Over the weekend, you spent a great amount of effort preparing a set of lesson plans for one of your classes. You are quite pleased with yourself and you are sure that the activities you designed are bound to excite your students.

On the Monday morning, you hand out your neatly typed stencils and after less than a few minutes a voice says: "Why do we have to do this boring stuff?"

You look at the student who, hanging back in his seat, his legs stretched out in front of him, is waiting for a response to his challenge.

Your first reaction is one of disappointment and frustration, but at the same time you wonder if he may have a point. What is your reply? Do you tell him that the activity is "good" for him for its own sake, or that he "better shape up because otherwise he will fail"?

It is unlikely that the student will be convinced by either argument, because you have translated worthwhileness into what you as the teacher consider to be "useful" for him. But faced with the assignment, the student doesn't see anything "useful". To the contrary, he perceives the work in front of him as "useless" and definitely "boring", and he asks the simplest question: "Why school?"

Human action is always an interpretation of an existing state of affairs, and action is taken when the affairs are recognised as undesirable. But, even more than the adult members of our society, our young students don't have strong ideological convictions. They are concerned primarily with solving personal and often subjective tasks and interpret the "signs" as they choose. Even after years of education, they are still woefully unprepared to interpret efficiently and clearly so they can become self-determining and self reliant individuals.

As has often been stated, all learning must begin with the learner, who must identify the problem first before he can turn himself toward solving it. Education should, therefore, centre on the question on how we can develop individuals who are able to identify and solve problems. This is not to say that they do not need a great variety of skills which could aid them in this. But it should be recognised that not all skills are of equal value to all individuals, and it should remain the right of the individuals to select the learning of those skills they prefer at any given moment.

The fact that, after many years of education, your bored student is still not capable of feeling responsible for his own actions, and prefers to blame you as the teacher for his own lack of progress, is a clear indication that, although he may have profound feelings about the human condition he is in, he has still not learned to ask appropriate questions and to make suitable choices. He remains confused.

"What meaning does my life have?" is an extremely important question for students, and those who fail to realize that the ultimate answer to that question has to come from within themselves, will fail to achieve freedom in the fullest sense of the word. They should realize that they will have to find their own solutions, and that these can only come from a disciplined mind.

Teaching that to our students is worthwhile in education.

Originally published in the PAPT - Sentinel, June 1990, vol.6, nr.2