October 2nd, 2006

It's Monday, October 2nd, and the university year officially starts again.

For me it begins with the so-called "practical course" in psychiatry - a subject that is rather interesting for me, so still I hope that it will not be too boring. However, it seems like this "practical course" consists mostly of lectures and seminars, and only on the last day of the week (which will also be the last day of the course) we'll spend one (!) hour at the clinic working with patients.

Well, I've just had about 60 minutes of psychiatry lessons: a psychologist (not an M.D.) told us about the diagnosis of psychiatric disorders in children. While sitting there, listening and from time to time making some comments which were appreciated by the lecturers, I had the following thoughts:

Now since many years I experienced something like "freedom" in my holidays for the first time: After passing my pharmacology exam on July 14th, I invested the time as planned, with many activities unrelated to studying: First I used two weeks in order to finish the new Hugi, then I spent one month working at Siemens, after which I studied social medicine to take the exam on September 20th, and since then, I've been working on the next issue of the magazine of Mensa Austria. In addition, I've visited many meetings and other events, e.g. yesterday I was at the election party of the Liberal Forum (Karin Resetarits invited me) and watched the TV coverage of the election sunday together with several politicians and friends of that party (including Alexander Zach, who is going to represent the Liberal Forum in the next parliament thanks to the seat the SPÖ reserved for him).

Now I'm virtually "back to school". Sitting in a classroom, listening to the teacher and only occasionally having the opportunity to raise one's hands and say something strongly reminds me of the 12 years I had to spend at elementary school and grammar school. Gosh! Short before my 6th birthday, I had lost the total freedom of arranging my time as I wanted. Except in holidays, much of my schedule was planned by someone else. Now I know why I always had some strange feelings during my school-days: it was because of this utter lack of freedom to spend my time as I wanted.

My mother is an elementary school teacher, too, and a rather strict one. Fortunate for me, she really managed to motivate me to do well at school. When I entered elementary school, I was convinced that "school was the most wonderful thing in life". As I was very successful at school, this conviction didn't wear off.

Since I had many interests, I enjoyed learning about almost everything. I also enjoyed writing and solving mathematical tasks. But in grammar school, there sometimes were subjects that didn't interest me much, e.g. botany or geology. Yet my mother insisted on me studying these subjects well, which meant that she wanted me to learn the transcripts from class word by word. I asked her many times: "Why? I'll forget this stuff soon after the exam anyway. Knowing this is of no use. I only need it for the exam, afterwards I won't need it ever!" My mother used to answer that if you learn something once, then it will be easier for you to refresh your knowledge on this subject later in life than if you had never learned it. Well, so I also had to learn this stuff. Sometimes I actually had a C in biology since this was the least interesting subject at school for me and I didn't memorize some boring facts even if my mother made me repeat them over and over.

Sometimes I said: "You've already said many times that I'm a clever boy, and my teachers say the same! So why do I have to learn this bullshit by heart? It won't make me more clever. This is something for the less intelligent ones - by studying this crap well, they show that they have at least some positive traits, such as diligence. But why do I have to study this? This is beneath my dignity!" And my mother would reply: "If a dumb child doesn't study this, this can be tolerated. But if a clever child doesn't study this, then it's a crime!" These were her moral views.

Since school was so important to me, I had little freedom of arranging my time. After spending 4 to 6 hours at school in the morning, I used to hurry home in order to complete my assigments, for which I used to need around 1 hour, and sometimes 2 hours if essays had to be written. After that it was usually already pretty dark, and so I decided to spend the remaining time with my computer. In bed I would sometimes read magazines or books.

Actually I wasn't too unsatisfied with this routine, but of course this gave me hardly any opportunities for making social experiences outside school. Since I lived rather far away from school, I didn't have friends visit me on the weekend, either.

But apart from all of that, what I've realized today is what was the really bad thing about school: it's this sitting on a chair for hours and hours, listening to a lecture that interests you more or less. Usually even the more interesting lectures aren't continuously exciting from the beginning through the end. So sometimes you simply start pondering over other things, or "sleeping" as some teachers would say. If you have the opportunity to read a book during class (listening and reading simultaneously), draw or write, that's great. I've done this many times; fortunately my teachers have been tolerant enough. But I know that not all of them are. Probably they only tolerated this behaviour of mine since I was such a good student. I have no idea how they would have reacted if I hadn't.

In any case, this solution was okay, but not the optimum since this always resulted in me returning home tired with a red head. After all, paying attention to class and reading at the same time is exhausting.

I just wonder if there's anybody who really enjoyed his school years. I used to tell myself that school was great, but in fact it wasn't. I virtually had no life since as soon as my leisure time started, the weather was already too bad to be enjoyed. IMHO that's a pity. Vienna is a beautiful city and it's most enjoyable during daytime.

It may be due to my fast-working brain that I was more often bored at school than others and therefore often did "multitasking". But as far as I know, most ordinary children are not satisfied with school, either. It really limits your freedom of acting, it limits the time you could invest in exploring the world on your own. You will learn things that interest you, as well as such that don't (and some of which you'll never need again in life, indeed!). Much of school pedagogics is based on anxiety; on this basis, you're forced to pay attention to classes that would otherwise make you sleep, since you could risk being examined about them any time, and so on. Is this really useful?

Do we need uniform schools at all? Aren't we living in a democratic society? Shouldn't education be the path of developing one's own personality instead of adapting to some "model"? Aren't all of us individuals with different inherited traits, raised by different parents, living in different environments?

On the other hand, one cannot deny that some knowledge is necessary for living in society: reading, writing, calculating, and some basic facts about society, history etc. But don't forget - there are many more equally essential things which you don't learn at school, like: how to get dressed, how to wash, how to brush your teeth, how to eat using knife and fork etc. These things aren't taught at school since one assumes that parents teach their children. Why don't parents teach their children reading, writing and calculating as well? As a matter of fact, many do! And if there wasn't school, I guess almost everybody would. Only due to the existence of obligatory school tuition, some parents rely themselves on school.

One must not forget that the school system was created in days when a large part of the population was illiterate. Nowadays there are hardly any illiterates in Austria and similar countries any more. So what's elementary school really for?

My point isn't that school is bad in general, the only thing I'd really like to discuss is if its realization with time-tables etc. is really necessary or whether it isn't rather harmful than beneficial.