Selling Sno-Cones at the Beach

lost education blues

One of my tasks at my parents' house last week was to clean out all my old schoolwork folders from high school, college and graduate school. I had had about two file drawers worth, which I reduced to about 8 linear inches of filing. I saved papers, some exams, syllabi and some other representative work; all the rest went into the recycling bin.

Sorting through (and tossing) my college papers made me melancholy because they collectively represent thousands of hours spent on things I don't even remember learning ABOUT, much less remember. What was the point - for example - of learning major theories of oncogenesis, of reading tens of articles about it? That knowledge has probably all been superceded by newer understandings in the last two decades. What was the point of being able to distinguish between a Picasso and a painting by one of his colleagues? Or the differences between Beethoven and Schubert sonata forms?

Throwing out the stuff seemed to be admitting defeat: that I had learned all this once for no good reason, and forgotten it soon after. But B says it's not WHAT you learn, it's learning HOW to learn, that is the point of college. I don't totally agree; I think you learn the infrastructure and epistemology of a particular field by building it up from the details. Once you have forgotten the details, do you still have the epistemology? I would answer with a qualified yes - but it still bugs me that so many of the details are gone now forever - sort of like the IDEA of a building structure without the beams and supports.

The grad school papers were a lot easier: tons of junk I didn't care about then and don't care about now.

And high school was just fun - lots of things I still remember, such as Latin declensions and the organelles of cells. Pointless stuff - I wouldn't mind if it skipped out of my brain. The most surprising find was the comments on my English papers. I had the same teacher for three out of four years, a demanding, stern woman who cut us no slack, ever. I was mystified to see how truly supportive her comments were. On a 'B' paper - "well done!" On an 'A' paper - "superb analysis." All this time I'd been thinking about how tough she was and how hard I had to work - and for some reason her encouraging comments never sank in, either then or in all the intervening years.

What's the lesson there? I am very self-demanding and while I would never want to change that (as if I COULD!) it's worth seeing it in a broader perspective sometimes. And worth writing a note to Mrs. M and sharing my findsings with her. If she is even still alive...

Posted by otto0114 at June 5, 2005 10:55 AM