What Did YOU Learn in School?

Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use 

to change the world.
                                                        ~ Nelson Mandela

Do you know the difference between education and experience?

 Education is when you read the fine print; experience 

is what you get when you don't.

                                                    ~ Pete Seeger

Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.

                                                  ~ Will Durant

There has been a lot of public discussion lately about school performance. Employers, community leaders, and parents all are questioning whether education is preparing our children for the world after after they complete their primary education. 

This conversation has led me to reflect on what I learned during the first twelve years of my education - and how useful that period of education is today.

It goes without saying, the world has changed enormously since I was a child. There were no computers or other technological devices, so central to classrooms today. Considerable moralization was considered essential to our functioning in the adult world. Every morning we stood and recited the Pledge of Allegiance. And we knew for sure that we were the good guys in the world - and who the bad guys were.

Being polite was a virtue, right up there next to cleanliness. We sat in desks in straight rows and marched down hallways in formation. Some teachers had inspection when we laid our hands on our desks and she (always a single woman in grade school) would walk up and down the aisles to see if our nails were clean. We raised our hands to give answers to teachers' questions - not ask our own questions. It was common for a parent to say to a child that if they were punished at school, they could expect to be punished for the same offense when they got home.

Handwriting had a number of strict rules. Whether you were right or left-handed, the correct slant was the same for everybody. Our writing had to be legible, though we didn't dare ask what happened along the way to boys who became medical doctors and wrote illegible prescriptions, signed with a flourish bearing no resemblance to an actual name.

Some teachers were advocates of the Palmer Method though none of us had seen any adult write in such a manner. No finger movement was allowed. Rather writing was done by arm movement. I kid you not!

It was here that I got in trouble - a good first-born girl. I almost flunked fourth grade because of my handwriting. It was "so poor" that my teacher and my parents got in a big flap about the state of my writing. I let them flap a bit, then moderated my efforts just enough that they believed there was some hope for me.

I was passed into fifth grade with a teacher so strict she should not have been allowed around children. Of course, the teacher was always right and I could expect no help from my parents. I was careful to stay out of trouble with her. This year of my life, school became serious business - the business of not being sent out in the hall to die in shame and hope no one would see you.

This prehistoric time was before calculators were available. Using a pencil and paper, we learned to add subtract, multiply, and divide. We recited the multiplication tables from memory. Fractions were the big deal - and hard to conquer.

Memorization was key. Somehow, if you memorized a lot of stuff, it meant you were educated. Aside from a set of encyclopedia in the school library, we were on our own. Try to explain to a middle school kid today the importance of having facts installed in your brain and they will look at you with a quizzical expression: why didn't you just look it up on the internet? 

Ten year olds cannot get their heads around the idea of a world BC (before computers). It is like when I stayed in the home of a family in Costa Rica near the Panama border years ago. One of the young women wanted to know what a furnace was (she had never experienced temperatures below seventy degrees). More incomprehensible to her was the concept of what a thermostat did. 

It was critical to memorize the names and locations of states/countries, and their capitals - and to be able to locate them on the globe, a fixture in every upper-grade classroom. After all, countries were supposed to be permanent entities with century-old boundaries - although a little knowledge of what happened after WWII contradicted this premise. Of course, you did not point out this discrepancy to your teacher and risk being labeled a smart aleck! 

Along with learning the names of all these foreign places that we never expected to visit, we also memorized each country's major imports and exports. It was important to know that guano was a major export from Peru, even if we had no idea what guano was. Coconut was easy because it was a necessary ingredient to top the icing of birthday cakes. It came from the territory of Hawaii.

Our roles as girls and boys were assigned at birth. Boys could become President someday - while girls practiced writing their names as Mrs. [the name of one's current boyfriend], a signature that would define them as adult women.  

When we finished sixth grade, this distinction was emphasized in some of the classes we took. Shop (industrial arts) was for boys. My father was their teacher and he was adamant that girls were incapable of learning the manly arts. Girls took Home Ec. There we learned how to make a cotton gathered skirt, something no one wore. 

And there was the ghastly Goldenrod Eggs. I would bet cold, hard cash that none of my female classmates ever made this inedible dish in real life. Tasteless white-sauce served on soggy toast, with grated hard-boiled egg yolks sprinkled on top. It was like eating glue dusted with sawdust. Gagging behind the teacher's back with each bite.

By senior high, some girls learned shorthand so they could become secretaries. Typing was usually reserved for girls, though some boys elected to learn how to type with more than one finger on each hand. Sports were reserved for boys, while cheerleading try-outs were the big event for girls. Of course Phy. Ed. had been segregated by gender since seventh grade.

Fortunately, my education was not something finished with my high school graduation. Gradually, I understood that education was not defined by this public school experience. Education is a life-long process, of which classrooms are only a small part of learning to function as a competent adult.

I did go to college, then to grad school. There I learned analytical skills and how to interpret abstract ideas. I learned - and unlearned information and knowledge. I was taught DNA was an amorphous mass with statistical amounts of amino acids. Then along came Watson and Crick  and the elaborate spiral helix - and Rosalind Franklin, who did all their work and got none of the credit.

I learned Fortran so I could write software and met my first computer - at the doorway of a room where the behemoth invention filled the entire room and was attended to by white-coated technicians. Now, computer technology runs my car, my security system, my bank account, and enables me to write these observations that people all over the world read.

I traveled from one end of the Earth to the other and met other cultures first hand. I learned America isn't always right - and sometimes makes huge mistakes. I embraced political opinions my conservative parents would have found abhorrent. I discarded prejudices I'd been taught as a child. My perception of the world and its people became fluid, ever-changing.

As a woman, I was no longer limited to who (or what) I could become. I found my writer's voice. Photoshop became an important tool in my work as a photographer as I moved from documenting what I (thought) I saw to using a camera as an artist. I went to museums and art galleries, concerts and theater. Last summer, I learned to text - a good thing to know because email rapidly is becoming obsolete in my grandchildrens' universe. Sometimes I have been the teacher - and sometimes my students and clients have taught me far more than I had to give them.

I learned about the intricacies of relationships, community, and friendship. And most valuable of all - the gift of love. As Annie Dillard said, education is learning how to live.

Martha Graham summarizes it as well as anyone:

                                  I believe that we learn by practice. Whether it means to learn to dance 

by practicing dancing or to learn to live by practicing living,

 the principles are the same . . .  Practice means to perform, over and over again 

in the face of all obstacles, some act of vision, of faith, of desire.