Leaving passion by the wayside

by Haley Olds 
“The problem with school is that it’s forced. I’m thirsty for knowledge when I have the freedom to seek it myself.” – A hipster teen blog



Education is important; I think we can all agree on that. But have we taken it a little too far? Countries are in competition for the best schools, kids are being overloaded with homework and expectation for their future.

Most of these expectations don’t come from their own minds but from someone else’s-a teacher’s or a parent’s. We have begun to lose the meaning of passion and are being enveloped by the concept that we must live a cookie-cutter life and work a decent job that pays well.

We are given one life. We are born and then we die, we choose what to do with the in between. English teacher Al Wendler said, “I feel like students are forced into learning things in today’s world that may not benefit them in the future. I think we live in a test-driven educational world. I’ve seen it become more and more this way…We are leaving passion by the wayside.”

Mr. Wendler makes a great point on how education has taken a turn for the worse. The turn is changed from learning basic things and finding something that truly makes you feel alive to learning skills we may never need just for the sake of testing. Education is very important indeed. It is what plants the seed for passion and the knowledge for making beautiful things.

Education isn’t the problem; the problem is those who put the requirement and boundaries up for it. Junior Cynthia Douglas said “[Education] is definitely more about the money nowadays. It’s more about the hands you shake in life, the opportunities you take.”

 Society has molded this model of what we should do with our lives, how we should live and creating a “better future”. Why not live in a shack in Kenya feeding and nurturing needy children or working at a small coffee shop in Paris if it’s what you really want to do?

Challenge the boundaries of what we’ve made our life goals about, take time to think of what really makes you happy, and question what it is that you want your life to be about.