Are we asking for something posible?

What a subject to close this part of the course! Chilean’s Education System.

I don’t know about you, but I’m surprised. Really. More than the article itself, which I thought was most important and most impressive were the comments. Seriously, I think at first were quite offensive and even a little ethnocentric, if not racist (characteristic of the West). But suddenly everything changed and became something serious (thanks in part to ‘apumaric’…and yes, I read all the comments). 

It’s interesting, entertaining and captivating to see how other countries think about our situation, it's like feedback. All this time I've been watching what the national media said about education, but I had not noticed what people from the outside thought.  And I could identify several positions on this issue in our country, from funny guys with nothing better to do than to annoy people to others with very good arguments. 'Apumaric', for example, caught my attention. In addition to his comment was quite large (and longer in fact), I was surprised by the certainty with which he was referring to the situation of education in our country. At first I thought it might be someone who had been in Chile for several years (because he know us enough), but then I realized that he was actually a Chilean. He seems to be a very educated person (and he may be studied in Chile, funny!)

Anyway, the comments made me realize something I already knew but didn’t want to see. This situation is common in many other parts of the world. A Colombian, for example, said this was exactly what was happening in their country. An Englishman said that he looked very familiar item description. In short, we aren’t alone in this and we aren’t the first. This is the same situation in which students were nearly 30 years ago and today we are experiencing the same thing. Our ideals and our hopes not allow us to realize that they failed a lot. Moreover, if today we are in this situation is because almost nothing has been achieved in all these years. Are we trying to really accomplish in a few weeks which hasn’t been achieved for over 25 years? Don’t we realize that this is just started?

I have many ideals, but I have specific goals too. Of course I want this situation to change, but there are powerful people behind this. I feel that the only ones that lose here are we, students. While private universities continue their classes and still charge the same tariffs, we are on the street asking for something that, although is fair, no one is willing to allow.

And the only thing that comes to mind with this is the thing that we have become. While some people want more and more at the expense of others, those others are resigned to work because they can’t do something better. Have we been like this from the beginning? Or is that something went wrong and come to this?

I really don’t know what to think, I am very disappointed on us.

No place for the soul.

Mr. Robinson’s TED talk is really interesting and yes, he´s right. Our education systems encourage anything but creativity. It seems that we all should know and do the same and there is no place for innovation. What a shame, but that’s what’s happening and what is being promoted in many countries (including ours). And no wonder, because Western thought promotes capitalism, which has as one of its bases to prepare a homogeneous production workforce to work and work and think as little as possible. That’s what the education system is doing to the children (and also probably what they made us).

In short, what Mr. Robinson means is that education promotes the fall of the innovation and creativity. For example, most of children aren’t frightened to be wrong; they just say what they think. But what happens is that our system punishes mistakes and gradually the children will lose the ability to improvise to avoid faults and, ultimately, become adults to be afraid of making mistakes.

In the other hand, he’s especially right in two points:

-The education system all over the world, promotes the idea that work-related issues are most important. For example, mathematics can be used for business; sciences allow us to advance in new technologies, etc. But we left out, and even have stigmatized, the arts, 'because these are good for nothing' or 'because you're not eating that'.

 

–All the world's educational policies seem to be designed to lead students to universities. Which isn’t bad, of course, but this means that all those who aren’t in universities, in fact, don’t have talents and set aside all their artistic abilities, or even sports, which not always enable them to go to the college.

In the next years titles are not going to be much use because there will be many people with college degrees so we will need for greater specialization and have even more titles and fill in our curriculum  with different degrees in various specializations to show the rest, according to these roles, that I have more capabilities than the rest.

Anyway, what will happen is that in the future there won’t be a place for open minds, those devoted to art, the expression of self, music, dance, etc. There won’t be a place for the soul.

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Damn criminals!

Hi partners, today I will talk about my opinion of the demonstrations, especially of violent demonstrations. I was inspired by a TV report I saw today rather than what we see on the national news about the student demonstrations. My problem isn’t with them – students- (which also includes me), but with the damn criminals and thieves who take advantage of these circumstances to commit a crime. I think they are the scum of society, they shouldn’t exist. I hate them. And sorry to be so direct, but that's what I really feel. It’s unfair that they appear when there are people who really want to express their discontent with public policies. I mean, what do they really want, manifest or only do harm to the others? Are they saying something? Are they discontent too? Or do they just have something inside that compels them to commit crimes? I really can’t understand them.

The other thing that comes to my mind when I think about this is that there must be something that men have (and I don’t mean to humanity, but specifically to men), I don’t know, something in their head that makes them do bad things. And why do I think this? Because, if we see or think who these people are (demonstrators) we’ll realize that they’re mostly men. And it isn’t a bias, it’s true, we can see it.

And finally, I feel sorry for what we have become, for all the hate and evil that reigns in our world. Because we are governed by powerful that lie and because we have the eyes covered by a cloak that prevents us from seeing this reality. If we have reached this is due to ourselves. Please don’t blame someone else. 

Hi everyone.

Well, this task isn´t very easy to me because I don’t actually use the internet much, so I don’t know many useful websites. Anyway, there´s one I often use to download music free. This is called beemp3.com and you can find a lot of music there. I discovered this website like one year ago when I was looking for a song (I don’t remember what). Since that moment I have illegally downloaded a lot of music. And that’s what I like this website, because I can find all kind of music there (to download and to listen). I really like it. I use it like 3 times a week or even more. Here you can find a lot of songs, watch videos, listen to songs, the lyrics of the songs, see similar searches, make playlists, and what is best, download music. It’s very exciting.

Other website that I like (because I think is very useful) is quedelibros.com. Is a typical website where you can find and download a lot of books of many styles (art, philosophy, sociology, psychology, anthropology, mysticism and esotericism, history and much more). It’s really interesting. I found it like one year ago when I was searching a book of Mircea Eliade called ‘The myth of eternal return’ (which incidentally is very interesting)…and I found it! Since that moment I have download a lot of books free (even some that have helped me for college). I really recommend this website.

And other sites that you can check are tuhistory.com (from the Latin History Channel and that is very interesting) or the rae.es (from the Royal Spanish Academy and that is very useful to avoid wasting time looking up words in a dictionary when you’re doing a job).