My Troubles with Education, Part II (The Long Bus Ride)

Posted on February 27, 2014 by qrparker

Note: This is Part Two. It’s a little more conversational than Part One. You don’t need to read it to understand this one, but you can.

IF YOU LIVE in a country that isn’t America, you’re probably comfortable with public transportation.

For most Americans, their only experience with public transportation will be the school bus. Five minutes on one of those is enough to develop a lifelong disdain for public transportation.

When I was growing up, the young kids rode the same bus as the high schoolers. The administration thought this was good because most drove themselves, so it wasn’t worth the money to get a whole new bus for the few who didn’t.
They were right.
All self-respecting high schoolers either bought a crappy car for themselves or borrowed their parents’ car. Unfortunately, this meant the only ones who did ride the bus were those legally inhibited from driving.

My bus had two criminals – Justin and Angel.

Justin and Angel were seniors, and had been so for several years. Justin had less than a year before he was legally too old to attend High School.

My stop was last on the route, and the bus was overcrowded. By the time I got on, all the seats were full except one.

One mid-semester day, most kids skipped school, so I could sit all by myself. I decided to use this time to get ahead on my reading.

I knew they were behind me because I smelled whiskey and cigarettes. They always drank and smoked on the bus. They weren’t allowed, of course, but they were twice the size of the driver, and my school took a military approach to education:
“If we don’t see it, it didn’t happen.”

That day, Justin and Angel were giggling drunk and their eyes were red and their lighter was an endless source of entertainment.

Hair doesn’t catch fire – it melts.
It turns into plastic and it smells like the chemicals from your shampoo.
When someone decides to melt your hair, you just sit there and let it happen, because they’re four times your size and they’re drunk and high and scary.
Just like I was taught:
“If you don’t see it happen, it didn’t happen.”

Somehow I made it back home without crying.
I told my mom what had happened.
I begged not to have to ride the bus anymore.

For the next few weeks, I missed the bus on purpose and, consequently, missed school.

Sooner than later, I became a disturbance, and was physically moved to the bus stop.

I managed to squeeze a seat in the front on the way there.

After school, during the stampede to the buses, I saw Justin.
He was alone.
He looked right at me.

I tried to get away.

I thought Justin wanted to fight me. I don’t know why I thought that.
I think when you’re young, and you feel you’re in danger, you feel like you have to fight, even if you’re going to lose.

But Justin didn’t want to fight me.

I realized I held all the cards.
On the bus, Justin was an invincible figure who could drink and smoke and melt hair.
At school he was a kid who, despite all his problems, was still trying to graduate three years later than his peers.

And I held control over him.
And I could get him expelled.
And I could send him to jail for assaulting a minor.

Justin and Angel didn’t bother me again.
I saw Justin at the gas station once.
I was a few inches taller than him.
I think he recognized me, but I didn’t say hi.

I really hope he graduated.

~Fin

My Troubles with Education, Part I

Posted on February 13, 2014 by qrparker

I didn’t start school until fifth grade. I homeschooled the previous four grades. It was a time when learning was a joy instead of a job, but I was lonely and so they sent me to school. I was a much better reader than anyone else in my class. It was right at that time before puberty, when that kind of thing would win you admiration from your peers. I didn’t think about it much, until people started having the opposite reaction to my reading habits.

My school had one of those hyperbolic gifted and talented programs that a portion of the class would go to halfway through the day. It was based on a test they took at the beginning of the year when I wasn’t there. Regardless, the kids in the special program made sure to let me know how dumb I was, along with the rest of the class. It was thoughtful of them to include me.

From my perspective, the only services the gifted and talented program provided was taking a bunch of impassionate, obedient nerds and turning them into a bunch of impassionate, obedient bullies.

But me oh my, it did give them a certain glow. Their buck-toothed, braceface smiles seemed to let everyone know we’d be working for them someday. Also, they said that – a lot.

As an English major in college, I have to deal with these people every day. They bring it up in casual conversation, while we’re discussing what books we read growing up, or while handing out their essay to be peer-critiqued. It’s as if the fact they understood fractions half a year sooner than their peers will work like a special sauce, masking the bland flavor of that “life-changing” mission trip that everyone apparently had.

A favorite move of these kids is the “oh, you don’t even want to know what I’m thinking.” This is a technique employed by people of all IQs, but one I’ve found to be most common among low-talent, high-confidence individuals. It allows you to retain the feeling of intellectual superiority despite your inability to come up with a satisfying retort.

The gifted and talented program was full of people who employed this “you don’t even want to know what I’m thinking” technique. It was like their motto. It made sense, of course. These people were used to getting a free pass. Forgetting a reading assignment was an honest mistake for them, and an act of malicious laziness for the rest of us. They were so used to feeling smart, they almost never had to be.

Meanwhile, we in the regular class had to scrap away to gain the most trivial of recognition. Their assignments were all about exploring the text through their own special ego:

“How did this story make you feel?”

“Why do you think the author chose to write about this topic?”

“If the main character were a color, what color do you think he would be?”

The questions, though massed produced, were framed in a way that made the answer-er feel special. The question were asking for what they thought, what they felt.

Our questions tended to look more like this:

“On pg.66, why does Joe Hardy pick up the stick?”

“In chapter 12, why does Frank Hardy say they should enter the cave?”

“What color is the cover of the book?”

Definitive question, definitive answer. Search and find. Strange it seems, that we reward technical intelligence by giving them questions that only a human can answer, while all other forms of intelligence are given questions fit for a machine.

~Fin

Why I Made This Blog

Posted on December 17, 2013 by qrparker

I have a confession: a confession about this blog, about the nature of this blog, which I will tell you via this blog.

Believe it or not, when I started this blog, it was not a vanity project. It certainly seems that way – I mean, I have drawn a lot of pictures of myself.

The internet has created an amazing canvas for vanity, which I think is a good thing. The fact that anyone can have a voice is incredible. It took less than five minutes to create this website. The barrier of entry is so low it’s practically invisible.

The human spirit wants above all else, I think, to be free. There’s something in the air we all feed. We bleed our minds and our hopes and our dreams into the nothingness and hopes it spits back something interesting.

If I had a thousand lives to live I’m sure I could sort out this whole damn mess, but it seems my great misfortune to only have the one.

This blog was started for a college class: Writing in Online Environments.

I took this class as an alternative to a plethora of other dull-sounding classes, most of which involved the word ‘rhetoric’ or ‘discourse.’

That’s not to say this blog was the product of some well-structured syllabus. I broke just about every rule set in front of me. This page was supposed to be an academic analysis for the thesis of my blog (I actually think it is, by the way.)

The class is over, but I think I’m going to continue the blog.

So now it’s all on front street. This blog isn’t a vanity-project designed to maintain an ego. It’s a education-project that almost immediately descended into a vanity-project designed to maintain an ego.

But then again, isn’t all of academia?

~Fin

Personal Failure, Part II

Posted on December 12, 2013 by qrparker

(Click the picture below to read the first part. It’s not a requirement. You are free to make your own choices.)

Now that everyone has completed the first part of my tragedy, I feel confident in giving you the conclusion. Here it goes:

I took financial mathematics because I needed a math credit and I thought the practical application of finances would lend to a practical learning environment.

I was incorrect.

I turned in assignment after assignment with answers correct down to the decimal point, but would constantly receive zeroes on assignments for doing it the incorrect way (the way the book does it). Eight out of ten answers on the first test were correct. By my math this is an 80 percent. By his math it was a 10 percent.

After the first test was graded, about half the students dropped the class. This moment would have been perfect for me to leave this professor and his ego in the math department where it belonged. No one would blame me if I left.

Instead I took it as a challenge.

Academia had usually provided little challenge for me, and in the rare instances where I was challenged, a few dedicated study sessions pulled me out of even the most dire of situations. Hell, senior year of high school I had less than half attendance and still managed to pass all my classes. I think technically I shouldn’t have been allowed to receive credit due to my absences, but they let it slide on account of my consistently high grades (and I think it would have required paperwork they didn’t want to do.) I would have even received honors if I attended the mandatory meetings (I didn’t, and they kicked me out.) Before I took financial mathematics, I had never failed a test.

Now I’ve failed four.

By last month, I was mathematically failing this class. By this I mean that even if I were to magically receive perfect scores on every subsequent assignment and test, I would still not have enough points to pass the class. The amount of people attending the class on any given day had dropped from the initial fifty or so to about eight.

So why did I continue to stick around even when, mathematically, I had no way of succeeding?

I’ll tell you:

It’s called a grading curve.

Yes, in order not to feel like terrible teachers, sometimes educators will employ this magical device to curve the grades. F’s become C’s, B’s become A’s, and A’s stay the same because fuck you if you’re getting an A when everyone else is failing.

You see kids, if everyone is failing, than failing is the average, and an average is a C, not an F, you silly, silly children.

I chatted up the few remaining students, and most of them seemed to be failing or at least close to failing. A beautiful grading curve was inevitable.

Now, I’d like to tell you that even though I wasn’t the strongest or smartest, even though all the odds were stacked against me, I stuck it out. And because I stuck it out, working hard, studying into the wee hours of the night, turning in failed assignment after failed assignment, my god-damned determination paid off in the end.

I’d like to tell you that.

But I can’t.

Because it didn’t.

I fucking failed and I just have to live with that.

And so do you.

~Fin

Silent Knowledge Accumulation

Posted on October 24, 2013 by qrparker

For a good chunk of my childhood, I did not speak. This was the height of my popularity.

Because, at this time, my parents were hippie liberal bohemians, they decided it would be best if I got my education in home environment where I would be free to till the garden-heart of my inner creativity. They purchased a book called Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and some puppets and some building blocks and I went on to receive the greatest early childhood education anyone could ever receive.

After just 100 lessons, (which were as difficult as advertised), I became literate. I mostly used my newfound power to figure out which cereals were most delicious.

I was an excellent reader, and probably had far superior vocabulary and much clearer syntax than any of my peers, but for some reason I never felt the urge to express these skills through verbal communication. Even when I spoke to my mom it was in a whisper.

Any free time not spent reading was spent staring at walls, trying to help my dolls process the accumulated knowledge into the key to unlocking the doors of perception.

I continued this trend of silent knowledge accumulation until about fifth grade, when I began to grow tired of never getting my way, but was still unable to speak.

So instead of talking, I began to develop “anger issues.” I would break things and throw things and cry. This quickly ended my reign of popularity.

My once endearing silence had become terrifying. My parents had no choice but to readjust their strategy.

~Fin

Personal Failure, Part I

Posted on October 22, 2013 by qrparker

One hour from the time I am writing this, I will be expected to fail a mathematics tests. Did you notice that I said “fail” instead of “take?” You should, because that is the basic premise for this entire blog post.

You see, my college requires everyone to obtain three credits of mathematics in order to graduate. Unfortunately, many people who definitely aren’t me avoid taking math classes until the last minute. This is because most math classes are about as appealing as watery oatmeal.

In their vast wisdom, my college implemented a system: if you don’t register for a math class by the end of sophomore year, you are not allowed to register for any classes at all.

I went up the registrar’s office during their office hour of one p.m. to two p.m. and asked them to fix this for me. I promised I would sign up for a math class right away if they let me register before all the good classes were taken. The registrar was exactly as helpful as every public service worker I’ve ever encountered.

After maybe a week of bugging them, I finally lucked out and landed a helpful person.

Then came the choice of which pointless and unnecessary level 100 math course I’d have to take. Pretty much every course at that level sounded like it would be filled with the boring as fuck fractions and line graphs I was forced to do throughout middle school until they boosted me up to the advanced courses when it became clear this stuff was too easy for my smart-ass brain.

Back my youngin’ days, I took a lot of pride in being smarter than my hillbilly peers, but now I just wanted to obtain my two credits with the least amount of work possible. That’s when I noticed a beautiful, familiar face: Financial Mathematics.

You see, back in middle school, Financial Mathematics was part of a “special” group of classes. Any kid too dumb for the worthless knowledge the school provided was placed into a tract designed to promote “practical knowledge.”

When I saw the glorious class as one of my college options I signed up immediately, positive I could breeze through with all the effort of a public service worker.