My maternal grandparents gave me this rocking horse when I was two or three years old. I loved everything about it except the foot pegs. I considered use of those foot pegs as nothing less than weak. They encouraged riders to game the system.
Public school systems tried to make me use their equivalent of foot pegs, expecting me to memorize a lot of disjointed material presented in a rushed, half-assed manner then regurgitate it to pass tests so I could qualify for credits which would add up over the years until I had collected enough of them to graduate. Actual deep learning was never the goal throughout my interment in public schools. I hated public schools from day one of first grade and my parents knew it because I made it very clear I thought it was a stupid waste of my time. And I never surrendered to them either, self-learning things of interest to me after school was over instead of ever becoming a good student making good grades. To hell with that nonsense. I got a lot of bad grades as a result but I never cared.
I should have never been subjected to public schools. I consider it to have been cruel and unusual punishment designed to teach me only one thing: how to game a system. And after getting enough credits saved up to graduate, if I had somehow never gained an understanding that I had just wasted 12 years of daylight hours of my weekdays and never actually received any sort of real education while attending public schools, I would have emerged from them and continued gaming systems throughout the remainder of my life as so many people do.
Gaming systems is no way to live for me, any more than accumulating seat time, passing tests and earning credits is any way to effectively gain deep knowledge and useful skills which can be applied to any practical purpose. My mother taught me about words and numbers before I started first grade in public schools. I was reading and doing arithmetic without having to attend a single public school class. I would have been much better off being showered with copious amounts of information in the form of books and tools and spaces to work on projects from then on than being forced to enroll into public schools where I was taught nothing more than how to memorize and regurgitate what teachers crammed down my throat without any regard to my interests, aptitudes or introducing me to subject matter which might have actually helped me discover what was really of any value to me.
My parents quickly came to understand how worthless public schools were and did provide an endless stream of information and tools at home for discovery of personal interests throughout my youth. Then as an adult–after the internet evolved enough to provide more information and tools on absolutely any subject of interest to me than I could ever desire– schools of any kind became totally irrelevant.
No foot pegs for me, ever.
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