Before you read this, put on some good dark industrial music.
Objectives:
It sounds like a trailer for a TV show trying to pump up some idiotic computer brand with completely obvious product placement, but learning to learn like a hacker is actually the only true way to learn. Just, don’t ask your public school teacher about it. They’ll send you to the principal’s office and call your parents. Hell, I’ve known teacher’s to send people I’ve mentored to the head office just for having a terminal open on their own computer screen.
“Teacher! W*’s hacking!”
That’s not hyperbole. It actually happened.
So what is it that makes people so enraptured and afraid of hackers?
I believe it’s their ability to learn, adapt, and own whatever target they set their mind to dominating. It’s their “artistic” creativity required to find solutions and their drive to see them through. They don’t take no for an answer, not even from themselves. When they hit stumbling blocks and lack of motivation they deal with it and adapt creatively as needed without wallowing in self-pity and doubt. It is these exact same hacker traits and skills that make technologists of all kinds who learn and practice them come to dominate their lives and careers.
Good hackers know they don’t know things. They know their weaknesses and their strengths because they are constantly testing themselves, assessing themselves, and creating detailed, if informal, plans for self-improvement. They don’t need a guru. THEY ARE their own gurus.
But hackers, who might be full of well-earned hubris, also understand they cannot do everything all by themselves. They need others to reflect back to them what they can improve on, not directly, just by association. They need people to have their back and push forward with them, not for them.
So how do you learn to learn like a hacker?
Technically, it’s not that difficult. Just do what humans have always done, that is, until their parents/school/religion and other power and control systems stepped in and shut down their natural curiosity “beating their creativity out of them” (Robinson) forcefully replacing it with fear and subservience. Just asking “why” in front of the wrong people can get you locked up for life, or fast-tracked to “reformation.”
But somehow, “hackers” from the dawn of time have continued to challenge the status quo, to ask “why”, to learn, and to speak truth to power. And thank God they did. Now we live in a time when almost anyone can take control of their own learning.
Why all the philosophy talk?
Because the real challenge to learning is overcoming a lifetime of institutionalized fear mongering that has nothing to do with your ability to learn. We are taught that leaning isn’t our job, that it for the teacher to do who will then “deposit” (Friere) that learning into our brains for us. If everyone was encouraged to learn on their own, without an institution decided what they should learn, we wouldn’t even need the “educational” systems we have today. Socrates dared to prove it and they killed him for it.
From the first time you were told that “to listen and not be heard” or “we don’t need to know why” or “I’ll tell you what you need to know” or “of course, everyone must go to college” you have fought to have the courage to look something up on the Internet during a class, afraid someone would discover your dirty-little secret: you actually don’t mind looking up answers, doing your own research, and learning on your own. But, just being here means you are already on your way, whether or not you continue with the Boost or not. You’re the one in control.
The reason teachers make almost nothing in America is because their occupation is not to educate anyone, it’s to repress everyone just enough to keep them good little potential employees under the guise of “education.” Guess what, grades really do not matter. I promise. Don’t be lazy, but don’t let them define you. And never let anyone make you feel small for not living up to their expectation. This is your life.
Seriously, how much did you actually learn in school? Obviously, there are significant exceptions, but the rule is, not much. Unfortunately, we will never know because they also control every “assessment” measuring system we have in place to even know. In fact, often the learning that happens within a school’s walls is happening in spite of the school itself. It’s the resources the school provides and the community of people (including most teacher’s) around you, facilitating and improving everyone’s learning experience organically. It’s these people, peers, and atmosphere that foster learning. You know it when you experience it, all you want to do is learn even if you can’t even explain why. It’s the best kind of virus to spread.
💬 It’s that very feeling that I’ve always tried to foster on rwxrob.tv.
The good news is that you don’t need permission to learn, to ask questions, to seek your own answers, and to share them with whomever you want! That is the true glory of our time.
We might be inundated with populist, moronic fears, but we can also use those same means of communication to share our true learning with one another, to test each other in conversation and collaborative exploration. We live in the greatest age of learning the Earth has every known and yet it hardly seems like it.
Now is the time to take back the power of learning, of self-learning, to rise up as an amorphous autodidactic nation committed to raising up everyone willing to put in the time and energy to learn. The learning revolution is already here, it never ended. It has been happening since the very beginning. The question is, will you join it?
Start now by doing more RWX during your learning.
Hackers do.
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Tags:
#hacking #education #oppression #learning #pedagogy #creativity