About School...

Only ideological psychology can say why so many are so insecure about their level of education and intelligence. There's always someone who seems more educated than you are. And the impossible truth is they probably look at you and see all the things you can do that they can't do and feel the same way. Not to sound obvious, but isn't that kind of silly? If only insecurities ran as deep for the development level of the spirit. But spiritual intelligence doesn't work well as a status symbol because it doesn't cost money to obtain. Spiritual intelligence is taken from life itself. Very few acknowledge and appreciate life as the cutting edge college that it is.

School is often mean-spirited and segregating. Some kids are treated badly in schools. It's no wonder it drives them away. And those who get along just fine wonder why so many kids leave. But what do they know about what it is like to be treated like garbage? Their daddy's buy them everything that it takes to be treated like human beings. They're cool, and only the cool deserve to be treated like human beings. It's no wonder the sensitive ones leave. I left. I was sensitive. School was a nightmare - a child-hating, soul-crushing, individual-denying nightmare. You can't be a kid; you have to be all grown up. All work and no play even though you're only six years old. You can't have a soul; that means you are creative and creative is not what the job market is looking for. You can't be yourself; yourself is a terrible thing that those class agendas, subject overviews, and routines that teach us all to think the same just will not have Almost all of my nightmares are about school. As soon as my head hits the pillow, I'm stuck in grade ten forever.

I know what you're thinking: "Ah, c'mon. School must teach something." Well, it teaches to ridicule, it teaches to pick fights, it teaches to be pretty and cool, and many other very important lessons. But most of all, it teaches how to hate yourself or someone else because you or they have more or less school than you or they. But thank goodness for Mrs. Slade in grade four, and Mrs. Butler in grade eight for without their encouragement and faith and their encouragement and faith only, I wouldn't be able to read and write this today. They believed in me. And it was their faith and encouragement and not simple abc and 123 that taught me how to express myself and to feel peace in doing so. And that's what pure school means to me. It's an attitude, a spirit; not a textbook or a classroom. But sadly school as an institution of higher education only believes in a small few. It is passive-aggressive and turns us all into robots.

School is often machine-spirited and competitive. It didn't matter if I got a higher or lower grade than whoever... I felt bad either way. It sucks to feel small. It sucks to make others feel small. But truth is not an honourary degree at college. You can't get a doctorate in truth. Life is the only college that teaches spirits. And spirits are the only teachers that specialize in truth. So if writing is the language of truth, writing is also the voice of the soul. And since the language of truth comes in many different colours, don't be afraid to use figurative colours such as metaphors. Language is more flexible than black and white. Try pink and green instead. But keep those colours as simple, as unintimidating and free from judgement as possible.

I've never mocked the school of living, but I've lived the mockery of school. School expected me to write on demand. But I visualize red rainbows over black lakes during English sunsets. I poeticize the blinking of little bright yellow lights along the horizon at night. Those are crab boats. I rationalize the angels in my boots. I write from the spirit. You know the spirit. When the thinker dreams too much, it's the stuff that plays with mermaids and their pet sea horses. She could never dream too much. When the dreamer thinks too much about things she can think too much about, it's the stuff that asks, "why does everyone hate me so much?" That's spirit. And that's what I write from.

I can't write about something that doesn't inspire me. Though they tell me I need to in order to complete the program. It's not to seek truth. It's not to question love. It's not to taste the wet sunlight that breathes rainbows during the day. It's not to soak up the wet moonlight that traces moonbows at night. Yes, there is such a thing. And they are quite beautiful. But "the program" isn't about them; the program is about split infinitives, misplaced modifiers, and dangling participles. It satisfies those who say I need to deliberate Hamlet's emotional states, or how the Canadian economy is dependent on the American economy. Generic subjects need not be signed by integrity. How can I write about them with integrity if they don't inspire me? And if you really want to, you can go to DueNow.com. You can get "Thousands of essays on every topic. Download one today for only $1.99!" Now we even get to pay to have others think for us. Lovely.

Imagine that: being told to write about something that you never think about, something that doesn't make you think, something that doesn't make you feel. In fact, it doesn't inspire you at all. How are you supposed to do that? Where are you supposed to take the spirit? Calculus with Mathematica? Harper's Bazaar Magazine? The Newfoundland Herald? You can pull it out of a bottle of smoke suspended in the stillborn air; otherwise it's just someone else's thoughts and feelings. So basically, they were asking me to bullshit: bullshit on demand. Write about something I never think about, feel about, something that doesn't touch my soul. They wanted me to write about something I knew nothing about as though I knew something about it.

Just because people aren't educated doesn't mean they're ignorant. I learned more from life than I ever learned from any conventional exam I crammed for. The woman on the TV news makes people who didn't go through the mainstream education system feel ignorant and stupid. But those at the top doing what everybody else wants them to do are also at the bottom with their controlled minds and dead dreams and unborn souls. They try to protect those at the bottom from their own supposed blind intuition and selfish integrity that cannot see what others want them to see no matter how crude, unless it's what they really believe in. But what's so blind and selfish about that? Unborn souls could never begin to see the poetry, the pure essays about life, a child of the woods reads in a silver stream sparkling. Dead dreams never feel the botany and biology that a woman of the flowers breathes in her buttercup bedroom looking through buttercup windows, lying in a buttercup bed, and crying pure buttercup tears. They teach her many wonderful things about her own heart. Controlled minds could never begin to identify the psychology, sociology, and philosophy a spirit of the streets learns from driving his taxi cab.

In order to learn from life form empty perspectives on things. Be an open book to experience so patience, reason, and understanding can write in it. And you can read your own soul and be your own teacher. 

Elaine 06