The Pursuit, by GoodBadLuck

(Source: pleatedjeans)

The winter evening settles down

With smell of steaks in passageways.

Six o’clock.

The burnt-out ends of smoky days.

And now a gusty shower wraps

The grimy scraps

Of withered leaves about your feet

And newspapers from vacant lots;

The showers beat

On broken blinds and chimney-pots,

And at the corner of the street

A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps.

And then the lighting of the lamps.

The morning comes to consciousness

Of faint stale smells of beer

From the sawdust-trampled street

With all its muddy feet that press

To early coffee-stands.

With the other masquerades

That time resumes,

One thinks of all the hands

That are raising dingy shades

In a thousand furnished rooms.

III

You tossed a blanket from the bed,

You lay upon your back, and waited;

You dozed, and watched the night revealing

The thousand sordid images

Of which your soul was constituted;

They flickered against the ceiling.

And when all the world came back

And the light crept up between the shutters

And you heard the sparrows in the gutters,

You had such a vision of the street

As the street hardly understands;

Sitting along the bed’s edge, where

You curled the papers from your hair,

Or clasped the yellow soles of feet

In the palms of both soiled hands.

His soul stretched tight across the skies

That fade behind a city block,

Or trampled by insistent feet

At four and five and six o’clock;

And short square fingers stuffing pipes,

And evening newspapers, and eyes

Assured of certain certainties,

The conscience of a blackened street

Impatient to assume the world.

I am moved by fancies that are curled

Around these images, and cling:

The notion of some infinitely gentle

Infinitely suffering thing.

Wipe your hand across your mouth, and laugh;

The worlds revolve like ancient women

Gathering fuel in vacant lots.

POSTED 2 weeks ago

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Tag(s): #poem

(Source: absolutefucker)

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(Source: welldressedhoodlum)

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I can still probably quote this whole movie start to finish. My brother and I used to watch it at least once day. Good times…

(Source: onceastarkid)

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(Source: weheartit.com)

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I’m bored at work

“Colleges are supposed to produce learning. But, in their landmark study, “Academically Adrift,” Richard Arum and Josipa Roksa found that, on average, students experienced a pathetic seven percentile point gain in skills during their first two years in college and a marginal gain in the two years after that. The exact numbers are disputed, but the study suggests that nearly half the students showed no significant gain in critical thinking, complex reasoning and writing skills during their first two years in college.

This research followed the Wabash Study, which found that student motivation actually declines over the first year in college. Meanwhile, according to surveys of employers, only a quarter of college graduates have the writing and thinking skills necessary to do their jobs.” -David Brooks, NewYorkTimes

So here i go: The evidence keeps piling up in recognition that the entire American/Western education system is flawed all the way down to it’s fundamental beliefs of why students are in school and what they should be learning. Little do people know that the entire American (specifically) education system was established during the industrial revolution. What that means is all of the core values and fundamental beliefs of education are catered toward attaining a skilled job, always has been, probably always will be. Of the incredible amount of flaws with this philosophy is the paradox that College rates keep going up, literacy rates keep going down and poverty rates are at 1 out of every 6 Americans. Furthermore, without getting into the flaw of having a mindset that every child should learn to think a certain way, be motivated by certain gains, and attain the same exact skill set, standardized testing is proving yet again that it is in now way, shape, or form a measure of intelligence.Yet colleges, highs schools, and the entire education system alike is set on achieving some strange hope of the “right” education for their kids.

The funny part is, they’re failing. Every 6 seconds, a child drops out of high school. And as David Brooks touches on in the quote and Ken Robinson talks about in the video I’ve linked at the bottom, there is little to no proof that the way we’re doing things now is working, has ever “worked”, or will work.

What i want is a fundamental change in our value system as individuals first and foremost. Why is it that when I tell someone, anyone my age or older that didn’t major in the arts (about 98% of people I know coming from a middle-eastern background) gets a disappointed look in their face when I say I’m majoring in English? I’ll tell you why, it’s because we’re trained to have a monetary-based value system. Where money and the American Dream are given precedence and importance over knowledge, personal dreams, or even happiness. Like someone becoming an Engineer (no disrespect pops) is somehow going to automatically make you happy because of the money you’ll make. You know why people (nearly everyone) have a mid-life crisis? It’s because they’ve attained all of their monetary and economic goals and suddenly they realize that it’s not enough, it’s all meaningless. So it’s stunning to me that when I’m in search of my personal happiness and striving for personal meaning from the get-go, people are confused.

It all starts with your fundamental beliefs and core values. We as individuals living in an educated and “free” society have to take responsibility for ourselves first and foremost, and then for eachother. Let’s face it, the world has enough IT majors. Especially the Muslim world. The arts are just as important to developing our minds and our cultures (more so) than the sciences or anything else. Studies have proven it.

Plus, check this out:

http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

POSTED 1 month ago ♥ 2 notes

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Tag(s): #school #education #David Brooks #arts #english