“ SCHOOL “
School is mandatory, there’s nothing we can do about it, and it’s free. From K-12 we are conditioned to believe three certain things about education, three things mainly, and they color how we view education for the rest of our lives. We are taught that school is one: mandatory, which it is by law. We are taught that school is: free, which because it is mandatory by law, it is provided by the government free of charge. We are taught that school is: out of our control. What we study, what skills we choose to develop, how we allocate our time, even what school we go to, all these are out of our control. School is standardized. It is incumbent upon the government to provide the most uniform education to every child included the most essential knowledge and skills. The three laws of tutelage mentioned above are therefore necessary.
This is what we know from ages five to eighteen. Too young to read and write to adulthood.
By the time we get to higher education, with these laws being true for us for the vast majority of our lives, how are we to understand that higher education has a completely different set of laws, in fact, the complete and utter opposite? I believe it is because we walk into higher education with the same expectations of the essential structure of school that we fail to understand the difference and fail to understand our true power where before we had none. As I’ve already gone through four years of University education, I can tell you these are things we should never forget if we are adult students for the first time or again.
In higher education: school is entirely voluntary, the exact opposite of what we’ve believed our whole lives. You don’t have to go to school. You can leave. You can decide not to go at all. It’s up to you. (And I mean this in the sense of overall attendance not day to day). Bachelor’s Degrees are the new High School Diplomas – everyone seems to expect them of you; and if you’re lucky enough to have the means and opportunity to go, you ought to. Only you can decide if this is the right path for you; only the forces in life you hold most true and relevant inform your decision. Now the truth about control; mandated school was out of our control but the aspects of higher education are entirely within your control. You choose your major, you choose your classes (this is more true on a University level on third year after you’ve met basic requirements, you can continue with any class offered in your major you’d like) you research and choose your school. Nearly everything about what you learn and why is under your purview. You are getting a specialized degree, not following a nationwide education stencil. Your choice. Lastly, and this is the kicker, higher education is NOT FREE. It’s extraordinarily expensive. And you’re paying for it. Higher education is for profit, and essentially, you’ve hired a group of people to teach you something. What equation do we come up with, then? Something like this: I have chosen to come to this specific school because I trust its reputation and am paying you an extraordinary amount of money to teach me something I have chosen to pursue. This is nothing like we have known, and yet people fall victim to “the old ways” for lack of a better term; after thirteen years, they’ve been etched upon our psyche. Never forget how different this situation you now have put yourself is from what you have known. Never forget the power you have; student is truly a poor term, it recalls hierarchies of power that have now been reversed. Pupil is more appropriate. You can most certainly fail yourself, there is no doubt about that, but still, no one can make you stand for the pledge of allegiance, no one can squelch your opinion or the type of words you use, no one can make you do something “just because”, you are forever owed an explanation, and while they know more and are your elders they deserve your respect, never forget that the teachers and staff work for you. And if they should fail you, not fail you with an “F” but fail to attend to your needs, dismiss you as irrelevant when you do not understand, attribute your resistance to apathy rather than dejected confusion…if they fail you, do not default to the days of old, but remember that this is YOUR education and so only you are in charge of it.
