of our days are overruled by school. What happened to the time when kids could be kids, when students would run home and spend hours on end exploring the world with their friends? When school was for book learning and home was for a different kind of learning: the learning that didn't feel like learning. Does anyone remember those times?
One of the problems with society today is that it is too tightly wound. Everything is focused on getting great grades and being involved and being accepted into the best colleges and jobs. Kids have so much pressure put on them every single day. I, as a very involved student who gets solid grades, know how much this pressure can crush a kid. There is a point where all of the responsibility and expectations forced upon us become too much - there is a point where we crack.
The world in general puts too much pressure on kids. Yes, we are the future. Yes, how we are shaped now is important. But why doesn't society value the imagination and critical thinking that comes from free time? It's proven that kids who use their imaginations end up doing better in many categories. My generation is losing so much imagination and critical thinking. I'm worried about what is going to happen to our kids. We are being programmed into robots, forced to do more work than necessary. And, because of this, we don't get time to do other things that will help us grow in ways that school stifles. We turn to entertainment such as video games and social networking sites that don't allow us to work our brains. We listlessly sit in front of the television screen, lulled by the flashing colors. Why? Because we don't have time for anything else. We don't have time to go out with our friends or explore the world around us. We don't have time to get involved in our communities, we have no time for fun and games. By the time we get home and finish with our homework, we only have time to plop in front of a computer or a tv before we head into bed.
Now I'm not saying that this is every teenager. I know teenagers who have plenty of time to go out and be with friends or find new things to do. But that doesn't mean that they do it. Kids look around them and see thousands of other brain dead kids with no time to have fun, and think that they are supposed to end up like that. Nobody can break the memes forced on teenagers by society. There aren't enough teens who see themselves as strong enough to break the world, and even if there were enough, we wouldn't have the time to do it. I don't know what we can do about it - Rome wasn't built in a day; there's no way we could change teenage life in a short period of time. But I wish that people could see that their lives are being ruined by their lack of activity; I wish that they would try to do something about it.
"Why doesn't society value the imagination and critical thinking that comes from free time?" Wow, yet another really big topic you've chosen. I think some parts of society do, other parts don't. And even the parts that do aren't quite sure what to do about it. Plus, "free time" won't necessarily lead to good results on its own, which is why education includes methods to help foster creativity and critical thinking. Still, I think these tend to come mostly to a small subset of people via unusual paths of experience. Books, courses, consultants, and training gurus talk about imagination & creativity, and ways to improve and harness them. Companies like mine spend loads of money trying to foster innovation, which is imagination & creativity applied to achieve results that matter (e.g., matter to society, customers, etc.). But the results are mixed and hard to measure sometimes, so there's a lot of uncertainty, but it seems like some people become much better at creativity & critical thinking than others. Still, I strongly believe you bring up a good point, in that too much time spent on some things can eliminate what needs to happen to help grow creativity etc. I'm sure this topic is something educators know about & try to deal with a lot already in their limited scope of influence, except that they work within a system that's difficult/slow to change, and one has to be careful not to lose other good things in the process. Also, some goals are conflicting, which makes it harder to find the best approach. More time studying gives good results in math & science, for instance. So in some countries, which value such skills more than creativity, there's even less time afterwards. The best recipe probably hasn't been definitively proven yet, and I wonder if it might even need to be customized to each student, or at least optimized to different types of people. But you point out something really interesting to me, in that people are spending lots of time on new things (even beyond staring at a television screen) such as social networking and video games. And we don't know what will come of it. It's an evolution of society, not just education. Of course, some people seem to find ways to extract insights & benefits & valuable results from almost any activity, but for the majority it's important to discover the long term ramifications of more time spent on these things. I believe lots of people are studying that very thing. Times are changing. Until it's figured out, maybe the best advice would be "moderation in all things" and that we should each try to find the "path with a heart" that matches our own personality and talents. By the way, I love the phrase "break the world" on so many levels. I haven't seen that phrase before. If it's your own invention, I am truly impressed. Even if not, I like the way you've used it. Critical thinking involves breaking free from unspecified or hidden assumptions to examine & analyze & evaluate to find the truth. Imagination and creativity involve breaking free from ingrained habits & notions & ways of thinking to come up with something novel. A little bit of proactive rebellion doesn't have to be a bad think at all. It might even lead to the creation of some better memes that can compete with and eventually replace the troublesome ones.
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