Daily Prompt – If I Ruled The World

You’ve been given the superpower to change one law of nature. How do you use it?

There is so much about this world that I would love to change, if I had the ability to do so, but to have to choose just one of those is actually quite hard – especially because changing one would certainly have a knock-on effect on the rest of the world.

Something akin to the theory that if you travel back in time and change something, even miniscule and insignificant, it will create major changes in the future, and completely alter history.

According to Wikipedia, there are 5 laws of nature – Physical, Natural, scientific, laws of science and law of the jungle, and most of these each have their own sub-set of laws, principles, theorems and equations. After doing some (heavy) reading on a few of them, I now find myself much more confused than I was to begin with. I’m reading a lot of big words, and have absolutely no idea what they actually mean… if anything, this prompt is making me feel quite unintelligent. Rapidly.

I’ve just read a few paragraphs regarding space-time continuum and black holes in space…

…and so now, my brain hurts. What was the question again?

Perhaps, instead of getting so literal with it, I might just state that if I could change anything, I’d get Mother Nature to get herself in check, and sort the weather out properly. Give the rain to the countries that need it the most – I’m lookin’ at you, Africa! And take more of that hot, sunny, dry weather further north to Europe. Nothing extreme, I’d just make sure that there are four distinct seasons again, and that it stays that way. I want nature and all that is in it to continue to survive and then thrive within more equalised ecosystems.

I don’t want to see any more David Attenborough documentaries talking about endangered animals dying in Africa because of the heat and the resulting lack of water. Sorry, nope. Not having it. Make it rain there, so they have water to drink and plants to eat. Make it rain so that third-world nations have much cleaner drinking water, and enriched soil so they can grow crops and feed themselves, rather than die from hunger and malnutrition.

Or maybe, I go one step further, and just give myself the power to close the hole in the ozone layer? That would probably assist with fixing a lot of problems. It’d help stop the polar ice-caps melting, it would help reduce global warming, but I think that there should be a trade off. If I give myself the power to fix the ozone layer, I should also be allowed to implement strategies and policies on earth that will also minimise greenhouse gasses which cause and exacerbate the hole in the ozone layer. Make it an international practice, and those who are non-compliant face heavy fines.

So really, I’m just being greedy, because I want a power that is two-fold.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/dp_prompt/if-i-ruled-the-world/

Daily Prompt: The New School

You get to redesign school as we know it from the ground up. Will you do away with reading, writing, and arithmetic? What skills and knowledge will your school focus on imparting to young minds?

I wasn’t a fan of school, probably because I was bullied and none of my teachers cared enough to step in or reprimand my tormentors.

If was able to completely redesign school, it would involve a complete overhaul.

I would make english, maths and health the only mandatory subjects, but I would structure it like my senior years in highschool whereby everybody had to pick enough subjects to make up 12 ‘units’. That way, all students would be free to choose the topics that they want to study throughout their high-school years. You wouldn’t be forced to study science, or geography, or history if it didn’t interest you.

There’d be better systems in place to deal with disruptive students and those with learning difficulties… basically I would take everything that was completely wrong with my high school and do the complete opposite so that it would actually function properly…

…and I wouldn’t end up sitting in the back on an English class full of dickheads who think it’s entertaining to throw a pot of glue and bananas at high-speed ceiling fans so they explode all over the class room, and everything, and everyone contained therein.

I wouldn’t force people to learn useless mathematical formulae that will be completely pointless for majority of students once they finish highschool… I’m looking at you trigonometry… You still never told me what x was…

I would have a zero-tolerance approach to bullying. I would have a school counsellor available every day, rather than just once or twice a week.

I would make P.E. mandatory and make it 3-4 times per week. Given that the world is talking about an obesity epidemic, and that it’s a major problem for children and teenagers, I’d be introducing major changes in an attempt to combat this problem. If the school had a tuck-shop / cafeteria, then it would only serve healthy and nutritional foods. There would be no sugar, and either natural sugars, or specific types of sweeteners would be used as subsitutes. We would have a smoothie bar, and nutrition would be a part of the health curriculum, as would healthy cooking classes, in order to give students a better idea of healthier meal choices they could be making and creating on their own.

I would introduce a system whereby every student can have three half-day study leave passes each month. Had a late night and didn’t finish your assingment that’s due tomorrow arvo? That’s okay, use a study leave pass, skip your classes for the morning, spend it in the library and finish your assignment, and pick up your homework from the morning at the same time.

All years would be able to have all homework tasks delivered via email, or school intranet, but all classwork would require to be handwritten. Only essays and assignments will be allowed to be typed, in order to provide a focus on creating humans with legible handwriting. For those with illegible handwriting, they would be required to make it part of their core English subjects.

There would be better behaviour management systems in place to remove disruptive, unsettled and delinquent students from the classroom to allow them more one-to-one attention, counselling and testing.

http://dailypost.wordpress.com/2013/12/29/prompt-new-school/

Dec 16: Imagination vs. Knowledge

Albert Einstein said: “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Do you agree or disagree?

I certainly don’t call myself an academic. I wasn’t academic at school, although, in saying that, high school was a complete fucking nightmare and nothing but 6 years of emotional abuse and bullying, so I really wanted nothing to do with it.

I’m a creative person.

The statement is a catch-22 to me.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Without imagination, where is the creativity? Where is the innovation? Where is the artistic expression. Without imagination, my view is that the world would just be cold and clinical. People would do as they were told and nobody would question anything. It would function like clockwork. No emotion. Lifeless and boring.

Knowledge is more important that imagination. Imaginative people are just careless and care-free. They have no structure. Without knowledge, there would be no laws / legislation to determine right and wrong. Knowledge is the foundation of science, and without science we have nothing.  Well, not unless you believe in Jebus?

So I can’t answer this and just pick one, when I can argue for both sides.

But if I had to pick one, I’d still pick imagination.