schoolyard subversion

2001-09-13 [< * >]

Back to School

It's that time again. Buy, buy, buy! Don't let your children get left behind. Lonely, unhappy-looking children sell everything from crayons to carburetors (You don't want your child to be stuck waiting after school, do you?). Parents' mad rush of competition filters down to their children, who try to outdo their peers in class.

I slept in that morning, like most mornings before it. But there was one difference, my brothers were gone. Their cheerful laughing and playing had been taken away. Then I remembered, they were at school.

My brother Ben is throwing fits. He doesn't want to go back to school. It's not fair he says. It's hard to calm him down. Later we play cards. I don't remember who wins, but he picks up the deck and throws it at me before storming out of the room. "There's a game for you," he says. "52-card pickup." He wasn't like this before.

Fear and anguish wells up in my stomach as we drive thru green scenery to the small, secluded Lake Forest College. "I didn't think I was going to school," I said. "Why didn't you tell me?" It's a beautiful campus, but practically deserted in these weeks before school starts. It's a nice place to visit, but I'm not planning to live there.

"So, where are you going to school?" the doctor asks. "Lake Forest College," my mother replies, as I'm too ashamed to answer. He doesn't understand at first, but my mom explains. Later, the nurse asks if I understand how special this is. "I don't think of it as going off to college," I say. "It's just a place down the street that happens to give classes." It's a phrase I have reused often.

I try and tear myself away from my sleep. It's too early... it's the first day of school. I'll be taking the train there and back, we've decided. The train station is close to both places. I'm taking two courses: "Abstract and Discrete Math" and "Fundamentals of Music". The first day goes slowly, with a couple kids asking me what I'm doing there. At least school is short -- only eight hours a week.

Lots of people told me how much better college was than high school, but I don't see much different. The kids are quieter, perhaps because they don't know each other as well. Smoking is much more common. Even the teachers smoke. And the campus is much bigger, streaming lines of children march like ants from building to building across the grassy lawn.

Math class seems rather easy right now, everything we're learning I've seen before in different guises. The rest of the class however, certain that they're "bad at math" (they are at a liberal arts school, after all) finds it difficult. They aren't confident in their answers either, and fail to answer even the most basic questions.

Music is the other way around. It's filled with amateur musicians who already perform on their own, yet the teacher insists on going slowly and methodically thru the absolute basics of music. We learn how to write notes, clap along to the rhythm, and count beats out loud. I look ahead in the textbook... it doesn't seem to get much better later on. The other kids, eager to fulfill requirements, are in no mood to complain.

It's boring, as I'd forgotten school was. So boring that I can feel non-essential portions of my brain shutting down, the lights going out. My mind begins to wander, to stay alert I begin to think of other projects with some relation to what I'm hearing. I fight the urge to smash my head into my desk to stay awake.

I explain to my parents that I'd be so much more productive if I studied these topics on my own. I'd volunteer to spend my hours going thru my math textbook and practicing the piano. I'd almost surely move ahead faster than sitting thru these painfully boring classes. My dad refuses. He, so liberal on so many other issues, has a rigid conservatism on this one matter: I must go to school. I simply don't understand it. My constant pleading and discussion just run up against an invincible mental wall. I don't know how to convince him, but that doesn't stop me from trying.

It can't be that all parents are like this, because I know that many aren't -- they send me email. They praise my thoughtful writing and ask me for suggestions on how to keep their children out of the educational system. Sometimes they just write to let me know that they agree, and they're not putting their children thru the pain. College professors email me to tell me that college isn't any different, and that I should continue to be wary. It's not that my dad is the only one who believes as he does -- I've met one or two others -- but it's that I can't understand why, and he doesn't seem eager to explain.

Last summer, when I started on this journey, I made a pact with myself to try and see school as merely part of my life, and not the other way around. It worked for a few days, but as school continued to monopolize more and more of my time, I couldn't hold on to that worldview. I saw days I took off from school, instead of one less day that school was on. This year, with my eight-hours a week of schooling, I've been able to keep looking at things that way.

The attacks of this week remind many of us just how precious every hour of our lives are, even if we have to go back to school or work the following day. Here's to continued life, for everyone.

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