I was once abroad in a country where people didn’t speak much English. My taxi cab driver was, however, quite fluent. I asked him where he learned English — meaning which school, or if he lived abroad, etc. He looked back at me, smiled and said, “From the school of life”. Over the years, he had a number of tourists visiting from English speaking countries, and engaged with them. Over time, he picked up the language in a society that didn’t speak it; quite remarkable if you think about it. In my brief experience, some of the most impressive individuals I have met were poor or illiterate, but very well “educated”. They understood “life”, what they needed to do, and the proper place of things in it. They were satisfied with little, but very quick and sharp of intellect. I’ve often seen the opposite with students in the university system. A colleague of mine years ago, a much older gentlemen, complained to me about our generation. His generation didn’t have degrees, but were very capable. Our generation, the “lost millennial generation”, has several degrees after our names, yet we are less capable. These two experiences got me to think a lot about what I wanted to take out of my education, but also taught me that more learning was going to take place outside the classroom with “life itself”. As one of my teachers told me, “When you graduate, you haven’t finished anything. All you have are the tools to begin learning”.

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Interesting…asking major philosophical questions through science fiction movies. And it seemed to get the same message across! I may have to try that in my history class. You certainly got me thinking here. Thanks.

This is a wonderful post. Honestly, thank you for sharing this. Teachers are people who do dumb things, but we really ought to own up to our mistakes, which is an ethical discipline that our education often seeks to avoid. I feel terrible for that little girl who put the right answer. School administrators should have seen this — especially when she never covered exponents! I guess there are limits to “dumb”, because that was REALLY DUMB on their part.

I actually taught this article when I was teaching English abroad in the Middle East. My students were older and really appreciated how their generation lacked degrees and universities, yet they were much more capable than the younger generation who have fancy degrees, but lack capability. It is a great article that makes us reflect on the loss of deep meaning and how this makes us superficial people. Thanks for bringing this up. It certainly rings well with Freire; I wonder how Freire would approach technology in the classroom?

This is really cool how you bring in Pink Floyd to comment on our educational practices alongside Freire. No doubt with every education there is indoctrination. And if it is not our education, then it is other institutions. Our cultures indoctrinate, and so do our languages (as Freire mentions about ideology and power in language). Thus, it doesn’t seem possible to avoid indoctrination, but rather, shift it to something positive. There is something negative about “thinking” and “learning” in that it necessarily compartmentalizes knowledge so we can eat and chew on it. But just as being informed about events, say through global news outlets, our binaries and stereotypes reciprocally increase, and this is problematic. So while your criticism of school is important, I doubt if not having school is any better. Plus, there are plenty of folks who don’t go to school and remain illiterate throughout their lives and still manage to make a living and make sense of the world. No?

Well written. The story is an appropriate allegory for contemporary forms of greed, racism and cunning hatred of others. There is something scary about the public/private divide in our society and the hypocrisy this can create in people. The rational self in public, the ideological in private. This is not always how societies were, even though we may come to feel this is normal.

I like your last line very much: “Inclusivity is not a habit that needs to be changed, but rather a desire that needs to be fulfilled”. This points to the reality that we all like and want inclusivity amongst diversity because diversity is simply a fact of life. If our children come to see us as practicing inclusiveness as an act of charity for ourselves rather than others — for ourselves to become better — they would no doubt carry that warm fuzzy to their children. Is this ideological? You bet, but it is one that does not conflict with the reality of lived experience and the incredible bio-diversity of the world that we have yet to — and may never will — fully realize.

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You have some remarkable and memorable comments here:
1)”Have I trained myself to be quickly and instinctively egocentric?”

2)”Have you ever attempted to eavesdrop on the conversation in your head as though looking for gossip?”

The first quote is fascinating in that most bio majors who just memorize themselves to A grades often tend to have a chip on their shoulder. I’m not saying YOU are like this, but recognizing you are good at memorizing in a field where memorization is important can have this effect. I did poorly in biology primarily because I was questioning everything in the textbook — there is certainly a degree of guess-work which occurs in writing textbooks and this is what partly drew me to the history and philosophy of science. But that is interesting how you drew the idea of instinctive memorization to instinctive egoism. Brilliant.

The second quote is really well written; its a psychological statement in literary prose really. I’m sure all of us do this, but we never thought about it the way you have written it, very nice.

I also liked the following quote that you quote: David Foster Wallace: “Twenty years after my own graduation, I have come gradually to understand that the liberal arts cliché about teaching you how to think is actually shorthand for a much deeper, more serious idea: learning how to think really means learning how to exercise some control over how and what you think.”

Most science students in undergrad seem to “go through the motions” of their degree and mock how the humanities and social sciences simply complicate life un-necessarily. I saw myself, a chemistry major who is now in the liberal arts, as someone who 30 years later would have to begin addressing serious questions about my life and the ideas I have; the liberal arts have helped expose the diversity of the world and prepared me for those deep personal moments by myself in the future. Can science do this for us? I am doubtful and worry about those who think it can.

The thought that girls were not good at math never crossed my mind until I first heard a controversy over this idea made by a Harvard President. My AP Calculus class in high school was half women and half men, and I can tell you the girls performed much better and had more 5 scores on their AP exam than the men. In college, my math tutor for BC calc was a female math major.

So I’m with you that it was unheard of to me, that is, until institutions of higher education made it appear such. I suspect political and financial motivations at this as well.

well said…well said. Is a place diverse if it isn’t a melting pot? I’m thinking….

Homero,

Just imagine if we started speaking something other than English on an airplane! BIG TROUBLE…