As I teeter on the brink of once again becoming a "stoodint" I can't help but think back on my previous experiences with education.
Even though I was in school back when there were only thirteen stars on the flag, the thing that still stands out most was the excruciating boredom. Not surprisingly, I didn't do all that well in school - I just skated by. I ignored the course work and aced the tests.
I admit it - I was lazy as hell, but if I had a nickel for every time I heard "We KNOW you can do the work...." I'd be typing this on my laptop on my yacht on the Mediterranean. I just wanted to scream "OK, if I know I can do the work, and YOU know I can do the work - WTF is the point of me doing it??? Am I a student or a trained seal?"
The curriculum was cookie-cutter and dumbed down to the lowest common denominator, like they were programming robots, not teaching people. Students are individuals, not something to try to stuff into a template.
When I had a teacher who challenged me (there were a couple), or I found the material interesting, I excelled.
The other negative aspect of boredom was that I tended to get in trouble - for lack of anything better to do. Every year between third grade and maybe my sophomore year in high school, my mother got called to the school at least once. (I know, that's probably hard for you to believe...)
If that all isn't bad enough, let's throw one more strike against me into the mix: One of my character faults has always been issues with authority. I never was one to grant respect just because someone had a title, or to do something "because I said so". (Needless to say, Catholic school was NOT a good fit for me....) (Even today, this "flaw" still causes me grief, but I'm completely unrepentant!)
It's only more recently that I began to realize that the one thing they don't teach in school is how to THINK. Time after time, I see people around me -some with a lot more education than I - who are very good at making decisions and giving answers as long as the situation fits neatly into a little preprogrammed box. As soon as things get a little off-kilter, they're lost. They don't know how to really narrow things down, to drill down to what the real issues are and are incapable of original, creative thought.
Maybe that's what I truly didn't like about school - everything was predigested and confined to very narrow parameters. There was no room for originality or creativity.
Oh well, it all worked out in the end.
Even though I really had no direction, I knew in school that I didn't want to sit behind a desk like my dad - I wanted to make things. I focused on my shop classes and Carpentry in vocational school. The housing market was in the toilet when I graduated, so I ended up going in my second-favorite direction: metalworking. For the last thirty years or so, it's paid the bills and been "berry berry good to me". Even now, I see I was right - a desk job would have been sheer misery and my job does allow me a great deal of creative outlet. (Now if I could just do something about my issues with authority and my tendency to get myself in trouble...)
But after thirty years of that, I feel I need fresh challenges again - I'm just sort of sleepwalking through my days.
It's time to reinvent the MCMAWG.
(A few years ago, I thought about going into teaching, but decided I didn't want to be just another hamster in the wheel handing out pre-digested material that conformed to the NYS Board of Regents draconian standards. Too bad, too, because I think I would have liked it - I like working with kids and challenging them to THINK. For what it's worth, my son told me he thought I would have made a good one).
