(This might be a bit rambling.)

I think that it boils down to the idea that education is… a formality. Or a mechanism, like digesting food and growing as a result.

It isn’t so much the belief that students need to be shaped, or that their capabilities have to be instilled, I think; or even a blindness to the idea that students deserve flexible environments and some recognition of their individual strengths and talents. It’s the idea that the right things need to be plugged into the right spots. Those who have the capabilities will make the most of them, then; and if they don’t make the most of them, then they didn’t have the capabilities to begin with.

And if you’re able to show capabilities where they didn’t seem to exist, that’s because you stumbled upon the right combination. Maybe enthusiasm, devotion and a rich alumnus’ tax dodge. Or whatever.

It seems like a “you can only work with what you have” perspective, with the possible addition of “you might not know what you have, so use method x to discover it.” Maybe raising Sea Monkeys or Chia Pets would be the best analogy, or one of those chemical crystal water gardens. Along with selecting the best doggies in the window (the ones without the waggly grades).

But I could just be jaded.

What I think angered those students so much was the implication of the exercise: that education isn’t about what you think, or even about how you think. It’s about what you do with your thoughts. The exercise was about the idea that the best education, ideally all education, is applicable to regular life — and most especially to its most difficult parts. Parts that we’re all going to encounter, to some degree, in some way, at some point in time.

There was a saying that my old Latin teacher used to use whenever we’d discuss life issues. He’d always leave them unresolved and add, “That’s a question for the final exam.” Then he’d move on to something else. It’s pretty much the same thing.

Anyway, what that hour drove home was the fact that book-learning doesn’t suffice. Degrees don’t suffice. You can’t just fill your head, in class or by yourself, and expect to handle everything that life is going to offer you — or throw at you.

You have to engage with it.

That, I think, is what those students couldn’t stand to hear. And that, I think, is where the problems with education ultimately reside.

In a denial of uncontrolled and uncontrollable existence.

How deep and in what direction do you suspect it runs?

You know, regarding society at large, the government and economy and social structure and everything, I used to believe in major, sweeping reforms. Then I was a radical and believed we needed to tear it all down. Then I just wanted to be left alone. And I don’t know where I am now.

Great discussion, really. Easily the best hour that I had that entire semester. But some of the students didn’t like the challenge. One, in particular, just stated that anyone who commits a felony should get the death penalty — at which point the instructor pointed out that interfering with the mail is a felony. The kid didn’t bother with a response. He just sat there stewing.

So he and some friends went to the dean right afterward and had him fired.

As much as the obvious point is that there are problems with the system, I suspect that it runs far, far deeper.