I remember when I used to be fascinated by the mysteries of science. As a child I would stay up until the early hours of the morning with my philosophical father, and ask him that if light wasn’t matter, how does a black hole pull it in? I adored these questions. I yearned to learn more and more and at 9 I was convinced I was going to be a scientist, most likely one that had to do with rocks.

Then came high school. And I’m not sure what it was about high school, but there was a distinct shift in my attitude towards imagination and education. At some point, math and science just stopped being fun. It had gone from reading books about amazing rock formations and asking impossible questions to which there was no satisfactory answer, to pure memorization of tables and charts. I think this is why I ultimately ended up gravitating more towards music and arts than the sciences, because in school they still allowed, and in fact encouraged, creativity and imagination in these subjects. The arts were to be enjoyed in the moment. With the sciences, I was just trying to meet my memorization quota to get an A.

Which is a shame, because then you read books later on in life, like “The Drunkyard’s Walk” which show just how creative math can be. When did math become so rigid? Or more importantly, why?

We are taught to dream big, but then when we finish school, the world is tougher than we imagined, and all we can do is try to survive as best as we can. Forget ideals. We need to pay rent first.

Education needs to be a journey. Learning is much more enjoyable without driving towards a piece of paper to be obtained in 4 years. I think the video explains this concept very well.