My True Education

I didn’t learn a lot at school. Sure, I learnt the function of the aldehyde groups and how they react with oxygen to form carboxylic acids. Sure, I learnt formulas to work out areas of increasingly complex 2D shapes. Sure, I learnt that an oxbow lake is formed by a river carving out the easiest possible way through a landscape. 

None of that shit applies to real life though, does it?

School only taught me what they think I should know to reach the next stage of education. And by that I mean the patriarchy. You learn what the government wants you to learn. I distinctly remember sitting in that citizenship lesson aged about 14 where the teacher went on a tirade of ‘all drugs are bad’. The same teacher was so addicted to nicotine they struggled to teach for an hour without a cigarette. 

Now that I'm older, I realise the economy runs on a combination of caffeine and cocaine. Walk through any town centre and you’re never two minutes away from somewhere that sells the former, usually in the shape of a mug of tea or coffee, but not forgetting the caffeine-laced energy drinks that give you wings. And tachycardia. Up and down the country, friends meet over caffeine, commuters catch trains with their caffeine dose clearly visible, office workers congregate around the caffeine dispenser unable to function without it. Coffee manufacturers have got a whole nation hooked on caffeine in the same way that Phillip Morris got everyone addicted to cigarettes in the 1960s. And look how that turned out. But the government doesn’t care because without it nothing would get done and the whole economy would be fucked. 

Now compare that to cocaine. Its use is so widespread that there’s traces of it on every banknote, and in pretty much every water supply. It fuels house parties, late-night raves and even the Palace of Westminster. But yet you wouldn’t go into a newsagents and buy a gram off the guy behind the counter. You wouldn’t get on the 07:49 to Waterloo clutching a bag. You wouldn’t stand around at work taking it in turns to have a bump. Society is set up so no one bats an eye when you neck an espresso in a restaurant after dinner, yet if you’re caught doing lines in public you get arrested. 

Society is a fucking hypocrite.

That’s the main thing I’ve learnt during the many years I’ve been on this planet. I’ve learnt it by carefully observing people going about their day to day lives, people who don’t know they’re being watched. I’ve learnt it by reading newspapers, reading books, reading anything I can get my hands on. I’ve learnt it through conversations with strangers, with friends, with family. I’ve learnt it through experiencing the world around me, getting out and seeing it through my own two eyes. 

School didn’t teach me any of this. My education - my true education - is life.