A Blow To His Confidence 12

I got an email from a colleague who asked if K really existed or if I was making the entire thing up. She really does exist and she is going to do great things – already is – on this particular planet. Below is her latest thinking on this thread. In it, she has certainly, and she knows this because we spent two GT years delving into this term, “moved up the taxonomy” in this story that started about running and falling in the hallway to prove a point. I am so proud of her. For a fifteen year old, I don’t think erudite is too strong a word to describe her character and her writing:
Saw your reply. It’s so frustrating – I don’t understand many things about our educational system or our world. I don’t see why we can’t all relax and respect each other like all those posters in classrooms say. That’s what all this – all the issues in the ed system and world come down to. If teachers could respect the kids and the way they need to learn and really what they want to learn, it would all be better. [ed. note: that is Duke’s mantra exactly]. Teachers could do this if the people in charge of the ed system and everyone in general could relax a bit . If they relaxed, they wouldn’t see a need for all these tests and required methods of teaching/benchmarks. Really, all these tests do is prove to someone (not quite sure who – bosses maybe?) that students (or a person in general) knows something or has been taught something, and look smart . There’s no point really because nothing worthwhile can be taught and it’s up to each person. For my friends and I, learning how to speak and experience (not understand – that’s another word that means very little. You can’t know something or understand something until you’ve done it – experience is a much better word, I think. ) For my friend, who has some issues with her speech, she goes to speech therapy to be able to speak so people can understand her and so she can sing along to her music – not to show some therapist she can say 100 “s” words.  Quite simply, if a person does not what to experience something they won’t, no matter what another person does to try and make them. The world would realize this if they relaxed, once they relaxed they would truly respect the fact that what everyone wants to learn and doesn’t want to learn is different for each person, once this happens the need to look smart and thus the need for grades and tests will disappear as well. Grades are totally worthless – as my Dad told me when I brought home my report card last year, looked at it and said “What am I supposed to do with this”? I responded, “It’s my report card for school – look at my grades and tell me what I did well on and what I need to work on. He looks over at the paper that says what each letter grade means and looks at my report card. He scowls, and I say I got all A’s, why are you mad? He says – “I’m not mad, but I’m confused about what an A means – are they saying that your teachers have come up with a letter that sums you up as a student?” He laughs. They can’t do that – several things in class are applied other places, and to do that they have to understand you as a person – and I know they don’t.
Ranting over- So, yes I am  very frustrated with the fact these kids can’t learn what they learn and how they learn it, but I’m even more frustrated with the fact that their problem and all other problems in the world could be solved if we just relaxed, had a little fun, and showed some respect for our fellow human beings.