I have to plead guilty, I am one of them. Even worse, I gave up on the first minute of class, knowing it will be as usual, i.e. having this passive attitude of accepting knowledge.

This is when it happened. Right here, it happened. The amusement the whole class was waiting for showed up, as a Messiah. A huge bug appeared on the screen on which the power point presentation was projected. It was moving around, provoking in us a mix of fear and excitement. It was maybe a spider, or even a beetle. But the only thing that really mattered was that it triggered our brains back on. I almost instantly looked at my classmate at the table next to me: “Hey man! Look at the bug on the screen! Hahaha!”. It felt good. I finally had something to do. Something to share with my peers.

The excitement spread over the classroom until the teacher noticed something was going wrong. He quickly understood why his students were suddenly so active — instead of passively listening to the preconceived knowledge he was sharing. He instantly took his conductor’s baton with which he was nervously pointing at the screen just a while before. CLAP! He killed the bug with a severe and determined blow. Done. A bug was missing from the surface of Earth. Along with our one and only stimulation of the evening. I was shocked. But, the action itself was not what I found the most revealing…

A short silence followed. The first one since a long time. It was unexpectedly enjoyable. Silence. It sounded like a note of freedom even if it lasted for barely a second. It felt like time had stopped to contemplate this revealing moment. It didn’t take long for the professor to share his thoughts on it though. His saying still resonates in my mind like an echo on how inadequate our current education system is:

I really don’t understand why you are so interested in this bug and not my class… You have grown up. You are adults now. You should be able to concentrate!

Oh. My. God. I don’t even know where to start. So he was asking WHY we are not interested when we are at school?