December 8, 2003
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12/08/03 10:57PM
I’m at my friend Giya’s house now, in Belito, a suburb outside of Durban. Her house is really nice, and has a great view of the ocean, which I will be playing in the rest of this week. Her house is also home to geccos. I’ve seen several, just wandering along the walls inside her house, which is half cool, half scary. But, apparently they are useful in taking care of flies, so they’re not a problem here.
During my 7 hour busride today, I came up with a few brief descriptions of the landscape, that I kinda like:
Cleanly shaven mountains
Green like Ireland
In the distance, the mountains become 2-dimensional and blue.
I watch the ridge-lines move like a stocke broker following the DOW.
Rows of identical 4-wall, one-room houses.
So simple, even I could design them.
The diversity of this drive is amazing. At one moment there is a forrest of trees to my left, and what could be an entire golf course to my right.
I spent the night haning out w/ Giya and another friend Dori. I met both of them at summer camp, B’nai B’rith Perlman Camp. If you’re interested in camp jobs, check out the american camping association website for jobs. It’s a great way to meet people from abroad.
At 4:10PM today, I decided I WILL write a book and I WILL create a different kind of college. reading Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintanance has given me an extra kick of confidence, beyond my youthful and idealistic conficence. The author, Pirsig, calls for the abolishment of grades and diplomas, over 30 years ago, and this book is still a best-seller.
Aspects of my college:
Every student will study abroad
Every student will gain job experience before graduating
Every student will be supported in putting together an independant project. This is an opporutnity to leave a mark on the world.
ex) a musician can perform, a writer can write, a traveler can travel
Comments (2)
Now you’re talking! Those were the best parts of college for me (besides drinking) – travelling, studying abroad, working and my personal projects. Seriously, if you want to go through with this, I’ll second that emotion!
Dan, I posted a reply to our previous conversation, but this is just a thought I had and I think you should answer it, if you have not already: Why do you we go to college? The answer may seem obvious, and perhaps it is, but I’ve come up with a few subtle reasons:
1. People can not motivate themselves to independently learn – if they could they would take Will Hunting’s advice from Good Will Hunting and spend $1.50 on library late charges rather than $120,000 (in some cases). Now, it is easy to say that you can not learn some things on your own, this is true, but I would wager to better, that a good writer learns more from reading others books, that what he can be taught in a class/lecture/discussion.
2. The degree. It is becoming evermore important to have that piece of paper, and many jobs require a degree (most secretary positions). So if people are just getting a degree they can do that anywhere and obviously learning for the sake of learning is not their highest priority.
3. Being challenged by peers and superiors. This is a big one and something I think your school may be based around. The workplace and many typical interpersonal relationships do not involve personal growth/challenge (though some may proclaim they do). College is just a great place to try new ideas, experiment with those ideas and challenge yourself and others. It is a place that harbors idealogues, in part, b/c most students have not been corrupted by the sterile, beauracratic “real world” (I know this sounds especially romantic – my apologies).
4. Learning to learn and in some rarer instances, learning to love to learn. This is the single most important thing I have learned at school and quite honestly the thing I most wish I could include on my resume. The idea can be boiled down to the old proverb: Give a man a fish, he eats for a day; teach a man to fish, he eats for a lifetime.
The goal of what I have just described to is approach your problem from a different angle – to identify the “mission statement of your school” w/o getting into the particulars (which inevitably change over time and will hopefully not, at least as a whole, describe your school. I think you are going in the right directions with identifying what you would things like for your school and why there is a need for the school. A suggestion: identify the need for the school (you have done that), the mission of the school, the aspects of the school, the type of students that the school will seek to educate (not all students will do well in this environment), the pragmatic considerations for the school (cost, no grades though students may want to go to grad school, etc.), and possibly most important, all of the concerns that people may have with the school. Identify, acknowledge, defend and revise per each concern. Also, discovering these concerns will help you learn, possibly what you should change about the school, and what will be particularly effective; what is overly romantic and what is ambitious and possible.
More to come – when I straighten my own ideas out.
Justin