School Daze
It’s important to note that despite what follows, I am a big fan of education. I’ve always believed that a lot of societal ills could be cured with a better-educated populace but that is a story for another day. This story is about those times when education, specifically my education, came up a tad short.
Ever since schools were created, students have wondered, “Why do I have to learn algebra?” Then usually that is followed with, “I will never, ever need to use it in my real life.” Which in turn is followed by assurance from a teacher (that would Mr. DiCicco) that you will indeed use it. In my case, he was right. Over the years I’ve used algebra for all kinds of things. Score one for Mr. D. Unfortunately, not all of my teachers were as accurate.
For example, last weekend when I needed two pieces of 2x4 wood that were each 7 inches long, I used my trusty tape measure to ensure that each board was cut to the proper length. I measured the wood, made the cuts, and the result was exactly as I intended, two boards of 7-inch length. Or to put it another way, each board was 17.78 centimeters long. But no one in this country (and I mean absolutely no one) would put it that way. That’s because in the United States, the metric system is the Beta Max of measuring.
That’s obvious now but back in middle school, I had a science teacher who insisted that within ten years, everything would be metric so, “You better be ready!” Now some forty years later, although I’m ready, I’m still waiting. Not only am I measuring in inches, I’m buying gallons and not liters of gas to travel miles rather than kilometers. LeBron James is said to be 6’8”. You never hear the announcer say, “Well Marv, at 2.03 meters, LeBron has a distinct advantage.”
And when I hop on the scale, it reads, well never mind what it reads, the point is it reads in pounds (yes, too many of them) and not kilograms (probably too many of those as well).
Even farther back in time, in elementary school I was led to believe that going forward, all of my writing would be of the cursive variety. Naturally this was before computers were invented (Actually I’m not even sure the ballpoint had been invented then). Whatever the writing implements, I was assured that I’d be using cursive writing for everything. Consequently I spent hours practicing the perfect formation of every letter of the alphabet (It occurs to me now that if they’d had me write things like “centimeters” and “kilograms” it would have been doubly pointless). As it turned out I need only have practiced writing my name, as my scrawled signature is the only bit of cursive writing I’ve done since the third grade.
Sometimes the information I got in school was not so much wrong as it was incomplete.
This was especially true in history class. Imagine my surprise, when I learned in college, that there were plenty of things of great historical significance that happened after the Civil War. Who knew? Prior to that, no history class I ever had managed to get past the War Between the States. US History began appropriately enough with the American Revolution, which somehow took months and months to cover. Surely something happened between Continental Congress and the Civil War but sadly I don’t recall a bit of it. I only remember the seemingly endless amount of time spent memorizing which general fought which battle.
By the time Grant and Lee were shaking hands at Appomattox, Alice Cooper was singing Schools Out. I suppose knowing those generals comes in handy when one is say, watching Jeopardy, but the rest of the time, maybe some of the other parts of history would have been nice to know.
I certainly don’t mean to imply that I got nothing out of school. As I said, I’m a big fan of education. Along the way, in addition to my algebra acumen, I picked up a lot of useful things. I seem to be able to write (although not in cursive) for one thing. I’m also completely prepared to discuss the weather in Spanish (and probably only the weather) should the subject ever come up while traveling in Mexico. And thanks to Mrs. Virostek (who also taught me to question authority and was absolutely the best teacher I ever had), I’ve read and appreciated everything that Kurt Vonnegut ever wrote.
Naturally this essay is written with tongue firmly planted in cheek. In reality, the list of benefits I got from school is very long indeed. And the list of teachers (I still remember them all) who had a lasting and positive effect on my life is equally long. If I had the time, I would probably write about that list. Instead, on the off chance that we finally do go metric, I’ll be working on a conversion table. In cursive of course.
