Monday, July 9, 2007
hurdles
I've been thinking alot in the last month about being a student and the student life. As most of you know, I've just finished law school and I am studying for the bar this summer. My days are spent trying to cram and retain information into my head. I am often alone, engaged in solitary activities, unless I find a friend to study with. And I think I have a new insight into the way a troubled student could just drop off the map. A student, especially a student who struggles socially, could disappear for weeks into a depressive funk entirely unnoticed. The goals that the system sets for him, to work, to work hard, to learn, to write papers, would all reinforce his internal monologue that he should remain isolated and working. And this activity would serve to reinforce the symptoms and underlying causes of his mental illness. And this has left me thinking--shouldn't we reform the structure of our educational system?
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3 comments:
So interesting. It really does scare me that kids can basically drop away---Don't you also think that work--especially competitive work---allows people to dissapear--perhaps they are still on the map physically but emotionally off the map? I feel like I know so many people who work to avoid their emotional lives--some of them are even conciously doing it. If work environments were designed to help people be in touch with their emotional needs--would it decrease productivity? What would our country look like if everything--government, culture, education, industry--was set up to keep people in touch with them selves and their needs?
Incidences of heart disease would descrease, obesity would start to wane, pharmaceutical companies would begin to experience a decline in their sales of antidepressants, the need for prescription sleep aids would decrease, high blood pressure preciptated by environment would start to regulate...
I would love a controlled experiment -- wouldn't it be great? How many of these sorts of things "never would have happened" had the student not been put in the environment of such intense pressure? There were two students in my hall at school who had psychotic breaks during exam period. I just wonder what their lives (and health status) would have been like without that year of "education." Makes me think a lot about whether I'll direct my own children into the kinds of places that cause these kinds of conditions . . .
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