If only I had more school… I wish that I and my fellow students said this more often. Why? Because! School comes from a Greek word that means leisure time. Don’t you wish you had more leisure time? If you were Greek, then you would be wishing for more school. This was the dream in the renaissance era as well. Do we as college students realize and appreciate that we are living the impossible dream for the influencers of the renaissance? Can you believe that we have 16+ years carved out of our lives by society for us just so that we can go to school and learn?! Amazing!
Enjoying the invention of the bicycle in 'school.'
Amazing what we humans can do at 'school'!
The vast majority of people alive during the renaissance did not really experience the renaissance. They were hard at work in the fields or hard labor and thus they did not have enough school. Not enough free time, that is. When you think about it this way it makes total sense that school would be free time. You see, we now grow up in a world of public education where school is the norm and people tell you to go to school and “work hard!” Why don’t people send their kids off to high-school and tell them, “enjoy all the free leisure time!”? Sounds kinda funny to us, right? I don’t think that would sound funny to Michelangelo though. Here’s why:
Learning, art, scholarship, philosophy, language; these are all things that one could only do if one was given sufficient free time to do them in. None of this was part of some government-mandated, tax paid for, public school system. It wasn’t even as easy as applying for college. Only those who had escaped the monotonous work in the fields or construction sites could aspire with their excess time to learn the deep mysteries of classical art or forgotten languages. Only with sufficient free time could one spend all day pontificating or conversating with other intellectuals in order to reason out, and then write, paint, or invent the great and noble truths that are discovered therein. What I am trying to get us all to think about, especially university students or all students/alumni, is just how lucky we are to live in a world and a time that provides enough economic prosperity and excess resources to allow so many young able-bodied people to spend years and years and years of their lives devoted to education and art and science! Instead of just a select few lucky ones, we now have masses of people living a dream that renaissance thinkers could have only dreamed of dreaming. Let us be grateful for so much free time at school!
That's an interesting way to look at it! Makes me then wonder so exactly what were their day jobs? Being lawyers or priests and that kind of thing? Honestly though we are extremely lucky. Not only because the things we study or plan on doing with the rest of our lives were once considered 'leisurely activities' but also because we have the opportunity to study them. Places around the world still don't offer up educations that are completely free as far as how many times you want to change your major or what you can and cannot study. In Brazil, you have to take a test that then decides for you what you are eligible to study because over there college is paid for by the government and high school is privately paid.
ReplyDeleteI really like this post. I feel like as a society we fail to value education, but from what I observed as we educate ourselves we come to value the knowledge we have. It's something we need to learn to love I guess.
ReplyDeleteI've usually seen school as anything but free time. As I have gotten older, I've appreciated my education. There are people in the world who are too poor to go to school and work all day. Thanks to school I have the freedom to choose who I want to be.
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