Education

We come now to the most difficult part of this series, where we have to set aside what "resources" are and how to use them, and take up the unholy, unwanted subject of "education." This disaster of a field, that has induced nearly every conscious person to equate with their frustrating, provably irrelevant school experience. Where, as teenagers, we used to say to our teachers, "Why are we learning this? I'm never going to use it," only to be chastened to warned not to question the importance of school, we can look back now in our late adulthood and say with surety, "I was right. I never did use that crap I was taught."

For this reason, when most of us hear, "education," we equate it at once with the traditional system — hours of rote memorisation, irrelevant topics, boredom, long wasted hours and the absence of practical benefit. This is made worse in that most assume that if there's anything to be gained from education as a DM, it must come from a formally named subject-specific class, "How to be a Dungeon Master 201" — which, in fact, the reason why this collection of posts is called "RPG 201." The title mimics the academic naming convention because if we do not say what a thing is right on the tin, they won't trust what they're buying. This puts me the position of having to lift that boat out from the water and scraping the barnacles off it's bottom.

Education differs from research in that learning from others is part of the process, either because we undertake to teach a subject or learn one. As a student, we do not hold the teacher accountable with every statement made to prove that the knowledge being given is worth knowing. As a teacher, we don't waste the student's time, discarding conventions and assumptions about what education ought to include. The weak point in the education system was not us, the students, and it was not our teachers; it was the vast panoply of interveners who were not in the classroom with us, but yet forced us ALL to obey a ridiculous set of protocols that continue to get in the way of everything. Education can be meaningful when it's focused and practical, and free from unnecessary distractions. This has to be understood first before any good can come of what's written here next.


Continued on the Higher Path