A graduation story

I attended a public high school graduation last week, and I've come to report that not so much has changed. The music is better than I remember, and there are those little moments -- fleeting -- when you do get a sense of something long and grand that connects Americans across the decades. By this I mean the ideal of universal public education, a tradition by which a nation invests in its shared future by providing for the schooling of its children. If you hold your head just right and squint, filtering out all the knowledge of bureaucracy and mediocrity and foolishness, you can almost glimpse that original ideal at a public high school graduation.

But what I wanted to write about were the speeches, and what of the things they reminded me.

First, the adult oratory. As is always the case, most of it was confined to recognizing the other adults at the ceremony: multiple flavors of administrators;  a mayor; a superintendent; various people with doctorates in education. A laundry list of uninspiring politicians with terrible ideas co-mingling with educators who -- via the magic of continuing post-graduate  courses and sheer dogged ambition -- long ago earned doctorates and burrowed deeply into the hide of the school establishment.

Next came the recitation of the achievements, their sheer weight and statistical rectitude delivering a single, powerful message to the thousands of voters in the massive hall: the administration is working, because the school keeps winning. State championships in obscure sports. Mysteriously aggregated academic rankings. Band blitzkriegs.  Quiz bowl hegemony. Intelligence and success measured in scholarship dollars accrued.

And then comes the student oratory: A class president delivering a desultory senior class gift via a  mind-bendingly banal quote; a salutatorian; and finally a validictorian.

Without saying which was which, let me merely state that one of those students gave a stereotypically bad speech that practically worshiped at the mauve alter of obsequious cliche. But another, in a pleasant break with tradition, gave a speech that was bright, thoughtful and infused with coherent purpose. 

So, you are to guess: On which of these students did the faculty choose to bestow its highest honor, the award that goes to the student who, in the eyes of the adults who run the place, best represents the school?

But there's no drama here. It's high school. Of course the over-achieving apple-polisher won.

I don't care to rail about that.  Rather, it made me wonder: How would the world be different if we didn't learn in high school that enthusiastic, single-minded pleasing of one's betters is the pathway to success? That happy, shallow cliche is better than awkward-but-honest stumblings toward deeper understanding?

Shouldn't we, as adults, expect better? Shouldn't we teach our children a more thoughtful and candid lesson? And why can't we ever seem to get this right?

Anyway, here's my story:

I attended high school in rural North Carolina from 1978-1981. I came bearing transcripts from a tiny Quaker school where my mother had been the headmistress, but she and my father were going through a divorce at the time and somewhere along the line my academic standing must have slipped through the cracks.

In those days my high school (which had the lowest socio-economic standing of any school in the county) offered a three-track academic program. There was a smart-kid track that included some honors and advanced placement courses; a middle track, called "college prep," for "average" students; and then  the meathead curriculum, designed for the students who were headed off to the mills, or the tobacco fields, or the Army. And since nobody at my high school seemed particularly interested in  deciphering my Quaker transcripts, I was assigned to the meathead track.

In retrospect, this was a great experience. Everyone in the meathead track -- students, teachers, everyone -- was simply marking time. Sure there were the usual rules and Knowledge-Is-Good rhetoric, but nobody expected anything much from us and boy did we deliver it.

I gave a few signs that I was capable of handling more challenging work (my American history teacher removed me from class entirely during the spring semester, sending me to the library to write research papers instead), but none of the other adults took much notice. I finished the year with a C average. And while I had some secret understanding of my own unappreciated worth, I was utterly clueless about the ways of the world. My "plan" was to become a mechanic, and maybe later on a novelist like my hero, John Steinbeck. I didn't see why I needed college for that.

Things turned early in my junior year. I'd signed up for the mid-level English course, and when I turned in my first paper ("What I did on summer vacation") the teacher called me out into the hall. "What are you doing in my class? You're slacking off. You don't belong here." He was actually angry, but I didn't really have a choice. A kid like me couldn't just sign up for gifted-and-talented classes.

But just like that, I hop-scotched from the meathead curriculum to a junior honors English class. There I gave a totally schizophrenic performance: I was unable to diagram a sentence (the focus of junior high English in public schools but not even a consideration for the Quakers), but usually scored well on the written assignments and literature tests.

This led to something very odd. Despite the fact that I was a late transfer into the honors program and had never, in fact, received an A in English, ever, that fall I was nominated to attend the North Carolina Governor's School with a concentration in English. There are two of these schools, one in Winston-Salem, the other in Laurinberg, and 400 rising juniors and seniors were invited to each for a program that ran for six weeks during the summer.

I remember that my friends were supportive, but that we all assumed my nomination was only as a nice gesture. I certainly never expected to be selected. I wrote an essay without much hope behind it and took a verbal IQ test. And then life went on. I didn't think about it.

Then one day in the spring a guidance counselor pulled me out of class to tell me the news. I'd been selected. None of the other nominees from my school -- all of them higher-achieving and harder working -- had gotten in. Most of them were gracious and sincere in their congratulations, but everyone was bewildered. At least one of them shunned me; his parents even made some kind of embarrassing formal complaint.

All these years later, I look back with wonder on that moment. Why me? Apparently the mystery had something to with that test score and an awful lot to do with the way one person at the county office responded to my essay. I learned later that I had been a "superintedent's choice," the one student from Guilford County who was added to the GS roster without having to going through the statewide competitive process.

The woman who plucked me from my mediocre circumstances and sent me off into a larger world that year was some mid-level administrator for the county's gifted-and-talented program. She later made a point of seeking me out at some public function and shaking my hand. "I justed wanted to meet the person who wrote that essay," she said. I can't quote the rest of our short conversation, but I remember that she leaned in close at one point and said something along the lines of "now do something with this." I got the sense that, for her, getting me into Governor's School had been a subversive act, and she was very proud of it.

Governor's School taught me that I could hang with the smart kids. But it didn't make me a high school success. In fact I was a terrible student with a smart-ass attitude. As the editor and cartoonist for the student newspaper I spent my senior year quarreling with the adviser and the principal, and getting in and out of trouble with the administration, the Beta Club adviser, various class officers, coaches, etc.

It probably didn't help matters when I went to the local newspaper and announced that I represented a countywide student bus drivers union that would go strike if the county didn't start paying us what it paid our adult counterparts, who did the same job for about 50 percent more than we made. A local TV station picked up the story, and I got called down to the county bus garage, where a harried administrator asked me if I would shut up if they gave all the student drivers an extra nickel an hour. Of course I said yes: that "union" was me and a few friends from a couple of  schools.

There are other stories, but whatever. I was a roiling, boisterous, arrogant teenager who wouldn't sit down and wouldn't shut up. I don't want to romanticize that person here. I must have been insufferable at times, I was often "on the make" with women, and I have to take responsibility for all that.

But here's my point: Where did I learn to think so poorly of the adults and institutions who held my future in their hands? Why did I hold them in such disdain so early? Why was I so painfully aware of the gap between what they said they were and what they actually were?

I used to look back at my life and think about how ridiculously unlikely it all seemed. If that one English teacher hadn't forced me out of his class and into the honors program I never would have been nominated for Governor's School. If one anonymous county administrator hadn't snuck me in via a loophole, I never would have been selected. And if I hadn't gone to Governor's School that summer, I really can't imagine what would have happened to me.

But last week I thought back on that sequence of events and saw it in a different light: Why is it even noteworthy when a teacher stops the conveyor belt and identifies a talented but troubled student? Why do administrators who help someone like me feel like it has to happen on the sly? Why do we accept and endorse an educational system in which talent and potential are less important than all the other, ultimately meaningless, criteria of high school success?

The final rebuff from my school to me came in the selection of the "Outstanding Seniors," as picked by the school's faculty. It's not that the selected students were undeserving -- it's that you simply couldn't look at that graduating class and not put me in that group. We were not a high-achieving school, but I was a big part of many of our modest successes and one of my class' obvious de facto leaders.

The adult-me looks back at that snub in head-shaking awe. At the time I was too "cool" to be upset about it, at least outwardly, and it's true that I wasn't surprised. But I knew that I'd been left off deliberately, and it added to the already massive chip on my narrow shoulders. Other students noticed, and the reasons for my exclusion became a topic of conversation. One of the girls who was named to the Outstanding Seniors list told me that my deliberate exclusion had cheapened the honor for her. The adults had sent us a message, but the one we received certainly wasn't the one they intended.

At 44, I think about that message and I just want to grab those teachers by the shoulders and shake them: Don't they see it that it didn't have to be that way? Don't they see that kids like me are the ones who need their help?

Those adults didn't think I respected them or their values, and boy did they show me. But it's obvious now that despite all the things I didn't yet know, I knew enough then to see the difference between the values they espoused and the values they lived. And so what I learned was that the people in charge are full of shit, that chasing after success, as defined by society's various anointed authorities, is for suckers.

Maybe that's just the way all human beings are. Maybe irony, skepticism and clever gamesmanship are the best things we can teach our children. But I still hope that's not true. Society needs institutions that we can trust and respect.

So last week I watched a teenage platitude machine receive her reward and wondered when life would come calling for her. I watched a jock with a reputation for bullying long-haired kids get honored by a stage full of politicians and administrators for his "passion for helping other people."

And as I looked down into that sea of mortar boards and gowns, printed programs fluttering in the graduates' laps like gulls over dark water, I found myself peering into the vast middle. Somewhere in that undifferentiated, unloved mass is one kid, I thought, one kid who is going to outshine them all. Because life really isn't just high school with money. 

Not unless you want it to be.

Comments

[Tim]

Face it Dan, you're still a meathead.

"Maybe irony, skepticism and clever gamesmanship are the best things we can teach our children."

Certainly useful lessons, but perhaps the "best" we can teach our children is that "institutions" are neither inherently infallible or evil. Once they understand that, irony, skepticism and clever gamesmanship become social skills among many other tools they can develop to work with the humans that inhabit the institutions and make them something other than "the machine."

[Sue]

"And so what I learned was that the people in charge are full of shit, that chasing after success, as defined by society's various anointed authorities, is for suckers."

I KNEW I liked you. I just didn't know exactly why. Now I do.

Yours,
A**-kissing brown-nose A+ student who wanted just once, the balls to feel the way you did.

[jmsloop]

Interesting post, Dan, and one of those issues I think about a lot. While your particular story is horrible because of how personal some of the actions seem to have been, I find myself often appalled at how institutional the attitude you describe can be. In the public education system, here, like in a lot of them, the "most gifted" kids can apply for one of a couple of academic magnet schools. However, upon arriving at the school, parents of bright but creative, seeking kids will find that the school cannot work with them. That is, if a child asks too many questions, or doesn't follow a pretty precisely prescribed set of behaviors, the parents are told that, regardless of how gifted the kid is, the academic magnets are made with one particular curriculum in mind, and it stresses education by the books. (Meaning, ultimately, that very gifted but 'adventuresome' kids have to return to "regular" schools).

In these cases, I'm sorta torn. Of course, the system is right that if they want to follow one curriculum, everyone needs to stay completely on task. On the other hand, it would seem to be valuable--albeit expensive--to find a way to work with the little Danny Conovers of the world as well. Ultimately, of course, those are the kids who will be the real gold for the scoial whole.

[Agricola]

I didn't have to get to the bottom of the post to know the author. And I'm not surprised at your experience. What is sad is that there is more than one kid in the class.......and they are absolutely stifled by the crap that is the public school system we own. From the school boards to the administrations to the principals to the teachers, the definition of our educational system is the least amount for the most with no real concern for results.

[toast]

alas, like the rest of life, schools are administered & staffed by mostly ordinary people who do not know what to do with the extraordinary besides attempt to subdue or stifle. it makes them uncomfortable. my mother taught senior english in traditionally disadvantaged high schools and i can attest that extraordinary teachers are also generally unwelcome.

in all this is a valuable lesson that real miracles come 99.9% of the time in the shape of people, sometimes strangers like your rebellious GS administrator, who somehow resonate, who sense some recognition and feel they must respond. i think we are bound to honor that gift by sharing our advantage in kind, by making a difference in the mundane structures abounding. or just be an asshole & not.

[Laura Knight]

Dan,

This is truly a great post. I was reading it in my email (as I subscribe to Xark via an RSS aggregator), which doesn't display the author of the post; halfway through, I had to click the link to go to Xark and see for myself--yup, that's gotta be Dan. :)

The most important thing I learned in high school was: "Question Authority". That phrase, that mindset, has served me well in the rest of my life, not in aiding my professional success (the opposite sometimes, in fact), but by being most certainly the thing that's allowed me to find my place in the world without being consumed and overrun by it. The teacher who repeated that phrase, over and over, during my sophomore English class in a small town? The long-haired hippie who was disdained by much of the faculty for his liberal politics, activism, and familiar relationships with students. He was one of the most influential educators that school ever had, though, because he didn't toe the line; he stepped right over it to the place where kids learn to think for themselves.

Again, great post, and I really enjoy the smart, insightful things I read on Xark.

Namaste,

Laura Knight

[Sam]

Dear Daniel,

This post reminds me of the story I heard once growing up. Dad must have told it to me, but now he doesn't remember it. He said that you had some profoundly gorked English teacher who, no matter what you did in her class, gave you the same B and smiley face on your work. One day she assigned you a ten page essay about something she clearly neither knew nor cared anything about and you finally got fed up. You, being the brilliant and cheeky kid I imagine you must have been, wrote one reasonable if not scintillating first page on the assigned topic and then wrote nine more pages of "blah blah blah". In retrospect, this may have meant you said meaningless things, but I always imagined you actually wrote "blah" for the rest of the nine pages and was in awe of your balls. I was even more impressed when I learned that this stupid woman again gave you a B and a smiley face. From then on, the story went, you pointedly ignored this woman. It was only when she finally tried to call you on your contumacious attitude that you stood up and pulled out your essay and in front of the whole class outted her in your explanation of why she did not deserve your attention. The story ended with a great deal of pride from Dad in your obvious superiority and bravery. You and he both faced such injustice in school, but you came out different.

My school experience was nothing like yours. All the school administrators knew my mom's name and she fought tooth and nail to make sure that the teachers gave me special treatment all the way up to middle school. At that point, against Dad's initial wishes, I went to a truly Friendly Quaker high school that remedied most if not all of the social retardation public school had tried to force down my throat. (I didn't know that you went to Quaker school, too - there is so much I don't know about you.)

Last year I worked with Spanish-speaking kids in middle and high school, as you may know. Their experience is far away from mine, and worst of all for the METS kids (who have interrupted education when they arrive - many are completely illiterate in their own languages). When we partnered with the school system we were forbidden from telling them that they weren't going to graduate. You can only graduate now (thanks to NCLB) if you pass the HSAs and if you haven't by 21 you're out and they were 17 and couldn't write their names, but we were still told to smile in their faces and tell them that a diploma was the touchstone they should measure their value by. Why? Because if they found out that they might not graduate, they might drop out, and that would mean more kids on the streets and the administrators who weren't trying their damndest to kick out all the imperfect kids were only trying to keep them in school to decrease their opportunities for gang involvement (and failing, of course).

My only hope is when I see smart kids like one I grew up babysitting named Andrew (around the same age as Luke - they met when y'all came up for Dad and Trish's wedding). He's in the same communications magnet I was in, and in middle school when he was assigned an Independant Media Project, he did a documentary on the funding and teaching quality of the different area public schools by race and socio-economic status of the surrounding community. Nothing ever came of it, that I know of, but it still helps me stay optimistic.

Should this be a comment? Feel free to delete it if it's too personal or too long.

[Janet]

Sam!!!! Yeay!!!

[ben]

And so what I learned was that the people in charge are full of shit, that chasing after success, as defined by society's various anointed authorities, is for suckers.

We've resurrected this thread (thanks Sam), and I always meant to comment.

I think one of the most personally damaging things I ever did was buy into high school (administrator) values, where being a "good kid" and academic performance mattered most, and following someone else's standards was better than figuring out your own. That teaches you to be an approval-seeking machine, and it never forces you to gain the inner self-confidence and personal convictions involved in the hard work of going against the flow. You get handed a set of standards, and you perform. On things that matter, you never think for yourself.

It's a tradeoff, I suppose. I have a good friend who went to a Quaker school who is a terrible writer because he was never forced to learn grammar. I help him with that. But he has a joy of learning, and an easy love of ideas, that I struggle to possess.

One last story: I had a friend named Tommy who moved away mid-sophomore year. Tom was a smart free spirit, smoked a lot of weed, and we did chemistry homework together and became friends. We both liked to BS about religion and philosophy, me as a (then) evangelical Christian, him as a free-thinking early-90s hippie-type.

Once, Tom got this big idea that we were going to cut school and drive west, not telling anyone until we were long gone (or maybe not at all). We would have stayed gone maybe a week, I bet, doing who knows what.

In most ways, it was a terrible idea, and I never had the guts to do it. Tom may have been bluffing. But I've always wondered how doing something so gleefully unaccepatable might have changed me. I wouldn't have graduated at the top of myy class, and teachers never would have looked at me the same. Which probably would have been better, in the long run.

[Janet]

Ah, Ben. I'm so with you on that. I was terribly uptight most of my school life. No one who knows me now would even believe it. I had to be perfect at everything, which, when you are trying to be a straight-A student and cool, makes for plenty of angst.

I, too, wonder how life would have been different if I had been able to relax a little. Maybe some lessons wouldn't have been so painful, bending instead of breaking.

That's one of the drawbacks of living in time and space: We can't experience all possible permutations of life. I guess my life looked pretty good to some people. In college, a friend and I both applied for an honors group. I got in and she didn't. When I was trying to console her, she brushed me off, saying I didn't know what it was like, because I always got what I wanted.

It sure didn't feel that way to me at the time, but I don't know what experiences I would trade. Maybe I'll be a wild child in the next life. Or maybe that was last time.