Homework: Work assigned to a student to do outside of class, for teaching a skill or ability that helps them accomplish something.

This Homework is a waste of time; it serves no essential purpose and causes more damage than benefit.

Homework takes time. Giving us this work adds to the already excessive pile. Just 30 extra minutes a week adds up to over 24 hours of sleep debt a year. I fell asleep typing this. Teachers have a responsibility to prevent harm to students.

Arguably, this is avoidable with good time management. However, a 5hr minimum pile of work is 5hrs. Extra-curricular is compulsory. Travel time is unavoidable. I’m too tired after badminton practise to take a shower, let alone write essays.

This homework does not teach teamwork, honour or happiness. Teachers have a responsibility of preparing us for the real world.

“But this teaches reasoning skills.” you say. However, all homework requires good reasoning and analytical skills. All work, too much practice, makes Jack a flat boy.

Promulgating pretentious idiolect consummates no utilitarian raison d'être. Do using long words mean good marks? Maybe. Will anyone understand you without a dictionary? No.

I now sit here more tired and stressed. I have not learnt anything.

This Homework is a waste of time.

'Never assume the obvious is true.' (William Safire)

So are my teachers really qualified to teach me?

By sheet virtue that they have been hired by the ESF to teach at a respectable secondary school that has a history over 100 years should tell me that they are all excellent at what they do.

Sadly, that is not the case.

Not every teacher I have met has been able to teach well, teach the subject material, or teach the class anything at all.

Now, onto something more agreeable with the people who will predict my IB Grades.


Racism.
Why?

Because it seemed obvious that the 'primative' Africans were not humans.
Wrong.
Because, the Europeans thought that Africans enjoyed being slaves.
Wrong.
Because they saw the disorganisation and thought they were given to them to exploit by God.
Wrong.

Do I see a pattern of how assuming what looks obvious is true leads to disasterous results?


We say that it's as obvious as the tip of our nose. But let's be fair. We can't really see our nose without a mirror. So, it's not really that obvious.

Sometimes, we need to expand our cause and effect.
How much of what I said it obvious? How much is true?

If you can't read this, you could always hear it...

...and see if I've done my homework.

Nowadays, if you can't see a webpage, you can hear it. Great for Mr. Turver when he loses his glasses... so long as he can find his laptop!

So how does it work?

To keep this simple and not a 1000+ essay I normally write for ToK, I'll do quickfire. Ready? Go!

1. Soundwaves go into your ear
2. Converted to electrical impulses in cochlea
3. Goes to brain
4. Converted into a sensation

That was easy, no? But then, that means that our hearing is just an electrical impulse. So, in other words, if I could force your ear to make impulses somehow, I could make you 'hear things'.

So is what you hear what is real?

Is my homework complete Mr. Turver?

The 5 Senses (Sight)

When asked to find out how our sight works, it really is asking for the absurd. Why, we use our eyes to see of course. The scientific definition of how sight works, I will not dwell on it much safe: light reflecting off surfaces enters your eyes and creates an image on the retina where the information is sent to the brain via the optic nerve and perceived. This is the scientific explanation.
(Correct me if the facts are wrong. My “perceptions” may be rusty from IGCSE.)

But there is more to it, personally, than how it works. (And here I venture out of my “great scientific beliefs”, which I have an abundance of, according to Mr. Turver.) What we see physically is different from what we see literally. We may see something yet fail to comprehend it; hence we do not acknowledge its presence. In other words, we do not “see” it. What we see literally is a part of the information gathered from seeing physically. (These terms may of course be interpreted differently, as I am aware that “literal” can mean without inaccuracy, but here I am taking its literal meaning: word for word.) After we see things physically, we put it into our own words and speak it again. Our own word for word is precisely what it is: our own, hence it is but our own interpretation and alteration. How it is changed depends on our knowledge of the world and our values.

These two types of seeing can only work in a human with the aegis of each other. How accurately we see a thing is determined by the perspective in which we stand.

WoK1: Sense Perception

• "There's more to seeing that meets the eye." (K. T. Cole)
• "There is no truth. There is only perception." (Gustave Flaubert)
• "Everyone hears only what he understands." (Johann Wolfgang von Goethe)
• "True science investigates and brings to human perception such truths and such knowledge as the people of a given time and society consider most important. Art transmits these truths from the region of perception."(Leo Nikolaevich Tolstoy)
• "We hear and apprehend only what we already half know." (Henry David Thoreau)
• "Most of the mistakes in thinking are inadequacies of perception rather than mistakes of logic." (Edward de Bono)
• "We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see." (Henry David Thoreau)
• "There are things known and there are things unknown, and in between are the doors of perception." (Aldous Huxley)
• "We sometimes get all the information, but we refuse to get the message." (Cullen Hightower)
• "The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comrehend." (Henri Bergson)
• "If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is -- infinite." (William Blake)
• "It is one of the commonest of mistakes to consider that the limit of our power of perception is also the limit of all there is to perceive." (C. W. Leadbeater)
• "After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn’t it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings." (Richard Dawkins)
• "Blessed are they who see beautiful things in humble places where other people see nothing." (Camille Pissarro)
• "Only in quiet waters do things mirror themselves undistorted. Only in a quiet mind is adequate perception of the world." (Hans Margolius)
• "Science is nothing but perception." (Plato)

Knowers & Knowing

1. 'Shall I teach you what knowledge is? When you know a thing, to recognise that you know it; and when you do not know a thing, to recognise that you do not know it. That is knowledge.' (Confucius)
2. 'Where there is shouting there is no true knowledge.' (Leonardo da Vinci)
3. 'Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.' (Martin Luther King)
4. 'Mediocre minds usually dismiss anything which reaches beyond their own understanding.' (Francois de La Rochefoucald)
5. 'Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.' (Daniel J. Boorstin)
6. 'It is very good for a man to talk about what he does not understand; as long as he understands that he does not understand it.' (G. K. Chesterton)
7. 'Those who are convinced they have a monopoly on The Truth always feel that they are only saving the world when they slaughter the heretics.' (Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr.)
8. 'A very popular error – having the courage of one’s convictions; rather it is a matter of having the courage for an attack upon one’s convictions.' (Anon)
9. 'There are many who know many things, yet are lacking in wisdom.' (Democritus)
10. 'The most important truths are likely to be those which… society at that time least wants to hear.' (W. H. Auden)
11. 'Never assume the obvious is true.' (William Safire)
12. 'The criterion of truth is that it works even if nobody is prepared to acknowledge it.' (Ludwig von Mises)
13. 'The possession of knowledge does not kill the sense of wonder and mystery. There is always more mystery.' (Anais Nin)
14. 'If one is estranged from oneself, then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others.' (Anne Morrow Lindbergh)
15. 'Now there is one outstandingly important fact regarding Spaceship Earth, and that is that no instruction book came with it.' (Buckminster Fuller)
16. 'Your vision will become clear only when you look into your heart. Who looks outside, dreams. Who looks inside, awakens.' (Carl Jung)
17. 'The universe is full of magical things, patiently waiting for our wits to grow sharper.' (Eden Phillpotts)
18. 'The dumbest people I know are those who know it all.' (Malcolm Forbes)
19. 'Self-knowledge is like a garden. If it is not cultivated, it cannot be harvested.' (Ghanaian proverb)
20. 'In times of drastic change it is the learners who inherit the future: the learned find themselves equipped to live in a world that no longer exists.' (Eric Hoffer)
21. 'The more you know the less you understand.' (Tao Le Ching)