SOL's, Our Future Leaders...

"I am not someone who was born with knowledge. I simply love antiquity, and diligently look there for knowledge." (7.20)

This quote was very inspiring. It has to do with looking for knowledge and knowing that it isn’t just given to you. So many people look upon a stereotype for example: All Asians are smart. This is false you aren’t just born with knowledge it’s the will power to work that gets you there. So many people expect it to come easily. What they don’t know is that Asians aren’t just born being geniuses; they are actually under a lot of pressure from society and their family to succeed. They have the will power to work hard, something many people don’t have.

"The Master said, 'The common people can be made to follow it, but they cannot be made to understand it.'"

This leads to the next part of my interpretation. This I have a more modern interpretation to. You see I did my elementary schooling at a public school in northern Virginia. Every year instead of doing fun creative projects to help us learn it was all about the Standards Of Learning tests (SOL’s). We were all to follow the same boring curriculum to ace the test and help the teacher keep her job. But were we really learning? No. We were memorizing key questions on the test. We knew the answer to the founder of the Supreme Court but we hadn’t a clue to what in the world the Supreme Court was. These little gaps create the common people. The can be made to follow the system but in the end they have no clue as to what in the world the Supreme Court is.

This leads me to my last and final argument to my reading today. Book eleven I enjoyed more because they were a bunch of short stories. Something that stood out to me was when he talked about ambition. He says it is bad. I say it is the human race, no matter how saintly someone is they have ambition and greed because we are born into it. We crave it. I think it is rather hypocritical for him to say that because judging from the human race no one is immune to it.