If I was to set a glass
that is half way filled with water in front of you, would you say that it was
half full or half empty? This example of the way you look at things was given
by Jeff Duncan-Andrade who spoke about this question in one of his speeches.
“Half full or half empty?”, Andrade’s mother asked him after throwing one of
his terrible rants. He felt as if it was a trick question, he didn’t know how
to answer to her. She proceeded to say,” Son, how you choose to answer that
question, is how you will live your life”. Life, as we all know, will sometimes
feel like the glass is half empty. It can feel as if something may be missing
or we don’t have enough. The thing is, we all have a choice to change that
perspective around. When looking at a glass that is at a half way, we can look at it as half way full and if
it is halfway full, we can feel pleased for what we have and the brighter side
of it is that there is still a lot of room for more. Allow your cup to fill up, allow it to overflow and like
Andrade said,”…and share that with others.”
“Life is one big
adventure”, said Ray in the beginning of the Passion Project video. This video
spoke of finding a unique love for one thing and going after it, in other words
finding your passion. Life is so full, there is so much that goes into it. It
is full of emotions, experiences, strengths and weaknesses. It is full of
things we’ve never dreamed of and every little part of it is a learning
experience. When we first arrive in this world we know absolutely nothing. We
don’t understand sadness or stress and we are amazed by the simplest things. We
become amazed by the things the world already knows. The look that overwhelms a
child when they first find their hands and feet, or as we get older and we are
amazed by colors and shiny things. The world as a child is so beautiful, full
of amazement and dreams but then we grow older. Where does the amazement and
excitement go? Why is it that now that we are older, all of our hopes, dreams,
discoveries and our excitements become silent or as the narrator in the Passion
Project video said,” Is it that we are silent or is it that someone is just not
listening?”. When we are young we look for attention in our accomplishments.
Now that we are older, we still do the same but the world says that it isn’t so
great, because it has been achieved in a better way by someone else or because
we can still do more. Education is a huge part of that world, of showing you
what your weaknesses and strengths are based on statistics.
Education, the journey
onto the little paper that defines us and explains the things that we can do. It
may seem like that is all education is but that is not all education should be.
Education should help us help our community, motivate us for the future and
open our minds for things we can do and most importantly they should know who
we all are and help us find that out too. The education system is a corrupt
game. It is another part of society’s way to shape us and tell us what we
should do and how we should do it. It’s all a process, go to school every day,
over and over sitting in a classroom with lectures and notes. Then from there
we go to work, sitting in an office answering phones and filing papers. We are
doing all of this for one thing, money. “Because we are kind of brain washed to
like want this because we think it leads to freedom ‘cause eventually when we
have money we have freedom”, said Ray from the passion project. All we look for
in the country of freedom is just that, freedom and the main thing that can
help us to gain the freedom we are looking for is money. Money gets you your
house, your car, your food, everything you would ever want. It allows you to do
whatever you want and you are noticed for it and there, is the attention we all
looked for as children. Money becomes our motivation, because that is what
society has been using to motivate us.
One thing that should change in the education
system is the motivation. Motivation in the classroom to follow your dreams or
find your passion is not really there. The education system is set up for
teachers to teach and get paid and that is all they need to do. Teaching isn’t
enough, repeating equations and sentences isn’t enough, having our memory full
of notes from textbooks isn’t enough. That is why you see so many run away from
education. What kind of drive is given to people to actually care about what
they are learning? We are told daily what we should turn our lives into. Expectations
from family or from other people can drown us and puts us in a place where we
don’t even know what we want for ourselves. “It’s hard for me sometimes because
there’s something where they expect you to become what they want you to
become”, said Romeo from Passion Project. I know at times sometimes I want to
prove myself to everyone, push hard and show everyone what I can do. My mom
wants me to get a bachelor’s degree and go into business of some sort. That’s
the path that she took, but I’ve been working hard to get into the radiology
program at Foothill. I know I have a long way to go but in a way, that’s what I
want. For myself I have to follow what I want, whether I make mistakes or not,
life is a learning process.
Another change that
would be great to see is education going into the community rather than the
community coming to them. Teachers, artists, counselors and others should try
digging deep into the community, bringing people back into the education world
and guiding others to be the best they could be. Sure teachers can go to school
to school and get paid for what they are doing, but that is just doing the bare
minimum. Teachers and education leaders need to learn to go up and beyond for
their student, being the support they need. Students have so much going on in
their private lives then they are told to sit in a class and pay attention, not
caring whether their friend was murdered yesterday or whether they are going
through family issues. A piece in Andrade’s speech that left me lost for words
was when he said, “And what are we giving them in school? What’s the
conversation about? Test scores, attendance, quantifiables, things we can
measure, very little attention to the material conditions of their lives. Very
little attention to their humanity and yet at the same time we tell them
schools care about them”. The reason why what he said took me back is because
it was the absolute truth. The education system sits students in chairs and
tells them to learn but they do this without knowing who this person is,
without caring about what this person might be going through. The system needs
to understand that no student is a lost cause. If teachers worked hard enough
to make personal relationships with their students maybe the students would
actually think about or want to attend school. As a human, we go where we feel
cared for and most of the time, which is not school.
Lastly, the school
system needs to find ways to help students look into their own lives. They
should be there to help students become all that they can be and more. Often
times students don’t like being at school because they have so much other stuff
going on in their minds and lives. We go through so much trouble trying to
understand the world that we, ourselves, seem to get lost in it. Now when we
are lost in the world, tell me, who is there to help find us? In his speech
Andrade spoke about the backgrounds of his students, where they came from and
how they were raised. He spoke about the difficulties that were put upon them,
dealing with the outside world and not having any time in the world to think
about school. The difference here is that Andrade reached his arm out to them,
showing them that somebody actually cared, somebody wasn’t going to give up on
the. Andrade compared these kids to a lyric in a Tupac song and called them
“roses that grew from the concrete”. Andrade said, “When you see a rose growing
from the concrete you don’t question its damaged pedals”. You don’t question
the damaged pedals because a rose that has fought its way to the light through
layers of concrete will obviously have some damaged pedals. That is what
Andrade compared his urban youth to. Andrade then spoke about the youth
explaining what they see and what they go through and telling people that there
is hope for them. They can change. He then ended his speech saying,” When roses
come back to the concrete they create more gardens”. This means that when you get the urban youth
that leaves where he once stood to lead a better life, often times you will
find them come back to the concrete they once lived in, helping others do the
same. Just like none other than, the man many still look up to today, Tupac
Shakur.
Society sometimes tries
different ways to define us. I think that’s why so many of today’s youth is so
unsure and so confused. When it comes to T.V., magazines, radio, and every
social network, we find ourselves caught up in it all. The world is so
modernized and yet we live or we were raised by parents and families who have
totally different views on things. Things were so different in the times where
older generations lived. So we often find ourselves being pulled in all sorts
of directions. Our parents tell us what we should think and what we should
believe in, our morals and values. Society tells us to make money, look a
specific way, and be a specific way. Then comes in our own thoughts, the things
we want to be or believe in or even all the undecided thoughts that we feel
pressured to decide. The thing is, when you are undecided and you don’t know
what you want, it can be something great. “But the best advice I felt like I could
have been given is to know that my mind is undecided. To know that just knowing
that I’m so undecided that um I’m going to change every single day”, said
Samira from Passion Project. Things being undecided is looked at by so many as
being a bad thing, but honestly, it just gives you a lot more room to explore
and see things you haven’t before. Then after you explore and experience, I
think that is when you start to understand yourself little by little.
Lastly, one of the main
ways that society can define us is by our so called “social status”. Social
status says many things about us such as our race and class. We live in “The
land of the free and the home of the brave” but yet we have people all over
this country afraid to be who they are and live life freely. People of
privilege, which are people that often feel like they have the higher hand
because they live life right, are mostly the first to judge. They speak upon
others that live life differently or that are different in a way that a human
would speak about an animal. Privilege and passion often collide with one
another because people are always going to be different. They will have
different views, the things they like may be different and not everyone has the
same passion. I think many people are passionate about something, it’s just
that they don’t feel comfortable sharing it. They most likely wonder what
someone else might think of it and how they will be looked at. Honestly many
people don’t even care about other people’s passions; they don’t dig for it in
people. “There is a lack of raw passion and there is a lack to explore a
child’s mind”, said Samira from Passion Project. Maybe if people showed they
cared and their weren’t so many judgments from the upper hand, then maybe we
would have an amazing generation. This generation is so scared of life it is
amazing. We are so scared to face reality that so many of us blur away the
fears by drinking or doing drugs. So many wonder why this generation is messed
up but yet no one is speaking to us and asking us what is on our mind. Maybe if
the so called privileged would understand the struggle of being different, they
could shed some light on us too. Until then, we are the generation of fear.
In class we read a book
titled Into The Wild. It speaks of a
young man who decides to leave everything he has to live alone in the wild. He
was a man that came from higher class. He came had it all. He was wealthy; he
had a degree, and had a great job. The thing is he was not happy. Living the
life in a society ran by money and judgments weren’t the way he wanted to live.
So he gave away all his money and belongings. He ripped up his social security
and birth certificate and went on to live as a free man. Many people didn’t
agree to what he did. Many found him to be crazy, not understanding how he
could give up all the riches and luxuries and live in such a way. Over time
though, people started to understand his reason for leaving. He just wanted to
live a lifelong dream, to truly be free. “It is the experiences, the memories,
the great triumphant joy of living to the fullest extent in which real meaning
is found. God its great be alive! Thank you. Thank you.”(38 eBook). I can only
imagine what it would be like to escape4 al of the pressures of the world.
Thinking of all the worries and stressors leaves your body and you finding one
place where you feel you belong, where you feel is just right for you. Given
the fact that every day of our lives, we live it slaving for money and over
working ourselves, to actually find peace with yourself and feeling one with
the ground you stand on must be one of the greatest feelings a man could feel.
I bet he felt that. “The very basic core of a man’s living spirit is his
passion for adventure. The joy of life comes from our encounters with new
experiences, and hence there is no greater joy than to have an endlessly
changing horizon…”(58ebook). He then ended up passing away after a few days in
the wild because of a deadly plant he had eaten. Although he passed away, in my
opinion he passed away happy because he got to live out his dream of actually
being free.
Education, society,
family and friends, the world; they all have impacts on us. It causes us to
sometimes lose who we are or make it hard to find who we are. The education
systems hand in this can be a great one. School is nearly our home for thirteen
plus years. Teachers need to start stepping up to the plate and allowing us,
not only to explore education, but explore ourselves and life along with it. “I’ve
been in many classrooms where the teacher doesn’t interact with the students
much”, said Emily from the Passion Project. That needs to change; teachers and
education can be the change of it all. Everyone wants to be listened to and
cared for so why is it that students can’t get that kind of attention in a
place where they are told is the best place they could be. Just this little
change in the education system can bring out so many new things in students,
but we just need someone to hear us out. We need teachers to understand us as
human beings, as amazing brains that can succeed. We already have too many
people that are around us that can simply give up on us, but we will always
notice the person that sticks around and fights with us. The amazing light that
shines from a student is hidden by society’s thoughts and people’s expectations
and judgments. If someone would take the effort of digging, then maybe you can
find that light
.