“Saya
lulus. Seharusnya saya menganggapnya sebagai sebuah pengalaman yang
menyenangkan, terutama karena saya adalah lulusan terbaik di kelas saya. Namun,
setelah direnungkan, saya tidak bisa mengatakan kalau saya memang lebih pintar
dibandingkan dengan teman-teman saya. Yang bisa saya katakan adalah kalau saya
memang adalah yang terbaik dalam melakukan apa yang diperintahkan kepada saya
dan juga dalam hal mengikuti sistem yang ada.
Di
sini saya berdiri, dan seharusnya bangga bahwa saya telah selesai mengikuti periode
indoktrinasi ini. Saya akan pergi musim dingin ini dan menuju tahap berikut
yang diharapkan kepada saya, setelah mendapatkan sebuah dokumen kertas yang
mensertifikasikan bahwa saya telah sanggup bekerja.
Tetapi
saya adalah seorang manusia, seorang pemikir, pencari pengalaman hidup – bukan
pekerja. Pekerja adalah orang yang terjebak dalam pengulangan, seorang budak di
dalam sistem yang mengurung dirinya. Sekarang, saya telah berhasil menunjukkan
kalau saya adalah budak terpintar. Saya melakukan apa yang disuruh kepadaku
secara ekstrim baik. Di saat orang lain duduk melamun di kelas dan kemudian
menjadi seniman yang hebat, saya duduk di dalam kelas rajin membuat catatan dan
menjadi pengikut ujian yang terhebat.
Saat
anak-anak lain masuk ke kelas lupa mengerjakan PR mereka karena asyik membaca
hobi-hobi mereka, saya sendiri tidak pernah lalai mengerjakan PR saya. Saat
yang lain menciptakan musik dan lirik, saya justru mengambil ekstra SKS,
walaupun saya tidak membutuhkan itu. Jadi, saya penasaran, apakah benar saya
ingin menjadi lulusan terbaik? Tentu, saya pantas menerimanya, saya telah
bekerja keras untuk mendapatkannya, tetapi apa yang akan saya terima nantinya?
Saat saya meninggalkan institusi pendidikan, akankah saya menjadi sukses atau
saya akan tersesat dalam kehidupan saya?
Saya
tidak tahu apa yang saya inginkan dalam hidup ini. Saya tidak memiliki hobi, karena semua mata pelajaran
hanyalah sebuah pekerjaan untuk belajar, dan saya lulus dengan nilai terbaik di
setiap subjek hanya demi untuk lulus, bukan untuk belajar. Dan jujur saja,
sekarang saya mulai ketakutan…….”
Hm..Setelah membaca pidato wisudawan terbaik tadi, apa kesan anda?
Valedictorian
Speaks Out Against Schooling in Graduation Speech
by
Erica Goldson
Here
I stand
There
is a story of a young, but earnest Zen student who approached his teacher, and
asked the Master, “If I work very hard and diligently, how long will it take
for me to find Zen? The Master thought about this, then replied, “Ten years.”
The student then said, “But what if I work very, very hard and really apply
myself to learn fast – How long then?” Replied the Master, “Well, twenty
years.” “But, if I really, really work at it, how long then?” asked the
student. “Thirty years,” replied the Master. “But, I do not understand,” said
the disappointed student. “At each time that I say I will work harder, you say
it will take me longer. Why do you say that?” Replied the Master, “When you
have one eye on the goal, you only have one eye on the path.”
This
is the dilemma I’ve faced within the American education system. We are so
focused on a goal, whether it be passing a test, or graduating as first in the
class. However, in this way, we do not really learn. We do whatever it takes to
achieve our original objective.
Some
of you may be thinking, “Well, if you pass a test, or become valedictorian,
didn’t you learn something? Well, yes, you learned something, but not all that
you could have. Perhaps, you only learned how to memorize names, places, and
dates to later on forget in order to clear your mind for the next test. School
is not all that it can be. Right now, it is a place for most people to
determine that their goal is to get out as soon as possible.
I
am now accomplishing that goal. I am graduating. I should look at this as a
positive experience, especially being at the top of my class. However, in
retrospect, I cannot say that I am any more intelligent than my peers. I can
attest that I am only the best at doing what I am told and working the system.
Yet, here I stand, and I am supposed to be proud that I have completed this
period of indoctrination. I will leave in the fall to go on to the next phase
expected of me, in order to receive a paper document that certifies that I am
capable of work. But I contend that I am a human being, a thinker, an
adventurer – not a worker. A worker is someone who is trapped within repetition
– a slave of the system set up before him. But now, I have successfully shown
that I was the best slave. I did what I was told to the extreme. While others
sat in class and doodled to later become great artists, I sat in class to take
notes and become a great test-taker. While others would come to class without
their homework done because they were reading about an interest of theirs, I
never missed an assignment. While others were creating music and writing
lyrics, I decided to do extra credit, even though I never needed it. So, I
wonder, why did I even want this position? Sure, I earned it, but what will
come of it? When I leave educational institutionalism, will I be successful or
forever lost? I have no clue about what I want to do with my life; I have no
interests because I saw every subject of study as work, and I excelled at every
subject just for the purpose of excelling, not learning. And quite frankly, now
I’m scared.
John
Taylor Gatto, a retired school teacher and activist critical of compulsory
schooling, asserts, “We could encourage the best qualities of youthfulness –
curiosity, adventure, resilience, the capacity for surprising insight simply by
being more flexible about time, texts, and tests, by introducing kids into
truly competent adults, and by giving each student what autonomy he or she
needs in order to take a risk every now and then. But we don’t do that.”
Between these cinderblock walls, we are all expected to be the same. We are
trained to ace every standardized test, and those who deviate and see light
through a different lens are worthless to the scheme of public education, and
therefore viewed with contempt.
H.
L. Mencken wrote in The American Mercury for April 1924 that the aim of public
education is not “to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken
their intelligence. … Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim … is
simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to
breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality.
That is its aim in the United States.”
To
illustrate this idea, doesn’t it perturb you to learn about the idea of
“critical thinking?” Is there really such a thing as “uncritically thinking?”
To think is to process information in order to form an opinion. But if we are
not critical when processing this information, are we really thinking? Or are
we mindlessly accepting other opinions as truth?
This
was happening to me, and if it wasn’t for the rare occurrence of an avant-garde
tenth grade English teacher, Donna Bryan, who allowed me to open my mind and
ask questions before accepting textbook doctrine, I would have been doomed. I
am now enlightened, but my mind still feels disabled. I must retrain myself and
constantly remember how insane this ostensibly sane place really is.
And
now here I am in a world guided by fear, a world suppressing the uniqueness
that lies inside each of us, a world where we can either acquiesce to the
inhuman nonsense of corporatism and materialism or insist on change. We are not
enlivened by an educational system that clandestinely sets us up for jobs that
could be automated, for work that need not be done, for enslavement without
fervency for meaningful achievement. We have no choices in life when money is
our motivational force. Our motivational force ought to be passion, but this is
lost from the moment we step into a system that trains us, rather than inspires
us.
We
are more than robotic bookshelves, conditioned to blurt out facts we were
taught in school. We are all very special, every human on this planet is so
special, so aren’t we all deserving of something better, of using our minds for
innovation, rather than memorization, for creativity, rather than futile
activity, for rumination rather than stagnation? We are not here to get a
degree, to then get a job, so we can consume industry-approved placation after
placation. There is more, and more still.
The
saddest part is that the majority of students don’t have the opportunity to
reflect as I did. The majority of students are put through the same
brainwashing techniques in order to create a complacent labor force working in
the interests of large corporations and secretive government, and worst of all,
they are completely unaware of it. I will never be able to turn back these 18
years. I can’t run away to another country with an education system meant to enlighten
rather than condition. This part of my life is over, and I want to make sure
that no other child will have his or her potential suppressed by powers meant
to exploit and control. We are human beings. We are thinkers, dreamers,
explorers, artists, writers, engineers. We are anything we want to be – but
only if we have an educational system that supports us rather than holds us
down. A tree can grow, but only if its roots are given a healthy foundation.
For
those of you out there that must continue to sit in desks and yield to the
authoritarian ideologies of instructors, do not be disheartened. You still have
the opportunity to stand up, ask questions, be critical, and create your own
perspective. Demand a setting that will provide you with intellectual
capabilities that allow you to expand your mind instead of directing it. Demand
that you be interested in class. Demand that the excuse, “You have to learn
this for the test” is not good enough for you. Education is an excellent tool,
if used properly, but focus more on learning rather than getting good grades.
For
those of you that work within the system that I am condemning, I do not mean to
insult; I intend to motivate. You have the power to change the incompetencies
of this system. I know that you did not become a teacher or administrator to
see your students bored. You cannot accept the authority of the governing
bodies that tell you what to teach, how to teach it, and that you will be
punished if you do not comply. Our potential is at stake.
For
those of you that are now leaving this establishment, I say, do not forget what
went on in these classrooms. Do not abandon those that come after you. We are
the new future and we are not going to let tradition stand. We will break down
the walls of corruption to let a garden of knowledge grow throughout America.
Once educated properly, we will have the power to do anything, and best of all,
we will only use that power for good, for we will be cultivated and wise. We
will not accept anything at face value. We will ask questions, and we will
demand truth.
So,
here I stand. I am not standing here as valedictorian by myself. I was molded
by my environment, by all of my peers who are sitting here watching me. I
couldn’t have accomplished this without all of you. It was all of you who truly
made me the person I am today. It was all of you who were my competition, yet
my backbone. In that way, we are all valedictorians.
I
am now supposed to say farewell to this institution, those who maintain it, and
those who stand with me and behind me, but I hope this farewell is more of a
“see you later” when we are all working together to rear a pedagogic movement.
But first, let’s go get those pieces of paper that tell us that we’re smart
enough to do so!
Pidato
Erica tersebut juga dimuat di blog America dan mendapat tanggapan luas oleh
publik di sana. Silakan baca di sini: http://americaviaerica.blogspot.com/2010/07/coxsackie-athens-valedictorian-speech.html
Kalau
ingin melihat video pidato Erica disini: