FIELD TRIP is the story about a woman in Blumentritt with her two
kids riding the cart she pushes as she collects recyclable materials she
can sell. She picks discarded plastic bottles and other materials that
she might able to use. Thrown away tarps that she can construct to a
makeshift roof on their heads in case it rains and some dismantled
cardboard boxes that she can turn into matting on the floor as a
makeshift bed.
Along with her are her two kids, they aren't in
school for obvious reasons, but in a way, this is like a field trip for
them. They get to see a lot of places all day, they get to know which
stuff are useful even if it's considered trash by others and they also
get a to spend time with their mother teaching them the harsh truth in
life at an early age along with the virtue of not giving up. This is
probably the only education that they'll get in their life time if we
think about it.
Back when some of us were still students, we all
went to field trips organized by our school. It doesn't really matter
where we go, as children or even as teens, anywhere outside the
classroom is a destination preferred by any student. Factories and
cultural places are the main ones, there's also museums and heritages.
But the one thing that actually fascinated me aside from the places we
went as a kid is how my fellow students and even teachers behaved during
the trip. I noticed that my classmates adorn caps and even bought toys
and at one point in high school someone even bought liquor. The teachers
also were more relaxed and friendly, not the terror you see every day
in class. Everyone behaved differently as if they weren't the same
person in school. I guess maybe, most of us felt it was a vacation away
from the prison like school.
This reminds me of this one school
trip that we went to when I was in third or fourth grade. We went to
Enchanted Kingdom, and of course, that's far away as being educational
as you can possibly get but more of a fun thing to do with your
classmates. I mean what is there to learn there right? Aside from
learning that the Rialto as a fun and safe ride and that the Condor was
never really going to be fixed. But lessons are always found in any
situation I learned.
My classmates and I were all excited to go,
we knew that magical place was a great way to play all day and for a kid
of that age, it was a big thing to have a day for the sole purpose of
play, more so when you're with your classmates and aren't really
monitored all the time by your teachers.
And yet the experience
for me there wasn't the most pleasant one. It started off well and good
as I remembered, a couple of classmates of mine started with the bumper
cars and went straight to the simple rollercoaster after that. We then
went to the Rialto next but soon I realized that most of my classmates
gone to different rides, mostly the scary ones that got me spooked at
that young age.
They went for the Space Shuttle which had a long
line of people waiting for their turn, they went along but I was too
scared then to come with them and so I was left by myself. To be honest,
I was just tagging along with them; I wasn't really close with any of
them you can say. But as a kid, you aren't really thinking of those
kinds of things yet, but I was able to realize a hard truth that day. I
realized, I really didn't have any friends at the time.
I spent
the rest of the day alone in Enchanted Kingdom, I still saw my
classmates although the magical land, but I was too shy to tag along
with most of them because of what I realized earlier that day. That no
one really wanted me in their group that I really didn't fit in that
much with them. And I was that shy to insert myself, being more afraid
of being rejected than riding the Space Shuttle.
It was the first time in my life that I really felt I was by myself, even if I was everywhere I looked I was
surrounded with current and former classmates of mine. And even if they
did see me, no one pulled me to go along with them for a ride, no one
pushed me to go on together to the scary ones either. I guess at the
time, it never really crossed my mind that no one really liked me that
much in school back then. No one wanted to be at my side and go on
adventures with in a strange place.
It was a strange feeling for
me indeed at that young age feeling loneliness, I wasn't too young to
not let it get to me nor was I too old to know what exactly I was to do.
It's different kind of loneliness being left alone at the house or
being the last one left at school because your parents forgot to pick
you up after dismissal.
I felt really alone at the time because
here we all are at a place where you can choose to do what you want to
do in the theme park and no one really chose to be with me. I guess I
should've got the hint earlier in the day, where no one really wanted to
be my seatmate in the bus. This one felt different, because there were
no rules.
There wasn't a teacher there to tell us to be partners
with or to tell us our alphabetical sitting arrangement, no seatmates,
no student number, it was my first real taste of how it really is in the
real world. I do however actually have a lot of friends outside our
school, I guess that's because everyone looks the same inside our school
with our uniforms, not being able to be different and to stand out
apart from the other.
But outside our school I was this
adventurous kid who got in trouble a lot and I had more reputation of
infamy, but the pranks I pulled at our street when I was a kid didn't
really got to my classmates and school, and so there I just a quiet and
boring boy who always followed the rules. But realizing I didn't have
any friends in our school really made me sad at the time.
So I
think after that I sought after friendship inside our school and I was
lucky enough to find a few real and good friends who I will treasure up
to today. They aren't that many, and in life we don't really need a
whole lot, only the true ones, and the ones we should keep.
Today, even if my best friends and I really don't hang out anymore or
keep in touch that much, when we do see each other, it's really easy to
feel good and safe when you're around them. Catching up and knowing that
you had adventures together like Huckleberry Finn and Tom Sawyer did.
As well as because like they were for me, saving me from my loneliness,
they too feel that they weren't alone when no one was really a friend to
them.
One saving grace about my time in Disenchanted Kingdom, is
that even though I felt sad, I was able to find that they sold root
beer floats there. As a kid I really love those, and even if I didn't
have much allowance at the time ( I wasn't even able to have enough
money for tokens in the arcade as much as some of my classmates did) I
was able to afford the float. And yes, that simple and sweet treat
really lifted my spirits up when I finished having it.
So yeah
for this excursion of ours, I was able to learn a hard lesson in life
about loneliness and a good place to get a root beer float, all for the
price of a student field trip.
Schools have to organize a field trip in order to educate children and teenagers about how it really is in real life. The factory, the scenery, the small town which specializes making
butterfly knives, see the steps on how to make things, the scenery and
waterfalls and many fields of our country, so that we get to see how all
the things we learned at school so far can really be applied in the
field.
The purpose of field trips is not just to know how the
things we all consume get made, but it also teaches us how we can
interact with other people and on how hard it is to work on this one
thing we all consume every day. It does not only give us a glimpse of
how working people in jobs actually look like, but it also shows us who
we can be in the future belonging to the working class and day job going
masses.
"This is how to survive." the teachers silently whisper in
their minds and wish that their students would realize. Which I think
what that one Eraserheads song didn't get.
In relation to the
family in the artwork. They are already in the field, no more training
wheels like when you pass a test or grade on a subject, this is real
life. When you pass here, you live. When you fail and keep on failing,
you die. It's true that these children might not even know how to read
or differentiate the difference between the alphabet and algebra, but at
least they would know how to survive.
Sometimes school is filled
with bullshit. Maybe not always, and maybe not to all, but for most of
our student life then, we've all thought of that one question; "How am I
going to use this information after I graduate?" Some might scoff at
this question and say that they are ungrateful of their education, but
there is some truth to it.
We really can't use all that we've
learned in school. We actually can't even remember all the things we did
learn then now, even if we once got a good grade at a subject. Maybe
you can remember almost everything but I don't. And I think the reason
is because we fail to grasp the practicality of learning the basics and
fail to see the importance of it all when we ourselves, as students, are
still even figuring out who we are and what we want to be at that point
in our lives.
I guess it might even be more effective to let
student choose what they want to be in life after teaching them the
basics of reading and math, so that everything they learn after what
field they chose would be extremely helpful to them and have gained
their interest already. And I think schools right now are veering
towards to although I wish it was actually started much earlier. As well
as art as a subject have more value in like sir Ken Robinson pointed
out in his now internet famous TED Talk.
It's actually more
effective to learn when we are actually doing something, instead of just
putting therefore I conclude in our problem solving essays. Meaning, we
should just go straight to hands on instead of long lectures, and I'm
not dismissing long lectures, what I'm saying is YES to long lectures on
the field I want and NO MORE long lectures on the things that aren't
related in the field I'm in.
I'd also be the first to say that no
one really can just focus on one subject only for the rest of one's
life because it might not bring out new ideas and new forms of
creativity. Although that's where free time to do whatever you want
should come in. What one decides to do and his other interests would
make an individual, in any field, be different from his own peers.
And yet it's not the teachers and schools' fault either. They give us
the best knowledge and information that they think we would be able to
use in life after we graduate.
When he was still a kid, Stephen
King was asked by his uncle Oren to come with him to fix a broken
screen. His uncle needed a screw driver to do so, so he told little o'l
Stevie to get his tool box in the garage. Stevie did so and upon
returning lumbering the toolbox, he asked his uncle why he had to bring
that heavy tool box if he only needed one screw driver? His uncle
responds:
“I didn’t know what else I might find to do once I got
out here, did I? It’s best to have your tools with you. If you don’t,
you’re apt to find something you didn’t expect and get discouraged.”
-On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King
It means of course that it's better to be ready with anything than just
bringing or learning one thing at a time. Or going back to the garage
to get the pliers in the tool box but in the case of our analogy, going
back to school to learn how to do fractions.
For the school to
teach us what they know, it's just best guess. The basics we have to
learn when we're younger to give us a fighting chance in life once we
finally leave their prison. That when we're finally free, we don't go
coming back. But in truth, and based from my experience, learning
doesn't stop.
No one really graduates in life. I believe we can
only really graduate when we die. When there is nothing more for us to
learn, we expire, we move on. And maybe even then, we still have a lot
more to learn.
Heaven aside, even graduate students have a hard
time getting jobs and surviving today. Some of them also have a hard
time talking to people, socializing or even courting girls. Some have
been so inexperienced with life outside school that once they finish,
they lock themselves up in rooms because they failed to understand
social dynamics.
In Japan there are people known as Hikikomori,
they are reclusive adolescents or adults who withdraw from social life,
often seeking extreme degrees of isolation and confinement. Nearly half a
million Japanese youth have become social recluses.
They haven't
learned how to properly apply what they've learned in school to real
life, they have been recluses because they fear rejection and failing in
real life. Afraid of making mistakes because of how they felt when they
were rejected by a woman they like or modern society. They failed to
realize that these things happen in real life and it's not something to
be ashamed of but to be seen as a learning experience.
They
were the lonely me who felt sadness back in at Enchanted Kingdom, but
the difference is, I took it as a challenge to change and better myself
and seek out friendship. I didn't see it as me being inadequate, or
being an embarrassment. I didn't put myself in high regard then so when I
fell, it didn't hurt as much (or maybe they just don't know where to
get good root beer floats).
Maybe that's why the Hikikomori, or
other recluses and millennials today around the world and in our society
fails in real life and in relationships because they think that they
are a failure because they can't achieve perfection in their life, which
I think is how they see themselves. Flawless but also without
experience and friendless. That's why Role Playing Games are so
addictive to them, because they can reset their game over and over
without consequences. They can start anew every time and play it to
perfection.
Real life is the real game, and no, no one here gets a
flawless victory. We all get damaged and a broken tooth. We all get
sick and all get scars. Imperfection is what makes us beautiful and what
makes us all unique. It what makes us human. College graduate or not,
no read nor write, it doesn't really matter, real life is only worth
living when you're happy and alive.
People think that if you get
good grades in school, if you always have a high score on a test and
you have perfect attendance, you already learned all you need to know.
What they fail to realize is that, it's far more different in the real
world.
Not everything can be quantified to a grade, there is no
grade, only performance. There is no single test to pass... everything's
a test! Your boss, your clients, your enemies, your neighbors, your
friends, your best friend, your wife and even your children will test
you.
That's why I don't think that these two kids riding the
cart with their mother are really that unlucky in life. Sure they might
not have the best education money can buy, but they do have the best
teachers; their loving mother and life. Telling them only the harsh
truths and not useless candy coated bullshit.
They can find
treasures when most of us only see trash. They find unity where most of
us are too busy to be with our family. They find happiness in simpler
things, like a discarded a diesel bottle and a broken comb. All of their
flaws and shortcomings, makes them who they are.
Maybe due to
the extreme harshness of life in the future, the two children might grow
up as thieves and hoodlums. But I prefer to think that because their
mother guides and teaches them, in still doing what's right while
facing adversity and even if luck is not on their side, I think that
they would still grow up being honorable and self-actualize men with
honor and resilience in their hearts and minds.
All because at a
young age, they are taught how to survive in the real world that some of
us have a hard time doing because of our self-grandiosity, easily
shattered expectations and inflated egos.
Yet these children,
persevering and adapting, toughening up every day, like unravelling
diamonds from coals, these children, whether they know it or not, they
are already mining the field.
FIELD TRIP
hand painted art print
9 × 12"
Marius Black 2019
Manila Ukiyo-E
