(continued from last week)
I won’t march you through all the other episodes and disappointments elementary school brought. I will say that I had always been a believer in public schools and the importance of the company of peers, so we went on, year after year, trying to see a better outcome. Yet by fifth grade I had to admit the circumstances of this form of learning had come perilously close to closing down our kid’s curiosity and wish to learn. Perilously close also, to losing me my patience, my sympathy with over-burdened teachers facing bulging classrooms and too many conflicting directives.
I had concerns also with the bullying environment at the school, where most bullying passed under the radar. Some teachers stepped up to the responsibility of being in loco parentis, but I remember one nice young teacher explaining earnestly that he wasn’t comfortable imposing his personal ethics on other people’s children. That declaration left me speechless. As the adult in the room, who would share his or her ethics if he, the adult, refused? Children don’t wait to ask their parents at home before they learn what works on the grounds of the school.
In response I went back to the distance learning program, Calvert, that my family had used when in Nigeria and no school available within commuting distance. I called Calvert, we went through the standardized test required for admission, and discovered that compared to national standards, the kid was over three years behind in mathematics, and one and a half years ahead in reading and writing skills.
Thus, we engaged in part-time home-school using the Calvert School materials. Part-time because as an only child I figured she still needed the company of other children. Further, most school districts allow this if the child attends the standard classroom a certain number of hours each day.
I kept thinking, asking myself– we are by ancient inheritance hunter-gatherers. Is that an inheritance we might tap?
I believe engaging with Calvert helped. But it wasn’t enough. We finally turned away from the local public schools to finding a middle school that allowed adventures, in fact required them, and that was a turning point for us all. I will never claim it was easy, but it was definitely wonderful. Literally, full of wonder. A private school, worth every penny because it opened back up the idea of joy in learning. What our kid got was the company of engaged caring adults on her hero’s journey to become an independent world-oriented human being.
So I asked the question above about using our inheritance, and maybe I answered part of it, that human engagement is necessary to the person we want to become. Wherever we find it– behind the school sneaking some vaping time with friends, or bicycling up a mountain road that feels impossible, with your aunt ahead looking like she doesn’t know what it is to sweat, and your sandwich toasting in your backpack.
We learn, and one of the things we must learn if we are to keep on learning and gaining skills, is that at the end of the day it doesn’t matter if the book is at your reading level if you can understand what it says. We learn that learning is for ourselves, not so we can check a box and be done with it. And what are the ‘its’ that matter at the end? Only we define them. Especially when we do things that are not in our easy reach, not in our wheelhouse, not at our reading level.
I know a woman who took third year college French language without any preparation, not even a high school course. At midterm she had a hard-won ‘D’, and after that her grade scraped upwards until her professor called her into the office.
“I don’t know what’s been wrong with you,” he said, not knowing the paucity of her background, and you can bet she didn’t let out a squeak lest he pitch her out on her ear, “but your improvement is admirable. Let’s say I throw out all your previous grades and you can have whatever grade you get on my final.”
Yes, she aced it.
She had a place in the College of Creative Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, some decades ago. A school with the cap off, literally, in terms of credit limits. A graduate school for undergraduates, where it’s likely to have your original research published or presented in a professional journal before you graduate. It might sound narrow, but it’s powered by a kind of thinking and wanting that breaks boxes. For example, CCS had a student who graduated having fulfilled all the requirements for three disparate majors. He finished in four years like all the others, though by his own admission–“It was a little crazy. I guess I should have taken another quarter.”
What’s the common thread to find an education? Be hungry for what interests you. Master the skills you will need to possess it all. Feed the courage that faces the chance to fail, a will to try the difficult. Seek opportunity and hard sweaty work. Find people who care to help you. No boxes. Just like real life.
Now I need to catch up….
robinwinter 