"In order to learn how to live, you must learn how to die." - Kaitlin Morris

Cornel West says that in order to learn how to live you must learn how to die. I have been learning how to die, or at least parts of me have. My assumptions, my beliefs have been unlearned. The foundations that held my world together have been lost, my world has been shattered over and over. I have lost my belief that law and justice are the same, that the authority is always is right. I no longer belief that our government is a democractic one, even though I long for it to be one.

And today? Today I lost my faith in education.

We do not learn in schools how to think for ourselves and critically examine the world. In schools, we have learned how to follow orders and jump through hoops, to regurgitate whatever the authority says because the authority is always right. The education system is a just tool for the government to separate the labor force into the workers and the bosses, so that we can join the assembly line.

I remember in high school, taking classes, working hard in them, getting As and then not remembering what I had learned afterwards. I remember teachers who would punish you with low grades if you dared to challenge their ideas. I remember complaining to my parents about this one teacher who was absolutely terrible and my dad telling me to jump through the hoop, just to do it and get the grade. That way, I could go to a good college and be successful. I believed it, I believed it with all my being. When the teacher said jump I would ask ‘How high?’. And so I got the high G.P.A, and when I applied to colleges I got the academic scholoarships and acceptance letters. But for what?

For the longest time, I have kept hope in the idea that colleges are places of higher learning and education, where I can learn anything that I could imagine. The purpose of Colleges and Universities though is not to educate. They are finishing schools, to teach you how to act, walk and talk- they prepare you for your place in society. I still do not remember most of the classes I have taken, the professors still punish you if you disagree with them, and I have jumped through so many hoops that I struggle with thinking that there is more than the hoop.

What more will I have to lose before this program is over? How many more pieces of my world will collapse? And how long will it take me to rebuild my world?