2. What is an education? 

I teach a lot of young people. They are mostly decent, honest and hardworking adolescents -- their eyes brimming with inquisitiveness. In their hands they possess the universe -- the Internet: they are God controlling infinity. What is behind the façade, however, if I were to be really honest with myself, is boredom. What can I truly say to them that sparks the intellectual curiosity that was normal in the “seekers” of my generation? I am no Platonist1 but I do draw a distinction between people who accept what is and those few who contemplate what could be. I find that one of the few things that has any relevance at all is just telling the truth: the truth about you, a real person – albeit aged. They have little to no time for the pontificators or the embellishers. They want the raw facts. What was it like in the “old days?” (In what many see as the Jurassic Period,2 with small dinosaurs still running around).

I grew up in an industrial town. World War Two was in the not too distant past and the economy of North America was the raw-material supplier to the world: it was sizzling. To this end, the lumber unions had extracted a measure of economic peace and stability from the logging barons by the high wages that were paid to the average unskilled or semi-skilled worker. It was possible to be employed for a year or a year and a half and buy a house: a small one to be sure, but still a house. This, of course meant that “staying in school” had less and less allure as you got older and older. The system itself was experiencing something akin to academic schizophrenia. When I first went to school in Grade One, autocracy was “all the rage.” We were summoned into the classroom by an ominous bell: the kind that you imagine in your classic horror film. We moved to our desks and proceeded to stand at attention. The teacher arrived, “Good morning, Mrs. Smith,” we all intoned. Next we sang God Save the Queen3  and had our nails inspected. This was not some trifling, cursory inspection, but the full appraisal; including look, length and cleanliness. We then sat down to begin the lesson. Any mere infraction was dealt with swiftly and severely: corporal punishment was immediate and arbitrary, its severity only lessened or increased by the mood and temperament of the pedagogue. There were “no prisoners taken,” no burp or chirp or guffaw that seems to be easily emitted by a young voice was tolerated. A classroom was noted for its peace and tranquility, though repressing the emotions and fears of its pupils. When I talk about “rote learning,” it still produces a visceral feeling in the pit of my stomach: A-B-C-D-E-F-G-H-I-J-K-L-M-N-O-P-Q-R-S-T-U-V-W-X-Y and Z: happy, happy family – now I know my ABCs. If there were any behavioral problems such as ADHD,4 for example, they were eradicated with the ADHD removal rod. It was a baton of medium length made from some exceptionally painful wood. It had a tendency to work wonders: even the most truculent could be cured after several visitations. Order, structure and respect for authority were the norms of the system. It had only one problem: it wasn’t working in high school. Students upon reaching sixteen years of age, the age of legal maturity, were quitting and going to work in the industrial sector. And everyone’s great dream, at least if you were a boy, could be achieved – you could buy a car. A car meant social status and its attendant reward – a girlfriend, whatever that was? To mitigate the effects of this stern educational system and “keep the kids in school,” it was determined that the entire educational structure needed some form of recalibration: the rules had to be rewritten.