Lou Pickney's Online Commentary
Prep School
Thursday
September 21, 2006
There's something amusing to me about seeing my sister Mary Beth's AP Calculus homework. The questions don't look like questions, the answers still variables galore included, and I couldn't make sense of any of it. Beyond the concept of letters and numbers, the understanding of what formulas were used, and why, was entirely lost on me.
And you know what? I'm okay with that. The last math class I took was in 1995. Somehow I tested out of math at the University of Evansville, and when I turned in my final for Pre-Cal II Honors in May 1995, I was free.
I suppose that there's some irony to the fact that my Mom is a math teacher now at the same high school I attended (Father Ryan High School in Nashville), but for me math was a struggle of rote memorization, asking not why but how, and surviving.
My Mom pointed out to me long ago that Math was not subjective, that there was a right answer that was irrefutable, and how in math you couldn't be the victim of a teacher giving out grades based on anticipated product versus actual writing (okay, she didn't put it like that, but that's what she meant.) My friend Todd told me our freshman year of high school that our English teacher would give him a C on every paper he wrote, regardless of how good or bad it was. So, from that perspective, I understand what my Mom meant.
It doesn't mean that math wasn't a horrific challenge, though. And one without any payoff in the long-run, at least for me. French was difficult for me, too, but it at least has paid dividends. Look no further than that midnight train to Munich from Paris in 1998 (en route to Oktoberfest), where I had to play interpreter with a hostile ticket enforcer who spoke no English. For that, I'll forever be glad that I took French. And it's helped me out in all sorts of situations, interpreting words and phrases and at least being able to differentiate between all of the various romance languages.
In many ways, I consider the American education system to be a training ground for life. You're overloaded with homework. Everyone thinks that their class is the most important (or only) one you have. Teachers can be kind or cruel, as can classmates, and often your success in a course depends tremendously on who surrounds you in a given class. You are punished because they are punishing everyone for something one person did. They make you do mindless activities, busy work, filling the void to play beat the clock.
And why? Because, ultimately, these same types of situations hit you in your post-school life in one way or another.
This may sound cynical, but cynicism and realism are often different names for the same thing. My point with this extended comparison is that school is a primer for life, a transition from the myopic, self-centered world of childhood into the reality of being an adult. Without that often rough series of lessons in unfairness, it would be an awfully tough jolt to suddenly be thrust into the reality of self-reliance without having had any transition time.
School's not fair; life's not fair. We all do what we have to do to make the wheels keep on turning. That is the ultimate lesson learned in school, taught piece-by-piece, and reinforced throughout life.
Of course, I see education as a lifetime experience; believe me, it's much easier to "write it off to education" in your mind than to lament the loss of money or time or emotion over something that didn't pan out. But that's another story for another time...
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