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"The Paragraph"
The Paragraph
The other night, I stumbled upon some excerpt while searching for a quote, and it kept me
awake for hours—that one paragraph. Its
author had made “a list of things they don’t teach you in school.” He said that
school doesn’t teach you how to love somebody, or “to walk away from someone
you don’t love any longer,” or “how to know what’s going on in someone else’s
mind,” or “what to say to someone who’s dying.”
“They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.”
Now, that put a lot on my plate.
After a while, I began thumbing backwards through
the pages of something I had written until I found what I was looking for. I
finally fell asleep in my chair.
When I awoke
a few hours later, I still had that paragraph in my head. I couldn’t shake it.
I was troubled by the writer’s choice to blame his social struggles—in or out
of context— on school: the
place which for some, is their only hope for discovering a thread in their
existence between themselves and other humans.
Now I know so many of us have had difficult
experiences in school, and I know many others who have found it to be their
saving grace.
Perhaps the author’s list had a shred or two of
truth. School offers no instruction manual on how to love—school may well be
guilty sometimes of hunting down spontaneity and killing it—but it can give us
hints of what love is, and how it manifests itself a hundred thousand ways.
School can teach us the truth and power of love by
showing us in a a thousand stories, and
through a thousand more examples of greater fools who drive to work each day
with an intensity of commitment and attention. I can’t help but hear the Allman
Brothers: “Love is everywhere.” If you discover those things, I’m thinking you
can figure out the rest. The “how” part will take care of itself.
My search had brought me to a verse halfway down
page 80.
I had spent years exploring the nature of freedom, and I finally discovered
that in its purest sense, liberty is driven by love. The realization came from
things I learned from books and songs, preachers and priests and nuns, dogs and
grandchildren— Of course, I learned much from my companion…my significant other. And my family, and friends… and school.
From coaches and teachers, from strange kids who
slowly became familiar by spending hundreds of days with me in my classroom.
Some of whom gave as much as they took.
Now, school
is rife with challenges and shortcomings. Cookie-cutter reforms can result in
the creation of all things unremarkable…unexceptional. Responses to political
pressures have given us spoon-feeding approaches to education…thus lowering our
expectations. Teachers and students
alike have stood upon desks and challenged
these things for decades.
But One thing School does not teach us, dear author,
is weakness. Weakness comes from the
world outside of school—from readers and writers of such paragraphs.
School gives us a sad clear eye on the lies of the
grown-up world. A world that claims to care for the protection of the
innocent—granting refuge in cages
surrounded by the threats and dangers
created by those obsessed with their own vulnerability.
In school, we learn the countless disguises of fear
and the granite hardness of reality. And
despite the beigeness of institutionalized compassion and the madness of
accountability and structure, school can teach many things worth knowing. Most importantly, love. It does not lose its
way in the politics of politics.
And if in fact, we’re able to discover that the end
of our education is but the beginning of learning, well, then we’re on to
something. The best lesson is learning how to learn. So, I reject the paragraph
and its claims… happily…
View all episodes
By Jim McGinnis
4.7
1515 ratings
The Paragraph
The other night, I stumbled upon some excerpt while searching for a quote, and it kept me
awake for hours—that one paragraph. Its
author had made “a list of things they don’t teach you in school.” He said that
school doesn’t teach you how to love somebody, or “to walk away from someone
you don’t love any longer,” or “how to know what’s going on in someone else’s
mind,” or “what to say to someone who’s dying.”
“They don’t teach you anything worth knowing.”
Now, that put a lot on my plate.
After a while, I began thumbing backwards through
the pages of something I had written until I found what I was looking for. I
finally fell asleep in my chair.
When I awoke
a few hours later, I still had that paragraph in my head. I couldn’t shake it.
I was troubled by the writer’s choice to blame his social struggles—in or out
of context— on school: the
place which for some, is their only hope for discovering a thread in their
existence between themselves and other humans.
Now I know so many of us have had difficult
experiences in school, and I know many others who have found it to be their
saving grace.
Perhaps the author’s list had a shred or two of
truth. School offers no instruction manual on how to love—school may well be
guilty sometimes of hunting down spontaneity and killing it—but it can give us
hints of what love is, and how it manifests itself a hundred thousand ways.
School can teach us the truth and power of love by
showing us in a a thousand stories, and
through a thousand more examples of greater fools who drive to work each day
with an intensity of commitment and attention. I can’t help but hear the Allman
Brothers: “Love is everywhere.” If you discover those things, I’m thinking you
can figure out the rest. The “how” part will take care of itself.
My search had brought me to a verse halfway down
page 80.
I had spent years exploring the nature of freedom, and I finally discovered
that in its purest sense, liberty is driven by love. The realization came from
things I learned from books and songs, preachers and priests and nuns, dogs and
grandchildren— Of course, I learned much from my companion…my significant other. And my family, and friends… and school.
From coaches and teachers, from strange kids who
slowly became familiar by spending hundreds of days with me in my classroom.
Some of whom gave as much as they took.
Now, school
is rife with challenges and shortcomings. Cookie-cutter reforms can result in
the creation of all things unremarkable…unexceptional. Responses to political
pressures have given us spoon-feeding approaches to education…thus lowering our
expectations. Teachers and students
alike have stood upon desks and challenged
these things for decades.
But One thing School does not teach us, dear author,
is weakness. Weakness comes from the
world outside of school—from readers and writers of such paragraphs.
School gives us a sad clear eye on the lies of the
grown-up world. A world that claims to care for the protection of the
innocent—granting refuge in cages
surrounded by the threats and dangers
created by those obsessed with their own vulnerability.
In school, we learn the countless disguises of fear
and the granite hardness of reality. And
despite the beigeness of institutionalized compassion and the madness of
accountability and structure, school can teach many things worth knowing. Most importantly, love. It does not lose its
way in the politics of politics.
And if in fact, we’re able to discover that the end
of our education is but the beginning of learning, well, then we’re on to
something. The best lesson is learning how to learn. So, I reject the paragraph
and its claims… happily…