I once believed that our education system
was the great equalizer. If you worked hard enough in school you could overcome
your circumstances and lead the life you’ve always wanted. American Dream
bullshit. Life has taught me a lot of disappointing things. I was hoping this
wasn’t going to be one of them.
When I was a kid I loved learning
and helping other people learn. I would get so excited when my friends’
siblings needed help with homework. I have always wanted to be a teacher and
now I am. My students ask me what I wanted to be when I was younger. “Surely
you didn’t want to be a teacher” they say, “We don’t know why you would want to
be a teacher.” They know. They know what I didn’t when I was their age. They
have seen the American Dream fail over and over and they aren’t going to trust
the lies they’re served. They have a socially acceptable answer to the
question: “Why is education important?” but their bones know better and it
seeps out in places of anger, fear, defeat, and frustration.
I live a conflicted life. One that
makes me question my character, purpose, and worth. I try so hard to educate my
students, to care about them, to change their lives. But, I am so tired. The
kind of tired that overshadows your dreams and makes you think you want to work
a 9 to 5 in a cubicle. A 9 to 5 where you don’t take children’s worries and
lives home.
I often think that I am a terrible
person. For not wanting to work any harder. For wanting to have a social and personal
life. For wanting a job I am less emotionally invested in. For feeling like I
am a martyr, laying my life down for the betterment of the next generation. But,
do we need martyrs? Do we need harder workers? Or do we need a different
system?
I met Lucy my senior year in
college. We dreamt of a different system. A system where generations learned
together, subjects weren’t separated and compartmentalized, employees were
valued equally, and school was less about capitalistic gain and more about the
personal and social freedom it can bring. Education is the plague as well as
the solution. I no longer want to be part of a system that oppresses. I want to be a part of a system that frees. I
hope I can stay around long enough to see that happen.
ReplyDeleteHi Delaine,
I don't know if you will feel like or have time for more conversation about this, but I've been thinking about your post a lot. Yeah, we sure did used to have some great, passionate conversations about what we believed education should and could be. I've been thinking that we need to either start a new blog or make this one change into having an emphasis on education. I don't mean another place to try to write like traditional education "experts,” but a place to talk about our experiences as learners and teachers (informal or formal), and our relationships with people who learn and teach. It would be great to have a lot of voices telling stories and sharing dreams. Maybe we can find our way to a new Dream. I know there is this cynicism about what more talking or writing is supposed to do, but maybe we begin creating better by enacting it, even with these efforts. I don't think we will ever transform what we need to if we remain too alone in our private thoughts, memories, and yearnings.
In my case, I shift continually between excited, curious idealism and the scary, nauseating thoughts that maybe I was right years before when I thought we had to opt out and create our own things. I get so deeply depressed about it at times. Yet there's no way to actually opt out. I've seen people I love hurt in so many ways in this system that they still have to live in. But I'm always wondering if being in the educational institutions lets me take on what's wrong and work to change it or mostly forces me to participate in perpetuating a terrible status quo
I like that saying of Alice Walker’s: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” (She has a book with this title.)
I'm really struggling to understand what my goals actually are for myself or my students - or my goals or maybe I should say HOPES for my kids and other people I care about. I say HOPES because I get so tired of the end-focused mentality of thinking of "goals." But whether we call them goals or hopes: am I just trying to teach my students to take their places in the corporate world so they can stay in the privileged class? Why did I even bother going back to school then if it is for that purpose? I couldn't care less about that. Am I trying to produce more "moral" corporate executives? What basis is there for believing that we just need "nicer" people to hold those positions, when we know that the form itself compels the behavior that is destroying the planet and harming the majority of humanity? And if not these things, am I hoping to educate for social transformation?
I LOVE this that you say: "Education is the plague as well as the solution." What kind of education do most of us REALLY want in this society? And if most of us want something far different than what the institutions deliver, what can we do to create the kind we want?
Thank you again for writing this piece. I'm sorry you're going through a lot of pain over this. and sorry that the job works you so hard that you become exhausted. The system really needs to change. How do we make that happen?