Why School?
So many people (Carolyn most of all) have been riding my ass to go back to school to get my ticket punched. The idea of going back to school has always seemed like a practice of circular logic. When someone told me that I needed to go back to school, I would ask them, “Why?“. They would reply that if I did go back to school, I’d be able to do what I want. I would then reply that I’m already doing what I want and that shelters, centers and programs aren’t built by initials after one’s name. I’d also then point out that when it comes to trans stuff, I’m the one that’s gotten pulled into court as an “expert” on TG issues, I’m the one that put programs together and that I’m just one of many folks that are regularly brought in to teach people with letters after their names about TG issues. I can argue why Maslow was wrong and I can say that given a choice between Jung and Gestalt schools, I’ll take Gestalt (mostly due to my exploration of Buddhist theories of anatta, the 5 skandhas and vipassana practice).
In some large ways, I tend to think that school has nothing of significance to offer. This argument has held water for a long time now.
Recently, Carolyn has changed tactics and said that if I hope to make systemic changes that I have to be a part of the club. In other words, people with letters after their names only listen to other people with letters after their names. I’ve found this to be true to some extent. I recall sitting down with a group of officials with the State of Texas to talk about programmatic efficacy in the language of Jargon. Toward the end of the meeting, the main State Rep asked me which school I graduated from and was visibly suprised when I said that I didn’t have a degree. I also noted that he treated me differently for the rest of the meeting. The idea that Carolyn has been pushing is that while I can dedicate my life to putting Band-Aids on TGs after they have been run over by a dysfunctional system, I could do much better by influencing the dysfunctional system on top of indulging my Band-Aid fetish.
This is the best argument I’ve heard for jumping through hoops school offers.
I’ve been thinking about this for months now. I’m still pompous enough to really believe that 90% of what I will attempt to remember for a test will be a total waste of time and energy and only matter in that it will help me get letters after my name so that I will be taken seriously by the shallow people who seemingly believe in the following Truths as made clear by poet Wendell Barry:
Educated people are more valuable than other people because education is a value-adding industry.
Educated people are better than other people because education improves people and makes them good.
The purpose of education is to make people able to earn more and more money.
The place where education is to be used is called “your career.”
Anything that cannot be weighed, measured, or counted does not exist.
The so-called humanities probably do not exist. But if they do, they are useless. But whether they exist or not or are useful or not, they can sometimes be made to support a career.
Literacy does not involve knowing the meanings of words, or learning grammar, or reading books.
The sign of exceptionally smart people is that they speak a language that is intelligible only to other people in their “field” or only to themselves. This is very impressive and is known as “professionalism.”
The smartest and most educated people are the scientists, for they have already found solutions to all our problems and will soon find solutions to all the problems resulting from their solutions to all the problems we used to have.
The mark of a good teacher is that he or she spends most of his or her time doing research and writes many books and articles.
The mark of a good researcher is the same as that of a good teacher.
A great university has many computers, a lot of government and corporation research contracts, a winning team, and more administrators than teachers.
Computers make people even better and smarter than they were made by previous thingamabobs Or if some people prove incorrigibly wicked or stupid or both, computers will at least speed them up.
The main thing is, don’t let education get in the way of being nice to children. Children are our Future. Spend plenty of money on them but don’t stay home with them and get in their way. Don’t give them work to do; they are smart and can think up things to do on their own. Don’t teach them any of that awful, stultifying, repressive, old-fashioned morality. Provide plenty of TV, microwave dinners, day care, computers, computer games, cars. For all this, they will love and respect us and be glad to grow up and pay our debts.
A good school is a big school.
Disarm the children before you let them in.
Of course, education is for the Future, and the Future is one of our better-packaged items and attracts many buyers. (The past, on the other hand, is hard to sell; it is, after all, past.) The Future is where we’ll all be fulfilled, happy, healthy, and perhaps will live and consume forever. It may have some bad things in it, like storms or floods or earthquakes or plagues or volcanic eruptions or stray meteors, but soon we will learn to predict and prevent such things before they happen. In the Future, many scientists will be employed in figuring out how to prevent the unpredictable consequences of the remaining unpreventable bad things. There will always be work for scientists.
