By Rani Schwartz
Until last year, I thought of different subjects as impenetrable bubbles. A poet couldn’t be a scientist, or vice-versa; an artist couldn’t also be a mathematician. I know that my thought-processes were faulty, since Michelangelo was good at many different things, but I justified my philosophy by believing that none of the disciplines that he participated in were intertwined. Furthermore, learning was simply memorization; memorization could only be tested by marks on a paper, and these marks were more important than anything else. However, my opinion changed when I listened to a Ted-Talk by John Green, a philanthropist, novelist, and educator. Green likened education to cartography, insisting that people should view learning as creating a map rather than jumping over a series of hurdles. This map analogy might be expounded upon, and I can view it in relation to myself. When I’m introduced to a new concept, I can draw it on my map of knowledge of the universe, and once I know where the concept begins, I can follow it. For example, I can travel down a river of calculus to calculate the speed of an object at a fixed point in time, climb a mountain of history to discover current world politics at it’s peak; and jump into a crater of biology that leads me back into the earth and back in time. These landmarks aren’t insular; the river flows into the crater and over the mountain. Likewise, rather than creating many different pictures, obtaining knowledge from different courses creates a mosaic. When writing an article for the RamPage Allen Academy news blog recently, I used an analogy comparing the law of entropy to politics. Ideas from completely different disciplines somehow perfectly complemented each other. Essentially, the tributary of a scientific concept watered a field of political discourse. Oh how wrong could I have been about learning? Learning isn’t about “A”s or marks; learning is discovering something new everyday, being a nihilistic lover of The Catcher in the Rye one day and then a completely re-born, enthusiastic, and invigorated reader of Thoreau the next. Learning is proclaiming that Abraham Lincoln was undeniably not racist, and that all Puritans are evil, then learning about the progress of New England communities and Lincoln’s rhetoric that black people are innately inferior to white. Learning is refusing to let the metal of your mind cool so that it cannot bend anymore, but keeping it firm enough to resist the “morsels of beautiful language” that threaten to compromise its integrity. Learning is understanding that with every river that you dip your toes into, every mountain peak that you traverse, every desert that you cross, a thousand more exist. I hesitate to form any opinions of my own because the opposite argument is always so compelling. Learning is creating an ideological wall from the strongest material that you own, watching it crumble with a few well-placed shots, and finding the courage to build another one again using the tips of the arrows as reinforcement. Learning is not a straight path; rather, it resembles a cycle with many different starting points and ending points, inhibitors and catalysts. Learning is trying to understand your motives for doing what you do. Am I simply trying to live up to expectations? How many of my actions are subconsciously calculated, intended to create a perfect version of myself? What if my whole life is simply a lie? What if I’ll never know myself because I’m trying to create a character? What if my essence isn’t even a solid entity; What if it is constantly morphing and changing so much that I can’t ever find it? What if the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states that you can’t ever know the true position of an atom because the mere act of locating the atom changes its position, applies to my perception of my inner being? What if I can’t ever determine the velocity and position of my amorphous, twisting essence at exactly the same time? What if none of this matters--what if my musings have no effect on anyone? What if we stop questioning the color of the tiles on the paths of our lives and simply begin to walk? Will that make our lives any richer, or poorer? What if I am terribly ego-centric, and my perception of this document as an important, valuable piece is unrealistic because a thousand people have asked the same questions before? I have no idea where this discourse is going, but it accurately represents the meandering path of life, with no definite beginning or end. And so, because this is as good a time as any, I guess I’ll end it here.
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By Rani Schwartz
Hello 6th graders of the left wing of the Middle school hallway. Today, I will entreat you to pay your jeans day dollar. I am not merely a puppet of the financial branch of the Student Council; no I have many, many times expressed my discontent at standing here before you and asking for your money without just cause. However, everyone, including myself, has to check boxes before she can run wild and live purely by her convictions. I don’t believe in this system of earning revenue; I don’t believe in the way that national honor society picks its candidates; I don’t believe that school should be organized to foster competition rather than cooperation; I don’t believe that I should have to check boxes, and I lament that you too, you young, bright, beautiful people of our future will have to grapple with these problems. Think of me as a British tax collector; in the growing tension between America and Great Britain during the 18th century, I might have been tarred and feathered or even killed. But, across the pond, I would’ve been considered seditious if I didn’t pay my dues to King George the third. My heart is telling me to let you dump a thousand pounds of tea in the Boston Harbor, but my neck is telling you to try your best to tolerate the intolerable acts for a just little while longer. Thankfully, because you all don’t have any capacity to hurt me, I know which side I will pick. But, Nevertheless, I still regret standing here before you. Let this be a lesson to you; please make sure that you know your job requirements before you sign up for anything. If tax-collecting is anathema to your morals, by all means choose a different profession. I hope that my honesty has convinced you to pay a dollar today. At our student-council meeting yesterday, President Lasell brought to our attention that revenue from jeans day has stagnated, dropping the rankings of the financial group. When my desire to break away from oppression hurts any of the people that I care about, then I must reevaluate my situation and bite the bullet. In closing, I ask you to hand over your hard earned money, not for me, but for the sake of the financial stability of Allen Academy Student Council. Washing dishes, doing laundry, and vacuuming under the sofa is hard work, and should be spent on something better than the hierarchy of Allen StuCo. Until my team can create more inventive, more creative, and more just ways of earning money, then I must continue to stand before you week after week and ask you for this small portion of your earnings. However, change cannot happen too quickly, and to facilitate it I must ask you, on this beautiful November morning, for a George Washington. Well, he would probably approve of your withholding of money and rebelling against authority and all but… anyway… please give me a dollar. |
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