Tyler

So let me tell you all very bluntly, I torrent like it’s nobodys business. Am I a bad person? I dare say no! Torrenting, for those who might not know, is something that I’ve heard takes up 85% of the internet’s bandwidth. I’m not sure if that’s true or not, but regardless. Torrenting is a [...]

So, as I said in my last post, I went off to boyscout camp as a counselor for the past 7 weeks. It was, in essence, THE time of my life. It was one of the best summers I’ve lived through, for an extensive list of reasons. I want to share a small bit of [...]

So to all you highschoolers, middleschoolers, college kids, elementary school-ers, whatevers…

It. Is. Summer.

And if you haven’t noticed, we at SeeTheHour have been taking full advantage of that. Busy left and right, stage crew here, summer camps there, everything happening because there is NO. SCHOOL. But you’re well aware of that, it happens every year. Why am I making such a big deal out of this? Because I’m doing something not unheard of, but something that’ll keep me away from civilization for… Most of this joyous time of freedom.

I’m going to BOYSCOUT CAMP. Yeah, because I’m awesome. 7 weeks of hardcore counseling for kids younger (and older) than me, getting paid in gummy bears, peanuts, and whatever else I want, and no internet or cell phone reception! It’s that great? Heck yeah it is. That’s the life.

I work at MaKaJaWan boyscout camp, and people are always like, “Hey Tyla, what’s ‘Mac-A-Jew-Wana’?” and I tell them it’s the place where boys become boys that know a little more than other boys about everything in the world. Campers can do anything from make a tower out of timbers to lighting a fire with a battery to shooting .22 caliber rifles. This camp is my second home, the only problem being it’s 6 hours or so away.

SO just letting you all know, this is like a ‘pre-req’ post to me talking all about what actually happens to me this summer, and I’ll probably make it into like a little novel-ish thing when I’m home on August 8th. So stay tunned for “MaKaJaWan : the Chronicles of a Boy and his Tree”, the multi-post epic novel.

- TYLER OUT <3

So yeah. Boyscouts.

Because you had NO idea we were that intense.

So let’s get down to the nails. You most likely think boyscouts, or scouts of any kind for that matter, are nerds and are addicted to merit badges. I guess because of pop culture and TV shows, that’s what we’ve been labeled as! But no more. I myself proudly wear the title of eagle scout, the highest rank in boyscouts, and I’ve heard enough of younger scouts in my troop being made fun of for being a boyscout.

To better understand what boyscouting is, you have to know what the organization is trying to teach to the youth that join. One of the first things that a new scout will learn is the Scout law, which basically sums up everything they will learn. “A scout is trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.” I think those are some values that todays youth haven’t had the chance to learn on their own. Scouting helps form strong young men, and leaders of the future.

There’s also the stereotype that boyscouts have nothing better to do other than earn merit badges. I’d like to debunk that and say that I’m a boyscout and haven’t earned a merit badge in months. Crazy I know, but you get other obligations in life sometimes. A scout earns merit badges to diversify his knowledge and skills while he goes up through the ranks, just like a man would do in real life.

I’m trying not to bore you with the technicalities and such of the scouting world, but I’d just like to say this. Boyscouts are young leaders with the advantage of knowledge, skill, and experience. Making fun of them is really making an unsupported argument, from a scout that’s just entering middle school to one graduating high school. I mean, how could you make fun of…

THIS?!

[caption id="attachment_1038" align="alignright" width="225" caption="That's me, by the way."][/caption]

Now whether or not you know, but many of us here on the Seethehour.com staff are on a stage crew for our high school. There, we’ve learned about everything from automated lights to running massive sound boards (to keep it short and sweet) and how to run them, about theater in general, and life lessons that come with the responsibility of holding a stage occupation.

Mean Girls is a movie I’ve never watched. Until some of my friends decided “Oh hey, Tyler’s never seen this movie. Let’s watch it.”

“Twice.”

So I watched this movie twice back to back, not that it’s bad, but like any movie you see things you didn’t see when you first watched it. Being in theater, I noticed something that really frustrated me.

During one of the scenes, the school the main characters attend is holding a talent show. A guy comes on singing into a wireless mic. Ok, no big deal, wireless mic. The mic is going to a wireless receiver, and from there most likely to some sort of sound board, and finally to the house speakers of the school’s auditorium. Then it gets stupid.

The mean girls come onto the stage, with their awesome little compact stereo CD player for their dancing act. They press play for the CD on stage before they start dancing, and ultimately end up kicking the stereo into the crowd because it’s sitting right at the end of the stage. This allows for Kady to start singing the song that was playing on the CD and save the day woohoo. But hold on.

If the guy singing was singing on a wireless mic, why can’t the mean girls play their CD on the house CD player? which the school obviously has the money to buy if they can afford a ~$2000 mic. They have to have a sound system (even though they never really show it) because of the mic, and that implies they have the money to at least play a CD over that same system.

It’s really frustrating when you can see even a little past hollywood. That’s my rage over Mean Girl’s illogical-ness. Anyway, that movie isn’t half bad if I do say so.

My friends made me watch it at 8 PM, on a Sunday no less.

So it’s 4 AM on a school night. Wait, what? Why am I up so late tonight? Well it’s not playing video games tonight. Finals are this week and the beginning of next week, and guess who doesn’t remember anything. Not just me, but most everyone in most of my classes can say that they don’t remember half of anything we learned this semester. Finals are our ‘review of everything we’ve learned’ yeah sure. I personally think that finals are what the school is required to do by law, and we would have a lot more time for actual education if we were always preparing for finals and other stupid tests that won’t benefit us later in life. (Now don’t judge me yet, because you’re probably thinking that tests do help us in the long run, which they do. But it’s not as effect a learning tool as other methods.)

This brings me to that basic fact that the western/US style of teaching in the education system just isn’t effective. I stood up in my chem class just today telling my teacher that I can’t review this material because it’s so expired in my mind and I barely learned it when we were taught it. In my classes, it’s moreover survival for the best grade, not genuine learning anymore. If you actually want to learn and not just want the GPA, tell me about it, because I’m not too sure how to pursue my interests in any of these academic subjects in highschool in this environment.

Now for me, if I ever have kids, I know I have some options on how I’d like them to be taught. I’ll get to those methods in a second, but before I do, I’d like to make a link between all of them. More effective learning comes naturally, when a person becomes interested in that subject and thinks he or she is ready to learn. If I’m forced to learn things when I’m not ready to, I’m not going to remember jack and it’s just going to make colleges (which are where I can actually learn about things I’m interested in) view me as a lesser student. I’d just like to list off some of the methods of learning that I would have liked to have had instead of what we have at our school . I do though, love the opportunities my school has offered me to connect me to what I’m interested in outside of the academics.

Ok, the first method I’ve learned a bit about is similar to home-schooling, but it comes with a twist. It’s called unschooling, and the link will take you to the website where I learned about unschooling. I first heard about it on AOL news, and it got me interested in what other methods of education were. I don’t think I can describe unschooling perfectly, but I think it’s best described in this quote by Joel Hawthorne: “The process of learning, the process of knowing yourself, openness, confidence, self-determination, independent thinking, critical thinking….none of which one gets when following other people’s agenda. Making one’s own agenda is what it is all about. Again this is done not in isolation but in the context of ones family and community.”

The second, and best as I see it, is an alternative education school. It’s a school that is basically just teaching traditionally compared to the western style we learn in now. I’ll use the example of Summerhill boarding school in the UK. As it’s founder Alexander Sutherland Neill said, “the function of a child is to live his own life — not the life that his anxious parents think he should live, not a life according to the purpose of an educator who thinks he knows best.” I think that that is the best philosophy on learning ever. Classes are optional, and everything in the school is democratic. You learn when you’re ready, at your own pace. That would really help me learn things, and actually remember them later on.

There are other countless variations of these kinds of learning, but I won’t bore you with that. Basically, all I’m saying is that I’m not going to study for finals as much as I ‘should’ because I believe that it really won’t benefit me in the long run. (sure, college. Whatever. I’ll learn about what I’m interested in when I get to a college that suits ME not vis-versa.) All of this assessment and standardized testing isn’t necessary completely, thought it is helpful in some ways, it’s the downfall of great individuals in many cases as I’ve seen it. If you’ve got any opinions on schooling or the education we go through, leave a comment and talk to me about it!

Written at 4 AM after studying a little for finals.