The Answer
So I’ve been reading this book called Finding Your Element by Ken Robinson. One of its chapters is talking about learning. It’s about how different each individual's learning process is. I know for a fact that I’m a visual learner for a long time, so it doesn’t surprise me. One of the topics presented by the book is people who are actually eager to learn but end up stopping because the teaching method is not suitable for them.
I was immediately reminded by a story I once wrote:
I’ve just realized that I’m actually one of those people.
First case: History
Recently, I’ve discovered that I’m into history. I can spend hours watching a documentary ranging from “how noodles got into Indonesian cuisine” to “Rise of China”. I love facts, and history is a fact that actually happens in the past. So why did I hate history lessons back when I’m still in school? It turns out because I’m a visual learner, the fact that history lessons are just a bunch of writings in a textbook bored me.
That’s why my media of learning history now is by watching Netflix and Youtube. It helps me bring history to “life”, it’s like I’m being transported to the past. I just realized that I don’t hate history. I hate the idea of learning history without visual help as if “it doesn’t actually happen in the past” in my mind, just a bunch of meaningless text.
Second case: Literature
I hate literature back then. The fact that it is not “scientific”, meaning it is not “factual”. So why am I actively writing story pieces in Medium?
Literature is a freedom of speech for me, an opinionated world. It’s how you express yourself with strings of words. Almost like an art form.
So the idea of “grading” an “opinion” made me hate literature back in my school days. How can you know a piece of essay is better than other essays? It’s so subjective in a manner. It’s a matter of “taste”. A piece of literature can be liked by a certain group of people, others might dislike it.
Another thing that made me hate literature is my 11th-grade teacher. She had this rule: “No correction in the piece of paper”. No tapes, no strikethrough, no “x” -s. That’s ridiculous. In the creative process of generating a good piece of writing, sometimes mistakes are inevitable. I once asked why she enforced the said rule, and her answer is not good enough for me. It felt like she imposes that rule just to make her life easier at the expense of getting her student’s life harder. I hate her and that hate evolves into hate literature as well.
The reason why I love writing now is that no one would “grade” my piece. I don’t care what people think, I just write what I wanna write. If you like it, then that’s good — glad you like it. If you dislike it, disagree, or even hate it — then that’s also fine, I won’t argue with you. I can also make corrections as many as I want. I often go back to my piece of Medium story and update it from time to time. Maybe some grammar mistakes or missing ideas that I forgot to put then.
Turns out I don’t hate literature, I hate how school “translates” literature.
This story is not to denounce teachers. I respect teachers, I think it’s the most important job for shaping the future. This story is for those of you who believe that you hate certain topics, lessons, sciences back in your school days. Ask yourself now: ”Do I really hate it?” or is it because of the circumstances back then that make me so?
Care to look back and try it one more time? You’d be surprised by what you find.
Thank you for reading
Cheers🍻
— Ferzos
