Friday's ramble

This morning was the annual prom sign up insanity. Some kids line up as early as four am. First come first serve. They even had a cop there to help keep the peace. Apparently things can get pretty rowdy. I guess if you get that many cranky high school girls together, anything can happen. Last year I saw the kids lined up when I got to school. I saw one of my students and said, "If you put this much effort into your classes, you'd have a full academic scholarship awaiting you." They don't get it.

Earlier this year in College Comp we were discussing ways to improve high school education. One student brought up the governor's plan to offer internships for high school kids in place of their junior and senior years. When we were exploring this idea, one student raised her hand and asked, "But what about prom?"

I guess if prom is an essential part of your high school experience, you might need to raise your sights a bit higher. But that's the thing with high school kids, they never see the forest for the trees. I can't say that I was that different, though. I never cared about prom, but sports were what I cared about. But still, I knew that I had to take my education seriously too.

I don't know what some of the kids here are thinking. They have this sense of entitlement - that they deserve to be rich and successful just because they are alive.

I wish kids worked half as hard on their studies as they did text messaging, down loading music, scurrying off to their part time jobs at Mc Donald's or Walmart or Hugos, and making out with their significant others in the hall.

In my first block Brit Lit class we began looking at the Renaissance today. So I was talking about the idea of a "Renaissance Man." Then we talked about how the fall of feudalism and the rising merchant class helped improve the overall style of life. This lead to more universities and a greater emphasis on education and reading and, thus, the 'rebirth' in classical learning that the Renaissance is known for.

So I asked them how this was still alive today. It took some prodding, but finally I asked them, "How many of you are guilty of saying, 'why do I have to take this class?' I'm never going to use this knowledge again!'" That got the hands up in the air and suggestions flying. Then I said, "The people of the Renaissance reveled in that useless knowledge. They learned it and mastered skills - music, art, language, philosophy, literature, science, - because they could. It made them better humans. That's something lost on us today."

They disagreed. Why learn something if you don't need it. That really got me going.

I went on the defensive. "Why do we bother having choir? I mean how many people do you honestly know who have ever made a living singing or composing music that have come out of our music program here (I know - given how powerful the choir program is here - that I was taking my life into my hands)?" A few names, but we aren't cranking out any American Idols or broadway singers.

"So why do you bother to sing and study all the crap that you do in choir?"

"Because we like it," one girl said.

"Yes. That's it. It's a passion. It's something that makes you feel more alive. It makes you - as the Renaissance scholars knew all about - a better human. It gives you a richer life. Music - like all the other arts that aren’t valued in our society anymore - makes the world a better place, even if they aren’t considered valuable or marketable by the powers that be - just look at the programs that get cut when schools run low on dough.”

(And now that I think about it, I would like to have added this tidbit I heard from a speaker at the fall inservice day two years ago -- “Just ask the powers that be when they want to cut an arts program because it isn’t deemed essential, ‘what kind of artifacts do archeologists always find when they dig up ancient cultures?’ They find their pottery, manuscripts, musical instruments, and paintings. You don’t ever see an archeologist on camera holding up a tax return form or an accounts payable sheet and saying they’ve made an essential discovery.”)

“But I still don’t see why we have to learn trigonometry and chemistry.”

“Like I tell some of you when you complain about learning something new - you don't want to be dumb all your lives, do you?"

What is often lost on them is that sometimes the best learning has no extrinsic value. It's all about enriching your life. But I guess that's what these kids have their Play Stations, Xboxes, and High Definition TVs for. They need their lives 'enriched' for them. Sad.