Monday, 29 September 2008

Free education anyone? You only pay for the bit of paper.

Monday monday. First day back at University today for me, frighteningly the beginning of my third and final year. Despite being accustomed to the sights and scenes of campus life, it was the mistaken overhearing of a first year's conversation earlier that reminded me of the following ludicrous aspect of going to University. See, they don't take registers whenever you go to lectures or seminars. You don't even have to present I.D. when entering any of the buildings, and the entire campus is employed legitimately as an array of public footpaths.
Personally I'm finding it bitterly ironic as the deteriorating bank statements roll in, that the amount of cash borrowed from the Government in no way equates to what appears to me to be free education. But of course, if anyone actually wanted to learn without having a bit of paper to prove it then our newest facade of democracy would surely jump at the chance of implementing control methods. No security yet, so what I sadly acknowledge must be the ever-rising hypocrisy of what it is to be recognised as an intelligent human being. No not while systems manipulate this existence will our real geniuses flourish. I can't present an alternative, but it's a fact - if you're poor you're less likely to go to University, and in our future Generation X there are thousands not taking the chance to reach their capacities and realise their potential.
Perhaps I'm naive to think that even a moderate amount of people have any sort of lust for learning in an age where we waste our time watching adverts and sitting on our arses nurturing self-obsession. Our sap-infused popular culture we have inherited rapidly from the U.S. replacing the actuality of life with an illusory virtual world where commercialisation rules. Of course I include myself in this condemnation of modernity, it being my own culpability as part of such brain-numbing normality that provokes me to this outburst. It doesn't quite feel right, there's no room for fitting in when our societal roles are pre-allocated by class and context. Yet despite this great methodologically constructed world, has anyone noticed that the education system has failed a significant proportion of our society? In relation to my starting point, there's some unnoticed free words of the wise going spare in Brum.

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