The phrase comes from our greatest poet, Walt Whitman: “A Backward Glance O’er Travel’d Roads”. But who doesn’t look back once in a while? Without consulting our memories, we would not have the luxury of consciousness. My intention here is to talk about education, using my own circuitous but not extraordinary journey to try to sketch something more important.
I glance back not out of nostalgia, but as part of a larger project that is, I think, intrinsic to a liberal education: the attempt at self-awareness involved in tracing the arc of one’s learning. The motivating questions include: who am I? Who was I? How did it come to this? What were the high and low points, the great driving forces, the critical hinge moments? Who were the influential figures? What and whom have I loved, successfully or otherwise? (We’ll pass over that question because I’m not here to talk about baseball).
Any education proceeds by invisible evolutionary steps. The process is almost uniquely important, for reasons I’ve discussed across these blog posts – although there are illiterate people out there who are wonderful citizens in every sense. We see progress (especially our own) only in hindsight. We blame and praise influential others, if we remember them at all; the rest is reading, writing, talking, listening, creating, experiencing others and the world. Patterns emerge mostly in retrospect.
Highs and lows are a given in any educational career. If you’ve never been stuck in a school you didn’t like, or tormented by teachers or bullied by other students, you’ve probably missed out on some valuable life lessons. And the learning, the forgetting, the joys and the regrets, never stop. (Only recently, I had a lengthy but dispiriting two-hour conversation with a former teacher from fifty years ago; we spoke frankly and amicably – but also exchanged veiled, unconscious insults. That’s how it goes sometimes. Learning and looking back can reveal our jagged edges.)
To properly explore one’s own journey is to examine the lens of the self through which everything is done and experienced. It’s a groping for self-knowledge that we never fully achieve.; and it’s easy to lose sight of the fact that the lens of the self and what we see are at once distinct, at least in our minds, and inextricably linked in every corner of experience.
More broadly, we tend to overlook the idea, foundational to critical thinking and liberal learning, that life is full of things that are both distinct and inseparable. Our minds can only process the world by abstracting and creating useful but artificial boundaries. That’s what thinking is.
But enough of metaphysics for now. My own case is all I can talk about with any authority. It wasn’t a steady trajectory of ascension toward a state of wisdom. (Or as Whitman said of the Civil War, which was more traumatic than my schooldays, “It was not a quadrille in a ballroom.”) My education was more like a wobbly roller-coaster ride, with loops and upside-down parts where I closed my eyes to the world around me, some moments terrifying and others thrilling.
It was also a process marked by two sudden and momentous shifts from one school to another. I spent my first nine years – age three to twelve – at a small, cozy private school where I had a good time without learning overmuch. Then things changed.
At age twelve, I entered a venerable prep school full of privileged kids like myself but strikingly, diametrically opposite to what I had known. It was larger, more rigorous, much more competitive, socially stratified, and not conducive to choices, risk-taking, or imagination. At the time, it seemed to my unformed self like a kind of purgatory. In retrospect, however, it was more like hell.
Most of what we were taught could be called liberal arts; but for me, something crucial was missing. Curiosity, excitement, motivation: I’d known these things earlier in life – not so much from school but from reading on my own; yet that drive simply fell away for six years.
Lacking assertiveness or self-awareness, I accepted as normal things that were unacceptable (including bullying, mainly by teachers, and a learning process that was devoid of enjoyment).
Then I went to college and, once again, everything changed, seemingly overnight. I rediscovered the joy of learning, began to like myself, and blossomed into a fairly decent student. I made close friends, some for life. And unlike in K-12, the students at my college were often smarter or more interesting than the professors.
I can’t say how much they taught me, in and out of class. But I’m guessing it was a lot. Enthusiasm – love even – is the secret sauce of learning. Otherwise, it’s a dull plod toward a multiple-choice exam. Again, there’s no need to embellish my story with facts. But I was extremely lucky to conclude my formal learning (never mind a few moderately interesting but less rigorous graduate programs) on such a high note.
I also realized how much had gone missing in me during high school. I still can’t explain exactly how it happened (there were many guilty parties, myself included), but I was ecstatic when the excitement returned.
What’s the upshot? I certainly don’t recommend how I got it done; but in truth we have very little control over how we get educated and where and when our minds become fully engaged. As with life in general, most of what we learn about our own educations comes in hindsight, and too late to apply. That’s true for me anyway. But I think there are lessons each of us can draw from our own private wells of experience, and without obsessing about the past, those wells are worth dipping into from time to time.
In any case, here’s what I would say to any high school student: question everything, including authority. Homework is mostly a waste of time; your evenings should be left free for other pursuits, including entertainment, socializing, reading and sleeping. Getting good grades and getting into a good college aren’t useless goals, but they are overrated. You will learn and grow willy-nilly, as your passion and curiosity allow, and that all depends on your personal emotional growth path. Mine was a local, not an express.
Think of your education, my young friend, as a furrowing of the ground in which something may later grow; but look for what you love in it. If it doesn’t work out, you can always make your parents happy and join the Coast Guard.
Had I been stronger and more self-directed, I might even have been tempted to drop out. But I don’t recommend that route either, because the world doesn’t offer nearly as many alternatives to formal schooling as it should. Stay the course, if you can; it’s eminently worth it in the long run, and somewhere in your voyage your sails will fill.