education

I nearly squealed with delight when I read this in Heather Armstrong’s latest blog posting:

“No, all my nightmares are now about college, all about not knowing the answers to a test, or not knowing that I’ve been enrolled in a class the entire semester until the week of finals, or waking up late and missing the final entirely. It’s never about sharks or getting hit by a bus or having the house crushed by a dragon, at least not anymore.”

This was so cool to read because, like her, I have frequent college nightmares, even though I’ve been out of college for over a decade. It’s weird…these dreams began not long after I graduated from college—I never actually had them when I was in college. They’ve been increasing in frequency as the years have passed, too.

The most common variation of the dreams is this: the end of the semester has arrived and I realize I haven’t attended class for most—or all—of the semester, so I have no idea how I’m going to pass my finals. A less frequent variation involves me arriving on campus at the beginning of the semester and not knowing what my mailbox code is, and/or what my class schedule involves. In the latter, I need to go to some office on campus to find out my schedule, but I can’t find the office and nobody can tell me where it’s located, so I just wander and wander, becoming more panicked with every step. In the dreams where I missed class all semester, the classes I missed are always the same: English and gym. Always English and gym.

So, okay, in a typical dream, finals are upon us and I break into a sweat of panic as I realize, “Holy shit, I haven’t been to English or gym class since, like, the first day of the semester. How am I going to pass these exams? How am I going to explain to my professors why I was missing all semester long?” Then I start coming up with myriad excuses to tell my professors. Like, I got really sick and couldn’t attend class for months, or I had personal troubles that kept me away from school. In these dreams I’m always on the cusp of graduating and I always realize that my failure to show up in class is most likely going to cost me my diploma. Sometimes in these dreams I’m running back and forth between my real-life job in Maryland and my college in Scranton, and I know that if I miss my chance to graduate, I’ll either lose my job because I won’t have a diploma or I’ll lose my job because they generously allowed me to take time off work to go to school, but that generosity is going to stop if I go over my allotted four years of schooling.

I’m quite curious as to what these dreams mean and how many other people out there have variations of them!

Speaking of college, I saw the greatest bumper sticker recently: “Education is everywhere.” And it’s true. So very true. I love the idea that education isn’t confined to a classroom or a textbook. That it’s out there in the world, in our experiences, in our daily lives. That just by observing something, paying attention, picking up a book, or watching a documentary, you are educating yourself and expanding your world.

But it also made me think about the paradoxical nature of the education section of my quotes collection. On one hand, there are quotes touting the virtue of being educated. I really do support this notion: the idea that education is exquisitely important, that it can change the world. I think it’s a tragedy when kids drop out of school prematurely and never go back for a GED. I think it’s a tragedy when kids in other countries are forced out of school at a painfully young age because they must pay to attend upper grades and they have no money to do so. I think it’s a tragedy that universities aren’t free or at least reasonably-priced, and that so many universities rely heavily on SAT scores for admitting students. (I test rather poorly, especially when it comes to math, so my SAT scores make me look like I’ve got about three brain cells in my head. Thankfully the four schools to which I applied looked beyond my low scores and were willing to take a chance on me.)

But on the other hand, I’ve got quotes in my collection that are heavily critical of education. I think it’s because I’m dismayed by the state of the educational system in the US—its increasing dependence on standardized tests, its emphasis on rote memorization, its focus on textbook learning.

And administrators are cracking the whip, forcing teachers to follow strict guidelines in order to ensure that students can pass specific standardized tests, which means teachers are losing the freedom to stray from textbooks and inject unconventional methods into their teaching techniques and lesson plans. Often they’re not even allowed to choose their own textbooks; instead, they have to buy specific texts chosen by administrators. So certain textbooks become orthodoxy and thus a certain set of prejudices is passed down year after year. With such a strict adherence to textbooks and rigid tests, the classroom becomes a grim and joyless place offering a narrow window on the world.

Although there are niches for kids who are learning disabled and kids who are gifted, there’s not much space for kids like me (I excelled at Honors English, AP History, and French, but at the same time I could barely pass the lowest levels of math and science; also, I hated speaking up in class—hated it with a passion—and even when I was doing great academically in class, my grades would suffer because I didn’t speak enough). All kids learn differently, but these differences are set aside in favor of a limited amount of boxes in which they’re expected to squeeze themselves. They must think this way and learn at this pace and their abilities should be somewhat uniform across the board, so if they’re in the “smart” English class they must also be in the “smart” math class. But what about people like me? Or kids who are geniuses with algebra but fail geometry? Or kids who ace history but can barely spell?

What bugs me most of all is how the educational system so ham-fistedly promotes conformity and groupthink. This obviously isn’t a new ideology; it’s been going on for as long as schools have existed. Remember that famous scene in Pink Floyd’s The Wall when the schoolchildren—who are all wearing deformed masks that make them look identical—have to march in step and uncomplainingly ride a conveyor belt that drops them into a grinder, where they’re all turned into one steaming lump of meat? The idea is that schools are grinding kids down to their basest nature, taking away what makes them unique and creative, pulverizing them into a single entity. How very true that often turns out to be. And I’m not even talking about school uniforms and clothing restrictions that keep kids from dressing as they want to dress.** I’m talking about the push to get kids to not think outside the box or color outside the lines. (Sheesh, how many clichés can I squeeze into one sentence?) Said Henry David Thoreau, quite beautifully, in his journal in November 1850:

“What does education often do? It makes a straight-cut ditch out of a free, meandering brook.”

**Honestly, I think school uniforms can be a good idea. Although I would’ve hated them in high school, as an adult I can appreciate the purpose they serve. They level the playing field so kids aren’t viciously ostracized or ridiculed for dressing differently or for wearing, say, discount or secondhand clothes. Many folks say that uniforms promote conformity and encourage everyone to be clones. I don’t think that’s necessarily true. Conformity is more than just how you dress—it’s how you think. How you act. What you believe. Clothing does make a personal statement, and I’m happy to work in an office whose business-casual dress policy isn’t rigid. So on the days when I feel like doing so, I can show up at work in funky platform shoes instead of sensible pumps, wearing a psychedelic ’70s dress instead of a gray suit. It’s a nice perk. A very nice perk. But at the end of the day, clothing doesn’t define who I am. It doesn’t make me less of an individual if I’m at work in a bland suit or a uniform, just like it doesn’t make a quirky, creative kid less of an individual if she’s wearing a uniform at school.



song heard most recently before posting:
In the Sun—Joseph Arthur