Don't Cut the Final Class - Part I

Don’t “cut” the final class

I have a confession to make:  I never cut a class before.  I would like to tell you that it is because ever since my youth I had a passionate connection with the importance of education but I’m thinking that might not be 100% on target.  I think it had to do more with my fear of death.  Particularly my own, because I knew my father would “kill” me if I skipped a class.  I am able to joke about it now that I am a safer distance away from those years.  I also know that I can out-run my father if I need to do so.

You know, now that I think about it, it wasn’t just parents and educators that were on the same team.  It was more or less the proverbial “village” that helped to keep the kids in line.  My Uncle John told a story from his youthful days of a neighbor woman that came to his house and told his mother he did or said such-and-such.  Right there, my grandmother gave him a wallop, despite his protest.  When the neighbor woman left the doorway and walked to her home, he turned and earnestly said to my grandmother, “But, Ma, I didn’t do what she said I did.”  She said to him, “I know.  But it made me so mad that she even said it.”  I am not sure she won an award for parenting jurisprudence that day, but it did make the point that honor mattered to her. 

Honor matters to me.  I think that it always has.  I have made my mistakes and have had to re-adjust my sails a few times in adult life but I think the thought of being a decent human being has always lingered around me.  I mentioned cutting classes before.  I want to go back to that topic.  In high school we had a teacher who was really a militant personality.  She missed one day of school and we had a study hall instead of her class.  I remember reading a novel that was particularly interesting to me during that study hall.  Now, over 30 years later, I still remember what it was.  Unfortunately, I was not on top of the concept of “signing-in” to class.  A sign-in sheet circulated around the desks because the study hall monitor did not know us to be able to do attendance.  So I was there, I just didn’t sign in. 

The next day, my friend and I were accosted by the teacher in class and basically humiliated in front of our peers as she announced, “You cut the study hall yesterday and I intend to turn you in,” or words to that effect.  Frankly, I couldn’t remember where I was for a minute because I was so stunned.  I turned to my friend who shrugged her shoulders and said, “big deal.”  That was not my thought in any way.  I went to the Assistant Principal before the teacher did and told him the whole story.  He assured me he would speak to her.  We never heard another word about that from the teacher.  I even told my parents about it because I wanted to make sure that the thing was dead in the water.  I learned from that experience that sometimes it is the teachers who get taught by the students about more important lessons in life.  You don’t have to be a fool to give a kid the benefit of the doubt.  You just have to know how to recognize an honest soul.  That takes a little more work and study, though, doesn’t it?

Last year in the midst of teaching a class I let the cat out of the bag.  I told the kids, “You realize that the point of formal education is not to open the tops of your heads and pour facts down in there for no good reason, right?  The purpose of education is to teach you to love learning so that you will continue to seek it out and become an enriched, wise person.”  They looked kind of surprised at that.  I really do believe that.  It doesn’t matter if it is adult education in a church basement, or hung-over college students on a secular campus:   the educator holds a torch for both fire and light, warmth and guidance, musing and motivation.  

The educator says, “Here.  Turn your distracted thoughts to just one thing and learn how to think logically and rationally because the world is not always offering that to you.”  (I will at this point avoid any pontifications on the current Reality TV show called “Presidential Debates 2016,” even though it proves what an educational NEED we have in our country.)  From the point of learning how to follow one train of thought on one subject, you use the commutative property (learned in mathematics) and apply it to all kinds of ideas and topics that come down the pike.  This, I think, is the essence of learning how to think.

Of course we hold out the hope that learning how to think moves you to the vision of learning how to live.  You cannot contemplate the true, the beautiful, the good, the just, without asking yourself, “How does this apply to my life?  Or does it?  Should it?  Can it?  How, then, am I to live, now knowing what I know?” 

When was the last time you allowed yourself the privilege of being challenged by a thought or an idea?  Are you willing to go beyond your comfort zone of ideas and pre-conceived notions to learn something concrete that may really help you to become a better version of yourself?

Who teaches that class, anyways?  

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