[While I’m busy scrubbing poop from diapers and other articles of clothing, several friends have been kind enough to provide content for this site, through a program we’re calling Blogbaby. Today’s contribution comes from my author friend Chelsea Lowe, who lives in Boston.]
The difference between high school and life, of course, is that one teaches you things you didn’t need to know; one teaches you things you didn’t want to know. The more I look back on that time, the more I’m struck not by what we learned, which was practically nothing, but by what we didn’t–which was practically everything.
What we were taught:
That Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote The Scarlet Letter
That the president has the power of veto
How to bisect an angle
That a body at rest tends to stay at rest and a body in motion tends to stay in motion, unless acted upon by a force
How to say “a thousand quiet cities” in French
Divide, multiply, subtract, check, bring down
That you can remember “Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species” if you can remember “King Philip Cleans Our Filthy Gym Socks”
That the planets spin around the sun, no matter what was once thought
What we we not taught:
How to fill out a tax form
How to go hungry
How to bargain
That years after someone you love has died, something may bring that person’s memory back to you with such pure longing, you may burst out crying on a city street or at a kitchen table
That, by and large, the moments you’ll want to go back to won’t be vacations or achievements, but mornings of drinking coffee and gossiping about the neighbors
That you’ll miss the home you grew up in and the foods you ate
How to fall
Chelsea, who, as you might recall, was recently left stranded by a hurricane in Vermont, is a professional writer. You can find her website here. Among other things, she’s written books about living with OCD and dealing with loved ones who suffer from Bipolar Disorder. We met through the internet several years ago, when she was researching detectives with OCD for an article she was working on about the television series Monk for TV Guide. She, I believe, also has the distinction of being my only friend with an iPhone app.
4 Comments
I get where you’re coming from, but I think that some important things were learned in school, like conflict resolution, working with teams, dealing with people you wouldn’t normally seek out in your regular life, etc. As for the rote stuff, though, it could be picked up anywhere. The real value is learning how to learn, acquire information, and deal with people. Unfortunately, as we continue down the No Child Left Behind “teach to the test” path, school is becoming less and less about those things.
You’re right, actually. And, my Gcd! we can learn foreign languages in school! For free! But, at the time, I found it largely useless. Also: sounds as if you attended school in a more enlightened era than I did! Thanks for taking time to comment, Eel.
Is it true, Chelsea, that some things can never be fabulized?
Exhibit A:
http://markmaynard.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/mm-unflattery_aitor.jpg
He, hee; only just saw this. I owe you an answer, Eel: Anyone can be Fabulized–provided he or she wants to be. ;-)