Often school feels boring in comparison to the Instagram lessons: three weeks of tai chi for the perfect body! how to apply makeup to look your best! How did the Beatles create that great sound on Straberry Field? Humans' interest in improvement is pretty high if it's self-serving or it fits kids' own pictures of themselves.
Instead, we are left trying to convince kids to care bcause it will affect their chances to get into college (i.e.... do MORE school) which will probably lead to some potential great job.
Sometimes I think we should be much more direct: how to pass as rich/entitled, how to build social capital, how to convince someone to give you money, how to land a good girlfriend? How could schools transform themselves if they got rid of the lofty, ethical, moralizing notions that come along with most lessons and rely on more base, crude instincts of kids (of humans)? You could probably do a lot without landing in the realm of "school for thieves." It'd more be more like "school for the self-centered." The striving? the mildly ambitious?
In English literature classes, we can promise something more... beauty, insight into humans, the ability to think about (and talk to peers about) things that really matter. The question is how do you awaken in kids' the sensitivity to beauty, psychological insight, discussion about what truly matter?
As a coaching endeavor, schools offer the ability for young people to get structured activities that can make you better, but also feedback on many attempts, and 1:1 tutoring sessions. But kids don't always see that writing is a valuable skill.
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