Sweet Livin’ Productions Education Statement
Education is important. In fact, it is very important. A lot of historic figures have said so. Such quotes can be found on the internet, including here. Victor Hugo said, “He who opens a school door, closes a prison.” Socrates called education “the kindling of a flame.” Malcolm X declared education a “passport to the future.” In looking at education’s offspring, Benjamin Franklin advised knowledge has “the best interest” rates. John Dewey claimed education was “life itself.”
Life, then, can be quite expensive, because education can be quite expensive. Tuition. Tutors. Books. Coffee. Texas Instrument graphing calculators (can they not be replaced with new, less-expensive technologies yet?).
And the expense is not just financial. It is stress. Our country has sadly invested heavily in the standardized testing game, a stressful pastime indeed.
Stress from testing and other educational stressors can have dire consequences. Nearly one third of students in 2006 cited educational stress as the reason for low grades and dropping out (https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1155536.pdf). However, in 2006 our educational materials here at Sweet Livin’ Productions were not free for online consumption (instead, they were more freely available by word-of-mouth consumption in the basements of South Oakland, a prominent Pittsburgh neighborhood that provides housing for the city’s largest institution of higher learning and higher amounts of Iron City Beer consumption).
Education does not have to be expensive. And we are not referring to the arduous process of filling out government forms in applying for grants and loans or begging altruistic people for scholarships by writing essays. Those processes can be stressful.
Education does not need to be stressful.
It can be free and easy, like when one gives you a free trip to a far away land where you have a relaxing great time and learn about a new culture. Or, like when you win the lottery and are thrust in the immediate necessary education of money management.
Or, like when you access Sweet Livin’ Productions free online educational materials.
Afterall, here at Sweet Livin’ Productions we do not believe that the education industry should be run by drug dealers masquerading as educators using kids as their front in creepy commercials.
Note about quizzes: If some of the test questions seem odd or confusing, please do not worry. That just cements our credibility in the educational testing industry as testing inadequacies and poor test questions have a long and storied history in this country–and beyond.
Additionally, we like to pre-emptively avoid any letdowns or disappointment by making excuses and lowering expectations.