The Headmaster's Ritual

Here's a really screwed up thing.

 Modern education to me seems to cater to the stupid, the incalcitrant, the uninterested.

It is pasted together with ridiculous amounts of paperwork that are unnecessary and make it easy to circumnavigate actual learning.  It is full of games and systems and surprisingly devoid of any content.

It is certainly not built for the naturally curious.  Like me.

Damn it, I love to learn new things: explore new ideas, religions and philosophies, points of view, interesting thinkers, new music, learn to play instruments,make things,  learn new languages, read challenging books, drawing, painting, look at all kinds of art, know about history, how the universe works.  I'm a little dull on math, although I do get the beauty of the symmetry and perfection in numbers--it's just a less interesting subject to me than other things I'd rather wade into, put in my brain.  ( I finished Calculus I --got an A--in college and decided it was enough.  My father the mathematician was pissed. )

Yet I hated school. All 12 grades.  Spacy Tracy.  I spent my school days in the back of the room, not interacting, avoiding eye contact with my teachers, classmates, too shy or indifferent to speak, even when I knew the answers--which was often--I just tuned out half the class after I read ahead in the book, and spent the rest of the time doing my own thing, drawing, reading the book I brought from home, exploring the latest idea roaming through my mind, writing.  I kept thinking--why can't I just learn about this thing, right now, that I am interested in--while I'm hot on it?  Everything in the class going on seemed on such a surface level--let's move on!!!! Go deeper.  College was the first place I encountered classes deep enough to keep my interest more fully.  But not always.

I did seem to always end up in the back of the room, with all the "heads", as we called them then.  Bob Marshall, who once brought a George Carlin album to school for "Show and Tell", who was pretty smart, yet was smoking pot in 8th grade, and I heard, set himself on fire by falling asleep in a chair, and Hal Thomazchek, whose family owned the fireworks stand across the river in Missouri, who used to call our teacher "Sister Mary Fuckhead" in class, and, who,  after a three day drug binge, ran over the girl he had just dropped off, in her parents' driveway, and killed her.  I think both these guys are already dead, along with Julie, who was smoking cigarettes in the girls' room in middle school and providing favors to unappreciative males in high school--lung cancer at 35. I was not friends with any of them, didn't quite admire them, yet, I think I got a contact high off their rebellion, sitting in the back with them.

To me, it seemed there was more truth in what was going on with them than what was being said in the front of the room.

But more, I think the source of my educational dissatisfaction was largely due to the other students, who seemed to be there for something else.  And dim teachers.  The mandatory thing waters down the stock.

If I had been in school with other people who were like me, you wouldn't even have to do the paperwork.  We'd learn anyway...it would have been such a trip. Maybe the hard part would be that  we'd attack too many subjects in too many directions, with no intersections, if we were all intent on doing our own thing.  But I get surprisingly interested in other people's ideas, as long as they have some substance to them.  When they give me something to turn over.

It didn't help that at Catholic school I started to actively not believe in a good bit of the material presented.  However, that may have fueled my interest in philosophy.

A lot of the things I'm good at I learned on my own, not at school.

Seems to me that somewhere along the line someone or some group decided school was all about socializing, rather than acquiring knowledge. They don't entirely acknowledge that.  So some of us, on the self-reliant plan, become the losers in the system.  I have over and again encountered myself in schools--tuned out because, we got that the first ten minutes--why do the rest of you need so much more goddam time on this?  Why do they resist thinking deeper about it?  A kid said to me yesterday:  "Hamlet thinks too much about stuff--he shouldn't go there--think about death, all its possibilities--"   Why the hell not?  What are you afraid of?  Oh, yeah, I know, JPS.
But be a man, dammit.  It's part of life..what's so bad about thinking it all through and deciding what's important?

Isn't this a major disconnect, when the people who actually have the most potential get severely limited by so-called" education"?  I always had this fantasy of being in a school that was more like a library--a DIY place, maybe with places to experiment with different arts, too--with maybe a polymath librarian type who you could go to for directions when you get stuck, need advice on how to accomplish something. Or something based on a more Socratic method:  here, this is an idea, say-- rebellion--what is known?  What is not known?  What questions do you have about it?  What books, films, history give a perspective?  What experiences have you had with it?  Would you consider this to be it?  No answers, just pure exploration, taken from myriad places--which of course would be difficult for assessment...grades.

I know, there's the broad education thing.  I'd allow that it has its purpose, and probably younger kids need to gain literacy in reading and math to not be a drain on culture.  But I think we severely overdo that idea, to the detriment of the depth of our wealth of cultural ideas.  Why does everything need to be documented--can't you tell if someone has a particular skill quite easily?   Especially if you do.  The trouble is, some of the "assessors" can't tell, in accordance with the Peter Principle.
The Peter Principle:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_Principle


Then there are all the school taboos.  Things you can't really talk about--usually the most interesting things in life.  A lot of this has to do with the modern concept of the gulf between childhood and adulthood.  The outcome of that seems to be that everyone, after crossing the gulf at the arbitrary age of 18, suddenly gets thrown to the wolf of adulthood with little practical instruction.  Because you weren't supposed to talk about THAT.  And they are all, of course, the things that can seriously fuck up your life.  Trap you into various nightmares, (like Eraserhead).

What if teachers could answer kids' real questions without worrying they'd get fired? So, Teach, did you ever do this?  What happened?  What was good about it; what was bad about it?  Idealistic, I know.  And of course, some teachers would lie, for a million different reasons.  And of course, students can have more knowledge, or different experiences, that add more to the font. 

The problem is purely systematic.  Several layers of system.

The problem is, at least in 'Merica, you could never get rid of the mandatory education system.  Even if you stopped  truancy laws, too many people think they should get an education, at least on paper.  They don't really believe in it, though--so they half-ass it. And don't get a good one--at least not the one I wanted.  One of the many  mass psychological dysfunctions this country has.  It's really not that I'm smarter or anything--they just don't have the same perspective, want different things from life.  Maybe we should have Social School for that--call it what it is--teams, teamwork,
groupthink, appearances, business and politics...shit, my mother would have signed me up right quick.  Yeah.  That's what it should be called: Paper Education. 

America really is not willing to take a good hard look at itself and see its own reality. Just like the kid in class said about Hamlet--why is it necessary to turn over the rock and look at what's decaying underneath?   Because it is there, man.  It's real; it's not going away.  Pick it up and look at it. The underbelly of life needs to be understood as well.  It's part of how you know yourself and control your destiny.  Not everyone is going to pat your head, help you out, and give you a cookie.  Which "school" tries to reinforce.

You're telling me you are a Christian and you never have these thoughts? Don't want to go there? It's never occurred to you that maybe there's something else to look at besides sunshine and smiles? And Jesus saving your soul--no worries.    Perhaps that's the other problem with modern concepts of education.  Teacher as role model and cheerleader--the outre optimist--to an almost demented level:  Yay, Susie and Sam!  I know you can do it!  I'm pulling for you!  Yes, I'll be at your game, yes, I'm giving you a smiley sticker on your paper!  Extra credit!  of course! Donuts for all! You deserve it! Enough and it becomes meaningless....guess that's why I'm a mean teacher.  The opposite is expected, promoted.  Occasionally I feel it for real, or amuse myself with a grand parody.

The thing is--if you really believe--Really.  Believe.  That there is something rather than nothing, you have to look into the murk.  Have to.  Or else it's actually proof you don't.  Believe.

Here's what I find difficult.  It's that "The more you know the more you realize you don't know" concept.  Which I potently believe.  Many smart people say so. So many things we are taught were wrong, or incomplete or need re-examination.  I like to be challenged on concepts I've long thought true. Learning  new languages humbles me. Musicians might not "hear" music in their head while creating it.  The moon changes visually depending on where you are standing on earth.  I remember once being in an airplane and there was a rainbow in the sky, but instead of being the classic arc, it was a circle--trippy new information.  I surely don't mind not knowing, or people even underestimating me for being willing to ask---looking naive---actually, I kinda get a charge out of that. There's a value in being underestimated. I do take exception to "spaciness" being equaled with vacancy..(a certain person who unfortunately shares my name tends to play this up about me--but I don't care, because I don't have the same goals) it's not the same, most definitely.  No. The hard part is finding sources of true information--most seem to come to me as accidents.  Not in school.

I worry this post sounds arrogant.  I'm just trying to truthfully reflect my feelings I remember from school days.  Wondering if there is somehow a better way.  Not in this paradigm (Education Speak 202). 

So what if school was for only the people who wanted it--no paper trail, no reward but the ideas themselves. That gets rid of the social climbers.  You could go at any age--that eliminates some of the authoritarian vibe, and taboos.  Maybe just record who was there and what went down.

If you wonder why I play in the broken system, it's because it's a completely effortless job for me. Since the other doesn't exist.  And the vacations: 3 months in the summer.  6 weeks more or less in the school year.  Can't find that in business or industry.  Kids can be annoying, but businessmen are worse.  And some people here actually amuse me.  Especially when they tear up the paper.

And, grumble,grumble, there's that whole do-good -good bullshit that keeps me from feeling greezy.