getting the fuck out [a.k.a if i were a "school", i would have a class called "life"]
This started as another short "if i were" post and then turned into a long winded rant. Apologies in advance.
If I were a learning institution that promised to provide the training necessary for their students to be self-sustainable human beings by the time they graduate, I would have a (however much time you need)-long course that's called "making a living" where you try to do things until you make enough money to support a specified minimum lifestyle. Passing is getting the fuck out.
I'm seriously bitter about all the bullshit students have to deal with in school. No wonder they're so well-trained for industry.
Please vote with your clickers in the 500 student lecture regarding the content of your daily workbook assignments machine-graded by your student TAs as to prepare you fully for the multiple-choice final exams.
These exams then determine your fit for a diploma, and thus your ability to work at a company, where you will be asked the following:
Please fill out this mandatory anonymous survey regarding your weekly performance reviews as to gauge their effectiveness at fulfilling the requirements of our annual sales quotas.
That is the life they are training you for. It's called a system for a reason. If you don't want that bullshit, get the fuck out.
Note: This post is written for effect to illustrate cases of such extreme bullshit that I wonder how any real learning or work ever gets done in such an environment. Systems, to some extent, are necessary to maintain a sensible order and capitalize on economies of scale. My beef is with systems that abstract work and learning so far from the real thing that the resulting activities no longer resemble their original forms in any way. Clickers in lectures and multiple choice exams is not learning, it's knowledge absorption; Google and Wikipedia can do that. Sales numbers and "performance" is not work, it's wanting immediate results; Enron did it better.
