School of Hard Knocks
A couple of lines from the song “Kodachrome” released in 1973 and written and sung by Paul Simon go like this:
“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all. And that my life of education hasn’t hurt me none, I can read the writing on the wall.”
Today these lines are still relevant. My belief is they are relevant for reasons much different than what Mr. Simon thought of when he first wrote them. I suspect Mr. Simon thought of his high school education as being indoctrination.
Today rather than being an indoctrination, which implies some kind of organized educational agenda, a high school education is more like a series of episodes from a bad TV reality series. The student can continue to watch unattended or can, since he is unattended, choose to leave the room. As dropout rates show, many students choose to leave.
High schools, at least in theory, are charged with an important and difficult task. That task is to prepare young people for future life in our society as functional adults and good citizens. On top of this some are of the belief that high schools should also teach people to be a better person as well if not instead. The rub is it is easier to define and apply standards to “functional adult” or “good citizen” than to “better person”.
Those qualities that define a “better person” are relative and therefore are anybody’s guess. Because of this, high schools over the years habitually have been the laboratory for anybody to guess about what it takes to be a better person. All of this guessing comes at the expense of teaching functional literacy, responsibility and citizenship. It also, not surprisingly, comes at the expense of the high school student.
My own days in high school (late 60’s) occurred about a decade after Mr. Simons experience and on the opposite coast. Despite these differences in time and space, I believe the commonality that all high school students share both back then and now is dependency. When we were in high school, as would be the case if I were in high school today, we depended entirely upon what was taught to us and who influenced these teachings. Questioning authority was something that was just not done by high school students. And this was and still is fair as we were not adults and we needed to respect our teachers as well as our parents who, ideally in a collaborative effort, helped with preparing us for life as an adult. This respect was a given in order to maintain order in the classroom which in turn would allow teaching and learning to flourish.
Today things are different. The years of experimentation have turned high schools into something akin to the federal tax code. No one understands or is happy with high schools but all recognize their inevitability. It is enough to know only that high schools, like the tax code, have been and will always be with us. In order to avoid severe social sanctions no one dares ask why high schools exist. It is prudent to only know that they exist and tinker with them as best as possible to further ones own special interests.
Each component of the high school fiefdom whether it be teachers, administrators, politicians, or assorted social engineers fights for their territory and power under the guise of helping to educate “the kids”. It is the ages old battle of tribal chieftains attempting to acquire more land, goats, and wives. And the student is caught in the middle. So, all the while, the student learns. He learns to be a “better person”.
“When I think back on all the crap I learned in high school, it’s a wonder I can think at all. And that my life of education hasn’t hurt me none, I can read the writing on the wall.”
Today these lines are still relevant. My belief is they are relevant for reasons much different than what Mr. Simon thought of when he first wrote them. I suspect Mr. Simon thought of his high school education as being indoctrination.
Today rather than being an indoctrination, which implies some kind of organized educational agenda, a high school education is more like a series of episodes from a bad TV reality series. The student can continue to watch unattended or can, since he is unattended, choose to leave the room. As dropout rates show, many students choose to leave.
High schools, at least in theory, are charged with an important and difficult task. That task is to prepare young people for future life in our society as functional adults and good citizens. On top of this some are of the belief that high schools should also teach people to be a better person as well if not instead. The rub is it is easier to define and apply standards to “functional adult” or “good citizen” than to “better person”.
Those qualities that define a “better person” are relative and therefore are anybody’s guess. Because of this, high schools over the years habitually have been the laboratory for anybody to guess about what it takes to be a better person. All of this guessing comes at the expense of teaching functional literacy, responsibility and citizenship. It also, not surprisingly, comes at the expense of the high school student.
My own days in high school (late 60’s) occurred about a decade after Mr. Simons experience and on the opposite coast. Despite these differences in time and space, I believe the commonality that all high school students share both back then and now is dependency. When we were in high school, as would be the case if I were in high school today, we depended entirely upon what was taught to us and who influenced these teachings. Questioning authority was something that was just not done by high school students. And this was and still is fair as we were not adults and we needed to respect our teachers as well as our parents who, ideally in a collaborative effort, helped with preparing us for life as an adult. This respect was a given in order to maintain order in the classroom which in turn would allow teaching and learning to flourish.
Today things are different. The years of experimentation have turned high schools into something akin to the federal tax code. No one understands or is happy with high schools but all recognize their inevitability. It is enough to know only that high schools, like the tax code, have been and will always be with us. In order to avoid severe social sanctions no one dares ask why high schools exist. It is prudent to only know that they exist and tinker with them as best as possible to further ones own special interests.
Each component of the high school fiefdom whether it be teachers, administrators, politicians, or assorted social engineers fights for their territory and power under the guise of helping to educate “the kids”. It is the ages old battle of tribal chieftains attempting to acquire more land, goats, and wives. And the student is caught in the middle. So, all the while, the student learns. He learns to be a “better person”.
posted by tovarich at 1:48 PM
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