Says Who?

Interesting and disturbing conversation overheard between two seasoned educators.  The gist was something like, "You know not everyone is college material.  Some kids just shouldn't be going to college."  Is that shocking?  Obviously I didn't think it warranted me to  interrupt with an objection.  I didn't want to cause a stir.  Or maybe I didn't want to get on the "bad list" which I am convinced exists in every private school.  Or maybe I am simply a coward.  Well, now and then, even a coward's conscience gets pricked.  And I feel it necessary to apologize to every single high school graduate who will not be entering college this summer.  All it would have taken was a polite, "There's another way of looking at this.  Personally, I think every student should have the means to attend college, and teachers should at least have that desire for all their graduates."  Instead nothing.  I also know that when roused, I find it very difficult to respond reasonably.  Reason always seems to arrive too late.  So instead of risking one or two curse words or unattractive
combinations of the same, I chose to reflect later.

So who is it that weeds out the "not college material" from among us?  I am glad that it wasn't my own counselor who after a feint in the direction of my transcript and no doubt taking greater account of my rather playful demeanor (I am being kind to myself) during my high school years declared me not only to be unworthy of any one of the seemingly endless list  of scholarships that was being printed out as I sat there (and continued to do so after our three minute meeting) but to be an unlikely candidate for higher education at all.  He may have mentioned something about trade schools, but I had already checked out if I had ever checked in.  With the exception of good friends and one or two teachers, I had not invested much in learning during my high school years.   I really don't think many of us could have been unanimously declared "college material".  I think the blame for that must be spread around, but that does not really concern me here.
 
I was fortunate to be accepted at the one college to which I applied, Duquesne University.  I don't think I realized how fortunate I was.  Looking back, there really was no good reason for me to be accepted.  My transcript including SAT scores was far from stellar.  What happened to me at that school, however, was so significant that it is very easy for me to succumb to adjectives such as inexplicable, astounding, miraculous, maybe even magical.   Those adjectives would suffice were it not that every single class I took, all I learned in them and remembered, all I learned in them and have since forgotten, and every good grade I earned was ultimately derived from individual professors.  I am not sure how many of these professors loved students (I think most did).  I do know that the majority at best loved what they were teaching and at worst knew what they were teaching.  Every single class was a lecture, and every single class was another slice of something for which I became gluttonous.  It was there I learned that I was designed to be a learner, that this was really a part of becoming human.  I knew I wasn't special.  I knew that from high school.  But damn it if I didn't feel special.

There are voices today in education that charge a hefty sum to come and speak to an audience of students and their parents and to give them anecdotes and aphorisms which, like a Big Mac, are very tasty, and earn instantaneous applause.  For example, that if our public education system in America were a business, it would have been in bankruptcy long ago.  But Big Macs for all their taste and calories offer little nutrition.  How should education be likened to a business.  Are students the products?  Is profit based on the number of students who go on to college?  Who make a certain amount of money?  If a product is defective should it be destroyed?  It seems to me that when we serve humanity, we must accept results that reflect the differences among human beings.  Of course anyone who has even skimmed through Plato knows how analogies can be used to explain anything.  So I may be silly, but I am worried about the thinking behind this one.  I am afraid that it will be easier to encourage whole populations of students into a non-college itinerary than to worry about the calisthenics counselors might have to do to help them matriculate somewhere.

Another aphorism is that no student believes that he or she will graduate from college with a ticket to a good paying job.   For this one, I am going to refuse to argue that we should think about changing the economic structure of our country rather than to endeavor to withhold advanced education from certain unworthy students.  Suffice it to say that the U.S. economy was strongest when the labor force was a college-educated one.  I am going to take a different direction, primarily because as much as education makes better workers, education means so much more.  Education, particularly a classical education in the liberal arts, has a humanizing effect on human beings.  Feeling that privilege of being human actually means more to feeling a purpose and joy in living than almost anything else expect for faith, religion, or spirituality.  If a teenager from a less than adequate public school system will not gain a high paying job after earning a B.A. or B.S., that does not give anyone the right to deny that teenager from the greater and possibly less measurable rewards of learning.  Who do we think we are?

Maybe someone in that zenith called the really rich fears educational fairness more than economic equality.  After all, who knows what will happen when an economically distressed population has the confidence to think and to learn and to speak out.  What if, God forbid, a college graduate working at a McDonald's considers it nonsense that a CEO is getting 10 million dollars a year more than her because the CEO is just that much smarter.  No one who benefits from an inequitable system wants people to start thinking.

So I will continue to maintain that all students should have higher education as a dream, and that every educator should have as his or her goal to help a student fulfill that dream.  And what may be a very bad business practice, may, as a finale, recreate this country into something more like the democracy it can be.