1989, 17 yr old me.
Part of an essay I wrote at 17 years old – (the guide dog punning took me a moment to untwist lol)
…
As a student, I would have the ability to choose my own destiny, not by picking only certain courses, handing in all of the homework and doing well on all of the tests, but by designing my course of study by using the teachers as guides not like guide dogs that go where THEY want to go, but that lead you in the direction that YOU want to go in, encouraging you to go alone and SEE.
I would be able to learn what I want to learn and how I want to go about getting the information. I feel that, in Hampshire, I would have a freedom that many don’t get the chance to experience unless they already have the free will and the ambition to go about teaching themselves. i see people, working in an office situation, that live out their secondary school-type lifestyle with little variation. This is a narrow interpretation of office life, but it is what I sometimes see, usually among men, hooting and howling at a beautiful woman, and saying the same, old dirty jokes among one another. What strikes me as funny is the fact that many high school boys act the “machismo”, imitating what they think as mature without realizing the fact that this attitude, among men, is the way THEY thought that they were supposed to act as teenagers. Some people get stuck in a cycle and never rise above it. Free-thinking is the only way to beat this type of control. Hampshire College would give me, as well as many others, the ability to never get caught in this cycle in the first place.
[snippets]
… “to learn by teaching oneself”.
… to be open-minded and fair, allowing everyone to have their say or, at least, their own viewpoint of things and not to get impressed with someone else’s ideals and values.
… This school is what I consider the IDEAL of education – to allow the student to teach him/herself past what the teacher taught.
ah, thank you chatGPT. I thought so.
“what kind of philosophical theories reflect a similar way of thinking about gender roles?”
Feminism and Gender Equality are philosophical theories that reflect a similar way of thinking about gender roles as the author of the text. These theories believe that gender roles are culturally constructed and that society imposes certain expectations and limitations on individuals based on their gender. They advocate for the breaking down of gender barriers and for equal treatment of all genders, challenging the traditional gender roles and stereotypes.