I had an interesting conversation last night. I was walking with a friend and we were talking about how the closing of the fraternity system at the college I attend might happen within ten years. I do not have much of an opinion on whether this should or should not happen. Boys will be boys, and if frat houses are closed down they will perform their antics somewhere else. That's not my subject, though.

My friend spoke as if it was an undisputed fact that it would occur. Who knows if he was just making idle conversation or not. As we walked and I listened to his pronouncement, it sounded odd. I specifically asked him whether he thought they should be closed or not. From this point on we had a rather interesting conversation on the pros and cons of fraternities on campus.

Frat houses is not my topic today, however. It was the conversation and the different ways of talking about a subject. It seemed to me that my friend was making a statement about the inevitability of a result. I wish I remembered my immediate reaction because he did get a reaction from me.

In looking back, I didn't care whether a whole bunch of people thought it would happen. It was much more important to figure out why they thought it should happen. The former seems too much like following with blinders on and led by a rope to the ring in your nose. The latter calls people to display their cards, tally the results, and pronounces a winner. What's more, we both are in college, a place to explore every nook and cranny, to question, to learn. His comment appeared very uninquisitive. To think that this kind of rote acceptance is encouraged or created by the educational system is terrifying.

I would not say that it is. However, I do want to make the point that it is dangerous to repeat what one has heard with unquestioning acceptance. The system of college is so ritualized and dogma-tized that it sometimes seems people are not encouraged to use/develop their full reasoning and questioning ability.

It is not the schools though, it is the students much of the time. Which brings me to another conversation, and I have noticed this particular topic seems to be repeated as I've experienced the past year and a half of school. Students, college students, don't have a sincere dedication to their studies. Many of them are pushed into school by their parents and when they get there have no idea what to do with themselves. This is not typical of all, and I have no basis for 'empirical' judgement as I have never done or read any studies on the topic. Still it remains on my mind and those of quite a few others I talk with... the majority of those I talk with, in fact.

Getting pushed into college by parents is not the reason that they lack dedication to studies. The cause comes from a lack of knowledge of what there is to do, who they are and how the two fit together. Take the idea of road maps: they are just great if you know where you are and where you want to go. I'm at point A. I go down road B. Get on interstate C, and take exit D. That puts me on road E going down to place F. There, no problem; you have gotten where you need to go with minimal effort because you knew where you were coming from and where you were going. Remove either and suddenly there is a problem. It is not enough to know only where you are going. After all, if point A is unknown how could you even go down road B much less get on interstate C. The problem for many students is they don't know either part.

Let me clarify these references. Where are they going? To a field of study that is both fulfilling for them, useful for those around them and will enable a good standard of life. Well, ideally. How many people know the answer to all of this when they go in? Very few, but that's an assumption on my part.

The harder question is what exactly is point A? What does it represent? Everything that makes up the person, their character, likes, dislikes, dreams, ideals. It is who they are. That is where they are coming from, where they must start on the journey through higher education. Figuring out where they want to go depends on knowing this first place.

As long as people do not know these things when they go through school, it is more than likely that they will not enjoy their studies and will not be involved in them. It is only by feeling that something is relevant to their life that students will become involved. Otherwise they don't learn as much as they could. It is crucial that they learn, how to question, how to reason, how to learn. The lack of motivation helps create a schooling system where people are fed and expected to regurgitate information.

Back in January of this year I had a thought about the world as I see it today. One of the issues I covered was that youth has potential but does not do enough with it. My thoughts today run along a similar vein. One issue to think about is that not enough people, not just youths, know where they are coming from or where they are going. Such confusion leads to poorly developed potential. As I said in January, " How do we survive as humans and come to deserve this world upon which we live? As a species and a fully global community in harmony with the living world around us."