Accomplishments

Creativity = Education
Education = Creativity

That is the vision.


People care too much about accolades and physical representations of a goal achieved. Materials and all that.

One of my friends was recently telling me how his little brother graduated middle school. You know how they have those end-of-year department awards? Like the math award and the science award.  He didn't win any of them. My friend didn't mention, but to my knowledge it didn't sound like he got any honor roll awards either. Usually when you got those awards, you'd get stuff like pins, ribbons, certificates, and sometimes trophies/statues for some. There were some cool ones ngl, I faintly remember like a gold plastic trophy for whoever got first place in the schoolwide 5k run.

Anyways, I don't think my guy won anything. I'll call him T for now. T's parents were disappointed in him because he didn't win anything. They talked down on him hella, they were telling him how he's an embarrassment to the family. And they were comparing him to the other students that won awards (I hate that shit), saying things like, "Jessica/John won these awards, why couldn't you?"

Obviously, as a parent you want to see your offspring do great things and make you proud. The thing is, though, the parents of that time don't really know how to measure success. Back then they never really questioned societal standards, not as much as today at least. For that reason, the norm of success was considered to be educational achievements. Who got the highest SAT and MAP scores. Who won the Spelling Bee. Who came home with straight A's on their report cards. All that sh*t.

Fun fact/side story, in 4th grade I got 2nd place in the spelling bee. I lost to a 8th grade white dude. Normally I wouldn't mention race in a thing like this but it has to be brought up because my sister said that looking back at it now, the game was rigged and the judges were lowkey racist. I'm not entirely surprised at either of those claims, because my teachers were lowkey racist with me. I don't think on it too much, because I was too young to understand racism at the time, and, as a result, I never felt impacted by the repercussions I was hit with due to my race.

Disclaimer: Not all of my teachers were racist, but a lot of them were. Every single teacher I had was white, except for my math teacher and Spanish teachers who were both Latino/a.

All 3-4 judges of the spelling bee were white women. So obviously there weren't tryna let a young king get his shine. On a more serious note, do you know how embarrassing it would've looked if a 4th grader brown kid beat an 8th grade white dude in the schoolwide spelling bee? It would've tarnished their image. That's why they gave me some hard ass words bruh. I don't remember the most of my words, but I remember the final 2 rounds between us. It was like triple overtime, and my word was disturbia. Like wtf!!! I didn't even know what that was man! I got very lucky cause I just spelled "disturb" and added an "ia" at the end. I remember some moms giving me a standing ovation for that, so I felt pretty gassed up ngl. The judges were astounded, and with reason.

The 8th grader went up next, and you wanna know what word they gave him? Tutu. Fucking tutu. T-u-t-u. Man I swear to God. Like I said I don't care about it now but it was pretty cheese looking back at it now.

The next (and final) round I got dropped off. They gave me "antonym". I knew the word, don't get me wrong, I just choked pretty hard. It must've been jitters or something, because I still have no idea how I f*cked that one up. I spelled it as "antynom", I don't know why I swapped the "Y" and "O" but it was just one of those moments.

The judges said they'll give the other dude another word, and if he gets wrong, I'm still alive and in the game. However, if he got it right, that's GG.

You won't believe what word they gave him.







Chocolate.

Every kid's second nature at a middle-school age.


Obviously the 8th grader fled through that word with ease, and just like that he got the W. Looking back at it now, I have to keep stressing that I don't care about losing today(it was a story worth telling), but tell me this: "Disturbia" & "Antonym" versus "Tutu" & "Chocolate". Which is the harder duo of words? And to drop them off on a 4th grade brown kid to prevent him from beating an 8th grade white kid in a predominantly white school? There are too many layers on this, I'm just saying. I rest my case.

Very long tangent, but I digress.

Going back to T, after the verbal abuse his parents dropped on the middle school grad, he cried hella and he's been very sad about it. Y'all don't gotta worry though, my friend talked with him and taught him that grades don't define you. Not to mention, middle school grades literally don't even matter at all, and don't affect anything. I had pretty good grades in middle school because I was a lowkey tryhard, but none of it impacted anything because none of my freshmen classes had middle school prerequisites. I remember my high school guidance counselor (nice and amazing ass dude, he's ahead of his time. He deserves so much and is probably one of the purest people I know. He cares so much about people, even students that aren't his own, and people that will do nothing for him in the future. He was so kind to me and never forced anything, only suggested with my consent. Great ass man. I wonder if he'll ever read this.) told me that despite what my grades are at school, I can ultimately choose if I wanted to take regular or honors classes. It didn't matter if I had a D in Spanish (I didn't btw, just giving an example. I had an A+ so what's good?), if I felt that I was well prepared enough for Honors Spanish, I could make that move. That was one of the earliest moves of liberation in my educational career, and it was an important moment to have. It was a great and ironic foreshadowing of high school.

It's important to remember that T wasn't crying because he didn't win a department award or make honor roll. T was crying because of the unneeded verbal assault his parents had laid down on him. Going back to what I was saying earlier, parents of the last generation didn't know how to measure success and worth other than educational accomplishment. That's why if you didn't accomplish anything educationally, or if you excelled in something outside of education, it often didn't mean much to parents. Prodigies and athletically gifted children were often exceptions to this group, and there were very rare occasions. The average middleschooler isn't a god at the guitar, or isn't a 7-foot phenom in 7th grade basketball. Like I said, rarities.

Because T didn't receive recognition for performing well in school, because of that he was belittled by his parents. But there are a lot of factors that must have played a part in him not exceeding in school, and those factors need to be looked into by parents. I won't go into those factors because that's way too long of a write, and I don't have much time at the moment; I'm watching Antman 2 with Adrian and Flex in about an hour 15.

I hope that the parents of the future aren't as strict as they are about doing good in middle school, because honestly middle school is so irrelevant. Assuming that the parents of the next generation do care about education, however, instead of parents asking "Why didn't my child accomplish as well as I had wanted them to?", they should be asking, "What could I have done to have aided my child, what wasn't I doing to help them excel, and what can I do from now on going forward to ensure that this doesn't happen/ my child can succeed next time?" Parents put too much blame on children; however, a lot of a child's actions often stems back to the parents. And a lot of the time there aren't two parents to help. I can't imagine how hard it must be to be a parent. It must be really scary. But also really exciting. If I ever be a dad, I promise that I would put 100% of my dreams and visions aside to tend for my kid. Because once I take on the role of a father, my kid's dreams and visions become my dreams and visions. I'm only 19 right now writing this. I don't know when I'm gonna be a father. I don't know if I'm even gonna be a father. But I do want to. Because I want the image of fathers to change. I want to change the image of fathers. I want the image of parents to change.

We're becoming too accustomed to the culture of daddy issue girls and motherless boys to be the norm. We have to step up. There's no point in dwelling on the past and repeating history just because you experienced it. We have to set the example.

A child's educational accomplishments doesn't define him. Teach the future generations what is important, at a young age. Love is important.  Presence is important. Desire is important. Change is important. Change is constant, which is why we need to put it in a positive light. Light is important, positivity is important. Darkness is important, negativity is important. Time is important, space is important. Energy is important. Culture is important. Education is important. Creativity is important too. Math and Science may not be important to all, but they are still important. Writing may not be important to all, but it is still important. Theatre may not be important to all, but it is still important.

We can't teach subjective importance. Yes, it's okay to dislike. disregard, dismiss, and overall not care about something, but it's important to recognize, acknowledge and still respect it. I disagree with a lot of people. I'm not gonna tell a conservative they're wrong. We're fortunate to have free speech. Hate speech is a whole other thing, I'd have to talk about that another day. But it's important to not be triggered if someone disagrees with you. That's why the entire image of feminism is diminished. The entire idea and concept of equality is great, and logically speaking everyone would agree with it. However, when blue-haired bitches start getting offended the second someone disagrees with them, they lose their credibility as they let their feelings get in the way. You can't find facts with feelings. You have to find common ground, a medium. That's why people make fun of feminism, it's poorly represented in the media. I am a feminist. But I'm not like these other feminists. I'm not gonna start attacking and verbally assaulting someone the second they don't believe in my beliefs. Even if I think my beliefs are right. Because in their head, their beliefs are right too and completely make sense to them. To them. We're all in our own bubbles. We have to break out and find the common ground.

My beliefs may change in the future. I'm only 19. Things will change, that's a given. I just hope I can teach these things to my future children and be a good influence on them. Whatever "good" means anyways, because my "good" is someone else's "bad". I want to be there, though. I don't want my kid to say "I don't have a father". I don't know what would be of me if I didn't have a dad.

Creativity = Education
Education = Creativity

That is the vision.