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| FIELD TRIP hand painted art print 9 × 12" Marius Black 2019 Manila Ukiyo-E |
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
Hi Marius your art is beautiful
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