Vivat Libertas

A string stretched beyond its elastic limit One of many markers of my geekiness is that I love to learn independently. Yep, I said it: I love to learn, and I love even more to do my own learning. There's just something magnificent about trying to understand this universe and everything in it, and it's all the more magnificent to do it of your own free will. Being a 17-year-old in the English school system, I still get spoon-fed information quite a lot and if I'm honest, I quietly resent it; I don't really like being told what and how to learn. I much prefer to do my own research - and I get pretty pissed off when someone tries to tell me that this is just the way things are. So I was pretty pleased when one of my physics teachers started to get us to teach ourselves a part of the course through making notes and doing experiments. Hanging weights off springs, extending wires until they broke and making rainbow-coloured notes, I got a lot more done than I wou...

Yep, I said it, and people aren't going to like it: learning makes you free. Now, there are a lot of objections to this, and I understand them. In our capitalist society education, like everything else, has a price. Particularly with higher education, it happens to be a very hefty price that will leave you thousands of pounds in debt. There's also the objection that formal education (for example, going to school) either does nothing or actively turns you into an obedient drone. Those three are generally the main overt objections - there is a nastier and more covert one, but I'll discuss it later. I'm going to let them pass. I'm going to accept them as true. Education up to 18, if not post-18, is mostly about "teaching" students to pass exams and be obedient, and even after having come out with a degree in something or other a lot of people are still  incredibly stupid and ignorant. Not to mention paying for that degree will enslave you to your debt. ...

Why learn? Because learning teaches you about the fucking Solar System, that's why. Okay, that wasn't actually my answer, but that picture does actually have a purpose...Well, sort of...Well, it'll explain itself in a bit. Doing A-levels I get a bit more of a challenge than I did at GCSE, and having Latin lessons that half consist of a long chat about the way Ancient Greece and Rome have influenced the Western world gets me thinking about education and what it means to us. You start your edumacation - so we say over here - when you're three and you end it when you get your degree in your early twenties, unless you're some kind of freak who wants to do a Master's or a PhD. Reading is a scary uncool thing and only nerds do it for fun, which is why we bully them. Still, you've got to have some kind of edumacation if you want to be successful  (read: make lots and lots of money) in this world, and if you don't want to be successful  you're a frea...

I'm a bit of a geek - well, a lot of a geek. I've been a curious, inquisitive little thing since I was very young indeed, and so far 11 years of schooling haven't managed to stamp it out. I read when I wasn't supposed to read; I lost myself in a book instead of doing pointless work or playing with the other children (and now you can see why I got in trouble and was bullied a lot as a child). I asked about funny things called atoms or why bromine crept up the side of the container. I just...I just always wanted to learn. I always wanted to question. I always wanted to find things out for myself, the school curriculum be damned. In a way, I suppose, I'm just an overgrown child - at least, I never really grew out of that bad habit of asking "why?" and "how?". Nobody managed to get it out of me...I'm incorrigible, I am. I've never grown out of my terrible habit of learning , and to this day it plagues me. I can't sit down and do menial ...