A Society of All Work and No Play

Credit to Giphy

"Everyone's a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing it is stupid." - Albert Einstein

It's September. Schools and universities have started again. Fortunately, I left school five years ago, but I'm still holding a grudge and I want to get this off my chest.

Education is one of the most invasive things in life. You go to school five days a week, spending around six hours sitting in dreary classrooms. And once you escape for the day, you get however many hours of homework in the evenings or the weekends. To top it off, there seem to be exams lingering around every corner - so there's always a need to revise. All to appease some faceless bureaucrats who are scarcely on the same page.

Back in January, I recall sitting in a restaurant where I picked up a conversation at another table (I'm a writer, so I eavesdrop). Some kid was being asked by her parents about revision for an exam. This kid was probably not even in secondary school yet, and was being given the January exams that were the bane of my life during my GCSEs and A Levels. Does anybody else think that's messed up? What parent wants their kids to be under so much pressure at that age?

To add insult to injury, you hardly use any of the stuff you have to study. For example, I did A Level Maths, which is full of calculus and trigonometry. Unless you're an engineer, what are the chances you're going to use any of that in later life? I've even heard that the "creative" GCSEs are being scrapped from the curriculum.

So, if school hasn't given you a nervous breakdown (or worse), what then? Go to university? No thanks. I'd had enough of exams by that point. The last thing I want is to deal with both that and debt. Besides, employers these days are more interested in experience than qualifications. I qualified as an accounting technician two years ago, and I have no interest in pursuing further education on that topic. And I certainly haven't used any calculus or trigonometry in that field. If you're lucky enough to get through the Catch-22 malarkey of needing experience to get experience, you're essentially made to become a machine - with only four weeks out of every year to escape.

So, I guess the bottom line is that "Learning is fun. Education isn't." I've probably learned more from research for my writing than from any classroom. I've previously spoken about my bitterness against "The Society of All Work and No Play" that we seem to be living in. I feel like I could convey this in my fiction. But full-time employment is numbing for a creative mind, so I guess I feel I have to discuss it more overtly.