35. Off the hook: Denying opportunities for greatness
[From Seth Godin, Stop Stealing Dreams http://www.squidoo.com/stop-stealing-dreams]
Greatness is frightening. With it comes responsibility.
If you can deny your talents, if you can conceal them from others or, even better, persuade yourself that they weren’t even given to you, you’re off the hook.
And being off the hook is a key element of the industrialized school’s promise. It lets parents off the hook, certainly, since the institution takes over the teaching. It lets teachers off the hook, since the curriculum is preordained and the results are tested. And it lets students off the hook, because the road is clearly marked and the map is handed to everyone.
If you stay on the path, do your college applications through the guidance office and your job hunting at the placement office, the future is not your fault.
That’s the refrain we hear often from frustrated job seekers, frustrated workers with stuck careers, and frustrated students in too much debt. “I did what they told me to do and now I’m stuck and it’s not my fault.”
What they’ve exchanged for that deniability is their dreams, their chance for greatness. To go off the path is to claim responsibility for what happens next.
Because the industrial education system makes it so clear when someone has stepped from the well-lit path, it highlights those who leave it, making it pretty easy to find those willing to speak up and connect and lead. They’re noticeable at first primarily for the fact that they refuse to be sheep.
Rebecca Chapman, literary editor of a new online journal called The New Inquiry, was quoted in the New York Times. “My whole life, I had been doing everything everybody told me. I went to the right school. I got really good grades. I got all the internships. Then, I couldn’t do anything.”
The only surprising thing about this statement is that some consider it surprising.
Rebecca trained to be competent, excelling at completing the tasks set in front of her. She spent more than sixteen years at the top of the system, at the best schools, with the best resources, doing what she was told to do.
Unfortunately, no one is willing to pay her to do tasks. Without a defined agenda, it’s difficult for her to find the gig she was trained for.
Too many competent workers, not enough tasks.
Peter Thiel made headlines when he offered to pay students not to attend college—to start something instead. The reason this program works, though, has nothing to do with avoiding college and everything to do with attracting those bold enough to put themselves on the hook. Education isn’t a problem until it serves as a buffer from the world and a refuge from the risk of failure.
Tags: stopstealingdreams
Views: 4
© 2024 Created by Steve Hargadon.
Powered by
