Lincoln Blizzard 2009
A blanket of chastity covers
this city tonight. I've never
seen anything so pure, laced
with a burning dynamo. I stop
for a moment to let the cold
fill my lungs. December has been
kind to me for the first time
in years.
Mere hours separate this moment
and all the rest. This valley
becomes a bog as white fades
to gray. I walk along the
disappearing sidewalk listening
to the muffled sound of our
steps. Our footprints give
nothing to nothingness.
You're gone, and I continue
alone on the glass surface
of the night. I'm glad one
of us remembered I have
to do this on my own. In a
blink I'm 7:34 of a
Sunday evening in late July.
Sweat beads softly where my
hair meets my face, and
no one should feel this
comfortable in their own
skin. Somewhere in the
distance a baby is crying,
or laughing. It's hard to tell.
And just as I turn my head
to the milky, summer sunset,
I'm back. Back in my
brief, little, crystalline jungle.
Lay down with me, feel the
heat of your body melting
the world around you.
I'll need your help to
keep my angel safe, I don't
have much left to protect.
This hollow night calls home
a million haze-filled memories
of weighted branches and
chapped lips.
And we've reached our
destination just in time for
the wind to uproot the dust
from its rooftop dwelling.
It showers me in a shimmering
coat moments before it's
gone forever.
Sunday, December 13, 2009
Friday, December 11, 2009
What I Learned in the Woods
http://www.acacamps.org/campmag/1007/what-i-learned-woods
Originally published in the 2010 July/August issue of Camping Magazine.
I spent the las t four summers of my life hidden behind a mass of trees and rolling hills. Separated from civilization by mere miles, I entered a world that sent my imagination whirling and my sense of reality to a screeching halt. As I woke every morning to the reminder of hundreds of trees waving and undulating over the expanse of nettles and clovers, I somehow had to convince myself that this place really existed. My heart still owns much of those 200 acres, where even the smell of rotting forest only serves to remind me of what it will become.
Somewhere in that chasm of breathing soil and trees, I started learning; and I found a library of knowledge more expansive than I imagine I will find for a long time. I learned books upon books about life and people and myself. Camp has this way of changing people, aiding them in some strange evolution . . . helping them grow. You can see it in the rouged skin of children who have discovered poison ivy for the first time or in the wide eyes of those who didn't know there were so many stars. Sometime within their week at camp, those children become startling images of themselves, untarnished by fear or misinterpretation or technology or judgment. And even if it's just a moment, the impact leaves the mark of a coal train. The all-encompassing universe that embodies camp is a frightening and awe-inspiring thing to find one's self in. But once you do, it's hard to make yourself leave. You become a part of the atmosphere. It seeps into your skin; your soul finds shelter in a gravel- and mud-filled gully. And all of this happens before you get a chance to realize what's really going on.
The effect you're having on hundreds upon hundreds of young lives, the effect you're having on your peers, the effect all of this is having on you . . . it all starts out masked behind cookouts and song singing and capture the flag. And then, maybe if you're lucky enough, you'll be sitting on the porch of your cabin, surrounded by a silence that has taken weeks of getting used to, and you'll come to the dizzying realization that you are at an institution of learning. What's going on inside this open-air classroom is something that could never be captured by the walls of any "proper" educational establishment. It's too organic, too natural, and too accidental to happen elsewhere. And, in many ways, that's why it's so necessary.
Within the ten-foot radius of a pond, a seven-year-old learns science and maybe even a little bit about respect. "Nicky, please put the tadpole back in the pond . . . A tadpole is a baby frog . . . Look, that one by the rock has tiny back legs . . . Really slowly all of those tadpoles in the pond will become grown-up frogs . . . Well, there are so many because the pond is their home; they live here . . . Yes, you can catch the grown-up frogs, but you need to be careful with them and put them back in their home afterward."
On an embankment overlooking the Platte River, several preteen girls learn history. They compare cabin names, bragging about what they know about their cabin's tribe — Blackfoot, Arapahoe, Tonkawa. And perhaps one of them mentions something about Native Americans losing their land, and another brings up civil rights.
And maybe they're a little a too young to have an actual discussion about civil rights. A few feet away their counselor looks up from patching a skinned knee and just listens. Later, she'll talk to them about what it is to be fair, how it feels to be different, and how their differences make them special. Below a mid-July sun, eighteen teenagers tackle math and science as they calculate how to get eighteen people over a twelve-foot wal l with only a certain number of lifts per person. Some aren't allowed to talk. Some aren't allowed to help. And they all must gain one another's t rust. Through an activity of team-building and trial and error, they come to know one another and their strengths and weaknesses.
And everything sounds a little corny and a bit unrealistic. That's because it is. When you compare camp with other places of learning or life, it's surreal by definition. This is not your traditional classroom. It doesn't have the same goals, rules, or practices. But in many ways it does the same thing — causes productive learning and social skills in chi ldren. Children create friendships in the span of a week that at home could take years — years of calculating social risk and social standing, years of fearing rejection from a "cooler crowd."
At camp there are people, individuals, and that's it; and then they're friends. Some of them have never had real friends before. Some of them consider camp home. In this land of invisible backgrounds and muffled personal histories, children judge one another on their depth of character and how kind they are. When ten nine-yearolds are covered from head to toe in mud, it's hard to tell how many toys they have, what school they go to, or where they shop. It's this stripping of material identity that allows these children to become open to the idea of acceptance, friendship, and growth.
"There are no bullies at camp." It's a rule every child who enters camp hears. It's a rule that is imperative to creating a safe environment in which the relationships mentioned before can thrive. "If you're a bully, you don't belong at camp." It's a part of the one and only rule we enforce at camp — respect. Respect yourself, others, other's belongings, counselors, and the earth. This lack of strict, manufactured rules and guidelines offers a lot of leeway for children. It allows them to say to a young girl sitting on the edge of the pool who doesn't have anyone to play with, "Do you want to play color tag with us?" Or it prompts them to start a "Save the Frogs" campaign and picket the pond because people have been throwing rocks and trash into it.
And these children have no idea that they're learning about convictions, social inclusion, networking, or character. This learning becomes more authentic because of how and where it appears — facilitated but not forced by authority figures, privately created between groups of children who don't notice adults standing just a few feet away (otherwise these stories wouldn't be told). It's an organic form of learning that lacks authority unless authority is called for — and when it's called for, authority comes in the form of conversations, reasoning, and questions. "What happened? Why did it happen? What should we do about it?" Authority shifts from enforcement to mediation as children take more responsibility for their actions and the actions of others.
Over the wood chipped trails and spongy grass, children gain a sense of empowerment. They hold within their hands the choices of what their week at camp will yield. And as they mature in age, so do their decisions. Ages ranging from seven to seventeen coalesce to form a community where learners of all ages interact.
Learning occurs where role modeling and audience are taken very seriously. Every situation at camp has an audience. Every day, hundreds of little eyes track counselors' every movement; and those eyes also watch campers who are older than them. Older campers are taught that they are role models, that their attitudes will influence the attitudes of those campers younger than them. This is shown at an early morning announcement where older campers aren't yet awake enough to react to anything, let alone the news that they will be having a picnic lunch. However, an evening announcement about cookout dinners gets them on their feet and bouncing around the room as 200 younger campers follow suit. And you can feel the excitement in the room by the vibrating of the windows as hundreds upon hundreds of feet move with anticipation.
Counselors, typically between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, aren't too old to relate to their campers. They can understand where their campers are coming from and where they're going. And they're able to connect on a level that's accessible and meaningful. The relationship between camper and counselor rides a fine line of friend, role model, and teacher. It is a difficult job to create education in a way that can't be found elsewhere. At camp, as the "teachers" facilitate education, they also learn in this circular, never-ending wheel of self-improvement and self-discovery and life. Just as camp is a stepping stone in the social and intellectual development of its campers, camp is just a stepping stone to what its counselors hope to someday achieve. I'm a walking, breathing, living example of the educator being educated. Learning what I learned at camp has brought me to the realization of what I want from life — to have a family, to be a teacher, to continue to educate, and to continue to learn.
And maybe this type of learning and growing isn't exclusive to camp. But it is unique. It is uncommon. It is special. It's a type of education that surpasses the walls of schools and the assistance of technology and importance of subject matter. It's a type of education that comes from people. I've been at camp during the school year; and I'll tell you the truth: Without kids and staff there, it's just 200 acres of trees and dirt. It's beautiful but it's empty. It becomes camp when a community of people is living in an atmosphere that reflects a feeling of mutual respect. The teachers don't look at the deficits in their students; rather, they trust their students to exhibit positive behavior and positive decisions. In turn, the students find trust in role models who have finally seen them as not what they have done but what they are doing, who they are. The type of learning that occurs at camp could occur anywhere. But it doesn't. Some type of magic lives in those hills during the summer, and it's what causes so many tears to fall from the eyes of campers as their week at camp ends and later from the eyes of staff members as early August rears its ugly head. I think it's the fact that leaving means the magic goes with them; and who knows where it will reappear?
Originally published in the 2010 July/August issue of Camping Magazine.
I spent the las t four summers of my life hidden behind a mass of trees and rolling hills. Separated from civilization by mere miles, I entered a world that sent my imagination whirling and my sense of reality to a screeching halt. As I woke every morning to the reminder of hundreds of trees waving and undulating over the expanse of nettles and clovers, I somehow had to convince myself that this place really existed. My heart still owns much of those 200 acres, where even the smell of rotting forest only serves to remind me of what it will become.
Somewhere in that chasm of breathing soil and trees, I started learning; and I found a library of knowledge more expansive than I imagine I will find for a long time. I learned books upon books about life and people and myself. Camp has this way of changing people, aiding them in some strange evolution . . . helping them grow. You can see it in the rouged skin of children who have discovered poison ivy for the first time or in the wide eyes of those who didn't know there were so many stars. Sometime within their week at camp, those children become startling images of themselves, untarnished by fear or misinterpretation or technology or judgment. And even if it's just a moment, the impact leaves the mark of a coal train. The all-encompassing universe that embodies camp is a frightening and awe-inspiring thing to find one's self in. But once you do, it's hard to make yourself leave. You become a part of the atmosphere. It seeps into your skin; your soul finds shelter in a gravel- and mud-filled gully. And all of this happens before you get a chance to realize what's really going on.
The effect you're having on hundreds upon hundreds of young lives, the effect you're having on your peers, the effect all of this is having on you . . . it all starts out masked behind cookouts and song singing and capture the flag. And then, maybe if you're lucky enough, you'll be sitting on the porch of your cabin, surrounded by a silence that has taken weeks of getting used to, and you'll come to the dizzying realization that you are at an institution of learning. What's going on inside this open-air classroom is something that could never be captured by the walls of any "proper" educational establishment. It's too organic, too natural, and too accidental to happen elsewhere. And, in many ways, that's why it's so necessary.
Within the ten-foot radius of a pond, a seven-year-old learns science and maybe even a little bit about respect. "Nicky, please put the tadpole back in the pond . . . A tadpole is a baby frog . . . Look, that one by the rock has tiny back legs . . . Really slowly all of those tadpoles in the pond will become grown-up frogs . . . Well, there are so many because the pond is their home; they live here . . . Yes, you can catch the grown-up frogs, but you need to be careful with them and put them back in their home afterward."
On an embankment overlooking the Platte River, several preteen girls learn history. They compare cabin names, bragging about what they know about their cabin's tribe — Blackfoot, Arapahoe, Tonkawa. And perhaps one of them mentions something about Native Americans losing their land, and another brings up civil rights.
And maybe they're a little a too young to have an actual discussion about civil rights. A few feet away their counselor looks up from patching a skinned knee and just listens. Later, she'll talk to them about what it is to be fair, how it feels to be different, and how their differences make them special. Below a mid-July sun, eighteen teenagers tackle math and science as they calculate how to get eighteen people over a twelve-foot wal l with only a certain number of lifts per person. Some aren't allowed to talk. Some aren't allowed to help. And they all must gain one another's t rust. Through an activity of team-building and trial and error, they come to know one another and their strengths and weaknesses.
And everything sounds a little corny and a bit unrealistic. That's because it is. When you compare camp with other places of learning or life, it's surreal by definition. This is not your traditional classroom. It doesn't have the same goals, rules, or practices. But in many ways it does the same thing — causes productive learning and social skills in chi ldren. Children create friendships in the span of a week that at home could take years — years of calculating social risk and social standing, years of fearing rejection from a "cooler crowd."
At camp there are people, individuals, and that's it; and then they're friends. Some of them have never had real friends before. Some of them consider camp home. In this land of invisible backgrounds and muffled personal histories, children judge one another on their depth of character and how kind they are. When ten nine-yearolds are covered from head to toe in mud, it's hard to tell how many toys they have, what school they go to, or where they shop. It's this stripping of material identity that allows these children to become open to the idea of acceptance, friendship, and growth.
"There are no bullies at camp." It's a rule every child who enters camp hears. It's a rule that is imperative to creating a safe environment in which the relationships mentioned before can thrive. "If you're a bully, you don't belong at camp." It's a part of the one and only rule we enforce at camp — respect. Respect yourself, others, other's belongings, counselors, and the earth. This lack of strict, manufactured rules and guidelines offers a lot of leeway for children. It allows them to say to a young girl sitting on the edge of the pool who doesn't have anyone to play with, "Do you want to play color tag with us?" Or it prompts them to start a "Save the Frogs" campaign and picket the pond because people have been throwing rocks and trash into it.
And these children have no idea that they're learning about convictions, social inclusion, networking, or character. This learning becomes more authentic because of how and where it appears — facilitated but not forced by authority figures, privately created between groups of children who don't notice adults standing just a few feet away (otherwise these stories wouldn't be told). It's an organic form of learning that lacks authority unless authority is called for — and when it's called for, authority comes in the form of conversations, reasoning, and questions. "What happened? Why did it happen? What should we do about it?" Authority shifts from enforcement to mediation as children take more responsibility for their actions and the actions of others.
Over the wood chipped trails and spongy grass, children gain a sense of empowerment. They hold within their hands the choices of what their week at camp will yield. And as they mature in age, so do their decisions. Ages ranging from seven to seventeen coalesce to form a community where learners of all ages interact.
Learning occurs where role modeling and audience are taken very seriously. Every situation at camp has an audience. Every day, hundreds of little eyes track counselors' every movement; and those eyes also watch campers who are older than them. Older campers are taught that they are role models, that their attitudes will influence the attitudes of those campers younger than them. This is shown at an early morning announcement where older campers aren't yet awake enough to react to anything, let alone the news that they will be having a picnic lunch. However, an evening announcement about cookout dinners gets them on their feet and bouncing around the room as 200 younger campers follow suit. And you can feel the excitement in the room by the vibrating of the windows as hundreds upon hundreds of feet move with anticipation.
Counselors, typically between the ages of eighteen and twenty-one, aren't too old to relate to their campers. They can understand where their campers are coming from and where they're going. And they're able to connect on a level that's accessible and meaningful. The relationship between camper and counselor rides a fine line of friend, role model, and teacher. It is a difficult job to create education in a way that can't be found elsewhere. At camp, as the "teachers" facilitate education, they also learn in this circular, never-ending wheel of self-improvement and self-discovery and life. Just as camp is a stepping stone in the social and intellectual development of its campers, camp is just a stepping stone to what its counselors hope to someday achieve. I'm a walking, breathing, living example of the educator being educated. Learning what I learned at camp has brought me to the realization of what I want from life — to have a family, to be a teacher, to continue to educate, and to continue to learn.
And maybe this type of learning and growing isn't exclusive to camp. But it is unique. It is uncommon. It is special. It's a type of education that surpasses the walls of schools and the assistance of technology and importance of subject matter. It's a type of education that comes from people. I've been at camp during the school year; and I'll tell you the truth: Without kids and staff there, it's just 200 acres of trees and dirt. It's beautiful but it's empty. It becomes camp when a community of people is living in an atmosphere that reflects a feeling of mutual respect. The teachers don't look at the deficits in their students; rather, they trust their students to exhibit positive behavior and positive decisions. In turn, the students find trust in role models who have finally seen them as not what they have done but what they are doing, who they are. The type of learning that occurs at camp could occur anywhere. But it doesn't. Some type of magic lives in those hills during the summer, and it's what causes so many tears to fall from the eyes of campers as their week at camp ends and later from the eyes of staff members as early August rears its ugly head. I think it's the fact that leaving means the magic goes with them; and who knows where it will reappear?
Thursday, December 10, 2009
An Ode to My Education
As I walked down that dimly-lit hall, stained from years of use and misuse, I knew that I knew everything. Within the six classrooms of my tiny high school I conquered all. And someone, somehow, allowed me to believe that was all true. Granted, my high school experience was a bit abnormal. I graduated with a class of twenty, many of whom I had started kindergarten with, from a K through 12 school. I moved twenty feet down the hall from junior high to high school. It was within the walls of this small school that I spent 13 years building up some false impression of what life was… what learning was – true/false quizzes over To Kill a Mockingbird, poorly facilitated group discussions that led to offensive name calling, dates of the Vietnam war with little to no explanation of social changes that came along with it. Then I left. And when I left, I left for good. As I entered the university, I saw for the first time what education could be, what learning could be, what social interactions could be – professors wanted me to constructively challenge my peers, literature had historical context, answers didn’t come in the form of a yes or a no.
At first I was confused. Then I was angry. Then I was sad. To have 13 years of your life diminished into mere nothingness comes swift and hard. Jaded, I delved into my life at UNL, and I never looked back… until now. Four and half years in the university system have taught me a lot. I owe much to my professors who taught me more about learning than just books and problems. Sure, some of my classes and professors have been solely bent on cramming as many facts into my head as possible. And, as I did for years in high school, I have continued to purge myself of such information as soon as the time came that I no longer needed it. But my college experience has been much more than that. My knowledge has been questioned, my mental abilities challenged, and my investment in my education confronted. Not only have I learned to doubt what I know, but also I have been taught to doubt what others know – to ask questions, to be skeptical, to be unwaveringly curious. When I think of my four years of disenfranchised high school education, I look at it in utter confusion, utter disgust. Why didn’t anyone tell me I was allowed to disagree with what I was being taught? Why didn’t anyone teach me to look deeper than the simple explanations and summaries presented by my teachers? Why did they leave so much out of my education? Mostly, it hurts. It hurts that many of the people I trusted during my adolescence didn’t see fit to give me or my peers the opportunity to flame the fire of inquiry. And it hurts to know they probably never considered it, never realized what they weren’t doing.
As educators, my high school teachers taught what they knew. Often, they did so well. However, their knowledge was limited to the two square miles of Falls City, Neb. Many of them had lived there their entire lives, disappearing for four or five years to experience “the world” before scurrying back to the haze of normalcy surrounding Falls City. They came back to what they knew. Living in a place like Falls City, living anywhere, a person comes to lives as a part of its culture. It affects the way they speak, dress and behave. It affects their values. My high school teachers were Falls City. It had created them, and they were now creating it – endless cogs in the machine of rural Nebraska. Then I entered school, and I too became a cog, the next step in the continuation of Falls City education. Much like taking a long look at myself in a mirror after years and years of disillusioned education, I must also take a look at the community I came from. That community shaped the school, education and young adults that came out of it. And with the good (moral values, a sense of belonging and value in your roots) came the bad (close-mindedness, a lack of societal context and arrogance.) High school education reflects the school’s community; and, in doing so, it prepares students for life within the strict confines of that particular community.
Coasting through my high school education, I learned everything that I would need to know living in Falls City, Neb. Do your best – years of straight A’s will pay off eventually… just not now, the football team is playing. Keep your head low if you disagree – suggesting that there may be flaws in the death penalty system will label you as a democrat, and that’s a dirty, dirty word in this town. Who you know is who you are – and “Honey, why don’t you run around with that Hullman boy? He seems nice” doesn’t allow you to really ignore the fact that he can be found in the luxury of a cornfield any weekend with 30 drunken friends and a Keystone Light in his hand. Yep, like the Keystone Light, my education went down smooth every time. Honestly, armed with this knowledge alone, I could spend the rest of my days in Falls City, blissfully ignorant of anything too far off of the county grid. Just think… I could be mayor. But then again, there could come a time where I needed to leave my fair town. Perhaps due to the economic struggles that seem to plague rural communities or perhaps due to the declining population brought on by the rural “brain drain” (don’t worry, we’ll get to that), I would have to leave. Who knows where I would go after Falls City? I would have to claw my way out of years and years worth of disgruntled lies that I told myself about where I was and what I knew. And then I’d end up some place where the names are unfamiliar, the customs are strange and the beliefs are downright scandalous. Perhaps in reality it would only be a short two hour drive to Lincoln or Omaha, but it might as well be a foreign country for how unprepared I would be.
I think perhaps what gets me most frustrated is how completely unprepared my high school education made me in my aspiration. It’s not so much about the information I didn’t learn in high school; instead, it’s about the fact that I wasn’t asked to learn. Not really. Not anything beyond the textbooks sitting on the etched desk in front of me. My greatest fear comes from realizing that this can’t be true for only me. How many students graduate from high school without learning how to learn? How many come to the same stark realization I did? And even more frightening, how many never realize? Never realize that those four years should not be their four best years. Never realize that there’s more to learning than just plot summaries and pop quizzes. Never realize that after you get into college, your ACT score is just another number that doesn’t mean much of anything. The system of high school curriculum used widely throughout the United States falls short on what it offers the nation’s youth. The teaching methods, which are continuously challenged and altered, still fail to prepare students for life outside of high school, whether that be within the job market, within society or within college. Where the high school education system fails its students, it fails itself. Year after year, schools send unsuspecting, diploma wielding teenagers into the world, the same students who are the future leaders of America. Yet, their mission is tainted by the early conditioning that they “have a voice” and the painful and baffling realization that they have no idea how to use it. They’ve been taught to have the same voice as their teachers, who have the same voice as everyone else, who all came together to form a community. This idea of community has so many positive aspects – togetherness, team building, family. However, somewhere along the line the importance of community starts to squelch individualism, creativity and, dare I say, a little anarchy. Without forming a strong and firm sense of self, how can one fully and actively contribute to a community in which he or she has any investment? By tailoring education to teach students how to live in a community, educators are doing those communities a disservice by not allowing them to grow and evolve in new ways.
Certainly the problems within the U.S. education system abound; and, without doubt, they have contributed to the problems I have encountered with my high school education. A lack of funding to many public schools throughout the nation leaves them few resources with which to build a curriculum. Tattered textbooks in hand, underprivileged students learn about Macbeth. While across town students sit at desks with personal computers and research the themes found in Shakespeare’s writings. Surely a disconnect in the quality of education occurs here, but not necessarily in the quantity. Still students are learning about Shakespeare, about his writings, about his themes. Regardless of the medium being used to educate these students, they continue to learn the basics. And later, “the school takes literature and makes it a matter of study and testing” (Purves, 8). What was Macbeth’s wife’s name? Who died in Macbeth? The questions, no doubt, will look the same as students mindlessly recite information they have stored in their memory banks just long enough to make it through the test. No, while funding my be a problem. It is not the problem.
The real problem rests not in curriculum, not in funding, not in location. The real problem with secondary education is educators who continuously sell their students short, underestimating their students’ abilities, imaginations, cognitive reasoning skills and yearning to learn. “The more serious problem therefore, is not the failure to teach some specific aspect of thinking, but the profound absence of thoughtfulness in classrooms” (Newmann, 110). Where is the process of inquiry? Where is the curiosity? My teachers said time and time again, “There are no stupid questions.” But, there were no questions period. My classmates and I wouldn’t have even thought to question our teacher. We had never been asked to. I have this strange, surreal feeling when I realize what I thought my education was when it was happening and to understand its reality now. My teachers allowed me to feel brilliant by understanding the simple concepts that they placed in front of me. They applauded me for doing everything they asked, but what else was I going to do? They “boxed [themselves] into this kind of teaching – where [they] want students to think for themselves and to get the right answer” (Applebee, 1). What these educators fail to account for are the countless problems and questions that cannot be answered with a yes or a no. Not everything is right or wrong. Heck, some questions don’t even have answers. But these types of questions, the ones that ask for deep, cognitive reasoning and discussion, seem to be conveniently absent from most high school classrooms. At least, they were from mine. My classrooms steered clear of anything that could have stirred us from our academic malaise.
In our static educational sphere, my classmates and I took information from one location and placed it in another. We were forklifts for the educational and community ideals set up by those who came before us. This type of learning “tends to reinforce attitudes and beliefs rather than to effect conversions.” (Purves, 10). And there we writhed, as students all over the nation must writhe, like drowning worms, incognizant of the cesspool of learning they have found themselves in. “What we learn is in large part a function of how we learn it” (Applebee, 6). We, as high school students, learn by being told; therefore, we learn what we are told. All the while, nothing else is asked of us. It has a numbing affect that is hard to notice until it starts to go away, like the tingling of an arm that you’ve been laying on for far too long.
I guess that’s probably why I’m most thankful that I left. Now I can feel all of the things I didn’t realize were happening to me. But now, I feel like I’ve been wronged too badly that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t go back. It would be too painful to watch the youth of the town go through the same incredible, delirious, ignorant moments I went through as a teenager. Helpless in my ability to make a change so great, with just one person so small. Perhaps I am a contributing factor to the “brain drain” of rural Nebraska. I wish that weren’t the case, but I fear it must be. “In just over two decades, more that 700 rural counties, from the Plains to the Texas Panhandle through to Appalachia, lost 10 percent or more of their population” (Carr). The brain drain theory states that rural communities are losing their brightest minds to larger cities because they convince their brightest minds that rural communities have nothing to offer them. I beg to differ. My small town drove me away after years and years of convincing me that it could give me everything. It drove me away with its lies. It drove me away, because it didn’t really want me or my abilities. It just wanted another cog, another mindless body in the machine of normalcy that is Falls City. It never wanted me to learn new and exciting ideas or theories. The brain drain theory will tell you that rural communities should send their students out into the world to bring back ideas that will allow the community to grow and thrive. And while all of that looks nice on paper, it’s a little too explosive when it reaches home. Just as a confused teenager struggles against change to keep the innocent tag games of childhood an adolescent reality, so do communities throughout the nation. While preaching growth and tolerance, they quietly take a passive role in their own evolution. Mimicking that sense of complacency, schools teach their students to fall in line with what they are taught. Think, but not too hard. Try, but only enough. Strive, but don’t do anything too radical, and maybe you too can be the mayor.
Works Cited
Applebee, Arthur N. Toward Thoughtful Curriculum: Fostering Discipline Based Conversation in the English Language Arts Classroom. Rep. 1994. ERIC document reproduction service no. EJ480971. Print.
Carr, Patrick J., and Maria J. Kefalas. "The Rural Brain Drain." The Chronicle of Higher Education [Washington D.C] 21 Sept. 2009. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 21 Sept. 2009. Web. 2 Nov. 2009.
Newmann, Fred M. "Chapter 6: The Prospect of Classroom Thoughtfulness in High School Social Studies." Teaching Thinking: And Agenda for the 21st Century. Hillsdale: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates Inc., 1992. 105-32. Print.
Purves, Alan. (1991). "The Ideology of Canons and Cultural Concerns in the Literature Curriculum." Washington D.C.: Report for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement.
At first I was confused. Then I was angry. Then I was sad. To have 13 years of your life diminished into mere nothingness comes swift and hard. Jaded, I delved into my life at UNL, and I never looked back… until now. Four and half years in the university system have taught me a lot. I owe much to my professors who taught me more about learning than just books and problems. Sure, some of my classes and professors have been solely bent on cramming as many facts into my head as possible. And, as I did for years in high school, I have continued to purge myself of such information as soon as the time came that I no longer needed it. But my college experience has been much more than that. My knowledge has been questioned, my mental abilities challenged, and my investment in my education confronted. Not only have I learned to doubt what I know, but also I have been taught to doubt what others know – to ask questions, to be skeptical, to be unwaveringly curious. When I think of my four years of disenfranchised high school education, I look at it in utter confusion, utter disgust. Why didn’t anyone tell me I was allowed to disagree with what I was being taught? Why didn’t anyone teach me to look deeper than the simple explanations and summaries presented by my teachers? Why did they leave so much out of my education? Mostly, it hurts. It hurts that many of the people I trusted during my adolescence didn’t see fit to give me or my peers the opportunity to flame the fire of inquiry. And it hurts to know they probably never considered it, never realized what they weren’t doing.
As educators, my high school teachers taught what they knew. Often, they did so well. However, their knowledge was limited to the two square miles of Falls City, Neb. Many of them had lived there their entire lives, disappearing for four or five years to experience “the world” before scurrying back to the haze of normalcy surrounding Falls City. They came back to what they knew. Living in a place like Falls City, living anywhere, a person comes to lives as a part of its culture. It affects the way they speak, dress and behave. It affects their values. My high school teachers were Falls City. It had created them, and they were now creating it – endless cogs in the machine of rural Nebraska. Then I entered school, and I too became a cog, the next step in the continuation of Falls City education. Much like taking a long look at myself in a mirror after years and years of disillusioned education, I must also take a look at the community I came from. That community shaped the school, education and young adults that came out of it. And with the good (moral values, a sense of belonging and value in your roots) came the bad (close-mindedness, a lack of societal context and arrogance.) High school education reflects the school’s community; and, in doing so, it prepares students for life within the strict confines of that particular community.
Coasting through my high school education, I learned everything that I would need to know living in Falls City, Neb. Do your best – years of straight A’s will pay off eventually… just not now, the football team is playing. Keep your head low if you disagree – suggesting that there may be flaws in the death penalty system will label you as a democrat, and that’s a dirty, dirty word in this town. Who you know is who you are – and “Honey, why don’t you run around with that Hullman boy? He seems nice” doesn’t allow you to really ignore the fact that he can be found in the luxury of a cornfield any weekend with 30 drunken friends and a Keystone Light in his hand. Yep, like the Keystone Light, my education went down smooth every time. Honestly, armed with this knowledge alone, I could spend the rest of my days in Falls City, blissfully ignorant of anything too far off of the county grid. Just think… I could be mayor. But then again, there could come a time where I needed to leave my fair town. Perhaps due to the economic struggles that seem to plague rural communities or perhaps due to the declining population brought on by the rural “brain drain” (don’t worry, we’ll get to that), I would have to leave. Who knows where I would go after Falls City? I would have to claw my way out of years and years worth of disgruntled lies that I told myself about where I was and what I knew. And then I’d end up some place where the names are unfamiliar, the customs are strange and the beliefs are downright scandalous. Perhaps in reality it would only be a short two hour drive to Lincoln or Omaha, but it might as well be a foreign country for how unprepared I would be.
I think perhaps what gets me most frustrated is how completely unprepared my high school education made me in my aspiration. It’s not so much about the information I didn’t learn in high school; instead, it’s about the fact that I wasn’t asked to learn. Not really. Not anything beyond the textbooks sitting on the etched desk in front of me. My greatest fear comes from realizing that this can’t be true for only me. How many students graduate from high school without learning how to learn? How many come to the same stark realization I did? And even more frightening, how many never realize? Never realize that those four years should not be their four best years. Never realize that there’s more to learning than just plot summaries and pop quizzes. Never realize that after you get into college, your ACT score is just another number that doesn’t mean much of anything. The system of high school curriculum used widely throughout the United States falls short on what it offers the nation’s youth. The teaching methods, which are continuously challenged and altered, still fail to prepare students for life outside of high school, whether that be within the job market, within society or within college. Where the high school education system fails its students, it fails itself. Year after year, schools send unsuspecting, diploma wielding teenagers into the world, the same students who are the future leaders of America. Yet, their mission is tainted by the early conditioning that they “have a voice” and the painful and baffling realization that they have no idea how to use it. They’ve been taught to have the same voice as their teachers, who have the same voice as everyone else, who all came together to form a community. This idea of community has so many positive aspects – togetherness, team building, family. However, somewhere along the line the importance of community starts to squelch individualism, creativity and, dare I say, a little anarchy. Without forming a strong and firm sense of self, how can one fully and actively contribute to a community in which he or she has any investment? By tailoring education to teach students how to live in a community, educators are doing those communities a disservice by not allowing them to grow and evolve in new ways.
Certainly the problems within the U.S. education system abound; and, without doubt, they have contributed to the problems I have encountered with my high school education. A lack of funding to many public schools throughout the nation leaves them few resources with which to build a curriculum. Tattered textbooks in hand, underprivileged students learn about Macbeth. While across town students sit at desks with personal computers and research the themes found in Shakespeare’s writings. Surely a disconnect in the quality of education occurs here, but not necessarily in the quantity. Still students are learning about Shakespeare, about his writings, about his themes. Regardless of the medium being used to educate these students, they continue to learn the basics. And later, “the school takes literature and makes it a matter of study and testing” (Purves, 8). What was Macbeth’s wife’s name? Who died in Macbeth? The questions, no doubt, will look the same as students mindlessly recite information they have stored in their memory banks just long enough to make it through the test. No, while funding my be a problem. It is not the problem.
The real problem rests not in curriculum, not in funding, not in location. The real problem with secondary education is educators who continuously sell their students short, underestimating their students’ abilities, imaginations, cognitive reasoning skills and yearning to learn. “The more serious problem therefore, is not the failure to teach some specific aspect of thinking, but the profound absence of thoughtfulness in classrooms” (Newmann, 110). Where is the process of inquiry? Where is the curiosity? My teachers said time and time again, “There are no stupid questions.” But, there were no questions period. My classmates and I wouldn’t have even thought to question our teacher. We had never been asked to. I have this strange, surreal feeling when I realize what I thought my education was when it was happening and to understand its reality now. My teachers allowed me to feel brilliant by understanding the simple concepts that they placed in front of me. They applauded me for doing everything they asked, but what else was I going to do? They “boxed [themselves] into this kind of teaching – where [they] want students to think for themselves and to get the right answer” (Applebee, 1). What these educators fail to account for are the countless problems and questions that cannot be answered with a yes or a no. Not everything is right or wrong. Heck, some questions don’t even have answers. But these types of questions, the ones that ask for deep, cognitive reasoning and discussion, seem to be conveniently absent from most high school classrooms. At least, they were from mine. My classrooms steered clear of anything that could have stirred us from our academic malaise.
In our static educational sphere, my classmates and I took information from one location and placed it in another. We were forklifts for the educational and community ideals set up by those who came before us. This type of learning “tends to reinforce attitudes and beliefs rather than to effect conversions.” (Purves, 10). And there we writhed, as students all over the nation must writhe, like drowning worms, incognizant of the cesspool of learning they have found themselves in. “What we learn is in large part a function of how we learn it” (Applebee, 6). We, as high school students, learn by being told; therefore, we learn what we are told. All the while, nothing else is asked of us. It has a numbing affect that is hard to notice until it starts to go away, like the tingling of an arm that you’ve been laying on for far too long.
I guess that’s probably why I’m most thankful that I left. Now I can feel all of the things I didn’t realize were happening to me. But now, I feel like I’ve been wronged too badly that even if I wanted to, I couldn’t go back. It would be too painful to watch the youth of the town go through the same incredible, delirious, ignorant moments I went through as a teenager. Helpless in my ability to make a change so great, with just one person so small. Perhaps I am a contributing factor to the “brain drain” of rural Nebraska. I wish that weren’t the case, but I fear it must be. “In just over two decades, more that 700 rural counties, from the Plains to the Texas Panhandle through to Appalachia, lost 10 percent or more of their population” (Carr). The brain drain theory states that rural communities are losing their brightest minds to larger cities because they convince their brightest minds that rural communities have nothing to offer them. I beg to differ. My small town drove me away after years and years of convincing me that it could give me everything. It drove me away with its lies. It drove me away, because it didn’t really want me or my abilities. It just wanted another cog, another mindless body in the machine of normalcy that is Falls City. It never wanted me to learn new and exciting ideas or theories. The brain drain theory will tell you that rural communities should send their students out into the world to bring back ideas that will allow the community to grow and thrive. And while all of that looks nice on paper, it’s a little too explosive when it reaches home. Just as a confused teenager struggles against change to keep the innocent tag games of childhood an adolescent reality, so do communities throughout the nation. While preaching growth and tolerance, they quietly take a passive role in their own evolution. Mimicking that sense of complacency, schools teach their students to fall in line with what they are taught. Think, but not too hard. Try, but only enough. Strive, but don’t do anything too radical, and maybe you too can be the mayor.
Works Cited
Applebee, Arthur N. Toward Thoughtful Curriculum: Fostering Discipline Based Conversation in the English Language Arts Classroom. Rep. 1994. ERIC document reproduction service no. EJ480971. Print.
Carr, Patrick J., and Maria J. Kefalas. "The Rural Brain Drain." The Chronicle of Higher Education [Washington D.C] 21 Sept. 2009. The Chronicle of Higher Education. 21 Sept. 2009. Web. 2 Nov. 2009.
Purves, Alan. (1991). "The Ideology of Canons and Cultural Concerns in the Literature Curriculum." Washington D.C.: Report for the Office of Educational Research and Improvement.
Saturday, December 05, 2009
It's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah
Something about the newspapers strewn across my carpet and bed, something in the way I can hear my florescent light bulbs humming, something that causes my pillow to smell like nostalgia tells me that all of this is about to change. It certainly is a year for changes.
As I gracelessly stumbled and weaved around the ice-skating rink tonight, it's all I could think about. I mean, aside from using almost all of my energy to keep from falling. On a rink full of people, many of whom I knew well, I was alone. Happily alone. I found myself some place I seldom do - calmly in my mind. Starting a few months ago and ending in August, everything around me is changing. Marriages, moving, graduations, ... everything. And it's terrifying, you know? To know that soon, very soon, a new stage of life starts. To be quite honest, I've been pretty comfortable tucked away in my little cocoon of normalcy, stability, sanity. (Sanity is a strong word for what my normal life is... but let's stick with it anyway.)
So, here I am, I still haven't taken my boots off, and I've been home for hours. And it's cold. And I'm overcome with this terrified, yet excited, sense of reality. And 2 a.m. is not a convenient time for reality or blankets or straws with umbrellas or the sound of a t.v. seeping through the ceiling. And for a moment I place my hands under my laptop to warm them up.
What am I saying? I wish I had a good answer for that. How about this - I'm going to make some promises. To you to me to whoever... I doesn't really matter.
1.) I'm going to start on my thesis over winter break... I swear.
2.) I'll stop selling myself short that second you do. (That's a lie. I'll do it before you.)
3.) Ninety percent of the newspapers in my room will end up in the recycling bin.
4.) I'll put aside more time to write.
5.) I'll invest in a coat that is not a couple of hoodies layered. (And gloves.)
6.) I'll turn the heat up. (That's a lie too... I kind of like to need my covers.
7.) I'm going to stop worrying. I've never been a worrier. Now seems like a pretty dumb time to start.
As I gracelessly stumbled and weaved around the ice-skating rink tonight, it's all I could think about. I mean, aside from using almost all of my energy to keep from falling. On a rink full of people, many of whom I knew well, I was alone. Happily alone. I found myself some place I seldom do - calmly in my mind. Starting a few months ago and ending in August, everything around me is changing. Marriages, moving, graduations, ... everything. And it's terrifying, you know? To know that soon, very soon, a new stage of life starts. To be quite honest, I've been pretty comfortable tucked away in my little cocoon of normalcy, stability, sanity. (Sanity is a strong word for what my normal life is... but let's stick with it anyway.)
So, here I am, I still haven't taken my boots off, and I've been home for hours. And it's cold. And I'm overcome with this terrified, yet excited, sense of reality. And 2 a.m. is not a convenient time for reality or blankets or straws with umbrellas or the sound of a t.v. seeping through the ceiling. And for a moment I place my hands under my laptop to warm them up.
What am I saying? I wish I had a good answer for that. How about this - I'm going to make some promises. To you to me to whoever... I doesn't really matter.
1.) I'm going to start on my thesis over winter break... I swear.
2.) I'll stop selling myself short that second you do. (That's a lie. I'll do it before you.)
3.) Ninety percent of the newspapers in my room will end up in the recycling bin.
4.) I'll put aside more time to write.
5.) I'll invest in a coat that is not a couple of hoodies layered. (And gloves.)
6.) I'll turn the heat up. (That's a lie too... I kind of like to need my covers.
7.) I'm going to stop worrying. I've never been a worrier. Now seems like a pretty dumb time to start.