The World is Yours.

Lesson #1: Listen to the World

From the time a child is not even in their fifth year they have already begun school.  They learn the basics—everything from expanding their artistic ability in finger painting to playground etiquette.  As they mature into elementary school they begin to learn those dreaded core subjects.  They are taught from a young age that in order to be successful in life, they must do everything in their power so as to have the highest GPA or make the honor roll.  Today’s media and society show us that success results in money and money equals happiness.  Since children from a young age are shown the happiness from glamour and red carpet status, they give into this notion and press on.  As they mature into high school and college their lives begin to revolve around school.  Their minds are trained to work in accordance with their school’s point system, always thinking, stressing, and sacrificing to be “good enough”.  What I don’t understand is that the world today doesn’t need the up and coming mathematician to uncover some secret key to the world, or a new scientist to create the latest clone.  What is the point of this? Our world today is suffering because of war, poverty, and famine.  The population of the homeless and uneducated rises as technology and general knowledge grows.  Why is being the best in your graduating class so greatly emphasized? Why doesn’t the school board incorporate classes that teach the importance altruism or humanitarianism? We have our budding engineers creating weapons of mass destruction so that we can “stop the war and fighting” to make our world a “safer” place.  If children across the world were taught from an early age the meaning of having a public spirit, we would eliminate the unnecessary hatred and pain.  People of the world would develop heightened senses of magnanimity, resulting in compromise as opposed to obstinate ness.  We all want a world free from commotion and altercations, yet we completely skip over teaching the youth how to achieve this sort of tranquility in the world.  We expect them to have a sense of benevolence yet we push them into a world full of war and fighting.  One day we will turn to our youth when yet again another destructive war has broken out, and ask them to bring peace to our world.  When they start firing off the machine guns we pushed them to develop and our worlds are disrupted with casualties of loved ones, we will have no right to wonder why they are doing such a terrible job at fighting for peace.