Learning and Unlearning

 Kevin and I had a conversation yesterday about what parts of our K-16 schooling were beneficial and which weren’t. We both have bachelor’s degrees, and that’s what I mean by K-16. From kindergarten until we got our bachelors. 

I don’t remember it, but I was always told that I learned to read when I was 3.  Recently I asked my mother how I did that. I didn’t tell her this part, but I really couldn’t picture her sitting me down to teach me. She said that I learned by watching Sesame Street every time it was on, and if I asked her what something said, she told me. When I went to kindergarten, I was ahead of the game.  However, it was all downhill from there. I always struggled in school. I always got bad grades and behavioral points. I was also extremely shy and never spoke to many people.  This caused me to be overlooked a lot.  

My psychiatrist diagnosed me with ADHD when I was 43.  I often wonder what I would have been diagnosed with if I’d gotten any sort of real help whatsoever when I was a kid. But I didn’t, because any mention of me needing any sort of external help (be it counseling, a learning disability evaluation, tutoring or even summer school) sent my parents into shouting rages and screaming matches. 

When I graduated from high school, I took math placement tests and scored at middle school level. It was as if I had never been to high school. The guidance counselor there asked me how I graduated. I told him I didn’t know. My high school in Arizona was very wealthy and had a lot of funding. It didn’t matter. 

As a freshman, I still lived in Chicago and went to a Christian school. I don’t remember math that year at all. It was probably just freshman algebra. We moved to Arizona on the last day of my freshman year and I went to Mountain Pointe High School in the Ahwatukee foothills area of Phoenix. Anyone who knows that area knows they have all the funding they need. I had the same math teacher for sophomore and junior years. He obviously never looked at anyone’s homework. Before tests, he’d review, and his reviews somehow made me memorize some other way to get the correct answers. Either that or he just passed people without giving a shit, but I never had a clue what was truly being taught there. In my senior year, they told me I didn’t need math. I had enough to graduate. But then once I got to community college and they tested me at 7th-8th grade level, I was forced to take two years of remedial math and pay for it myself. 

I think “maybe” those remedial classes were helpful, but there’s no way to know for sure. We all “do math” all day every day, and maybe I just exist in this world doing it all my own way instead of how it was taught. 

A class that I always “did well” in was Spanish. But like I’ve mentioned before, I “know all the words” in Spanish, but absolutely cannot have a conversation in it. So did school help with that?  I don’t know, did it?  If I wanted a bump in that area, I’d have to travel somewhere that only speaks Spanish and I’m just not going to. I use it here and there in public if I am communicating with someone who only speaks Spanish, but it’s always very basic things that are on signs everywhere anyway.  

In high school, I didn’t take chemistry, because I took anatomy and physiology. In community college, I took medical terminology. Then I became a CNA.  Those things helped with that, somewhat. If I ever want to go back to caring for the elderly, I don’t think I can lift people like I used to. I can lift kids but not adults. I used to be able to do it easily. I don’t know what happened, maybe I just got old. Luckily the last elderly person I cared for was able to walk, even though she used a wheelchair. She could get up and get herself from here to there, I’d just hang on to her arm. That’s the extent of what I’m probably able to do anymore. The job I have now pays way better than that anyway. 

The classes that I took that were most helpful in my life were the ones I took because they were topics that interested me. I took five sewing classes at that community college, and I love to sew. A year or two ago, I took a real estate class for fun, and it was right after I started dating Kevin. The things I learned in that class helped me to “get” him out of a homeownership situation that was a nightmare. He just didn’t know there were investors out there that will buy anything. I didn’t either, until I took that class. He always tells me that I saved him from that townhouse, and that I’m his hero. If that’s all that will ever come out of taking that real estate class, then it was more than worth it. Luckily, we were already saying “I love you” and had decided we were boyfriend and girlfriend before that happened. (I’m sure you know what I mean). 

I also really always liked philosophy class. BUT. A philosophy class in any school today will only tell you about a handful of white guys who lived 200 years ago that were the “first philosophers”. Were they though?  Human beings have been around for about 300,000 years. My old Christian school lowered that number to only about 10,000 years ago because they were Bible literalists. But still- no matter how many thousands of years ago we’ve been around, did “philosophy” just start 200 years ago with these old white guys?   No. Our ancestors have been philosophizing from the beginning. It’s human nature. I would argue that every single person who’s ever lived on this earth has done it. Maybe not people who died in early childhood. But it’s just part of who we are, and it’s represented wrong in textbooks. That’s my unpopular opinion!  

So the only classes in school that ever helped me were MAYBE remedial math, MAYBE Spanish, and definitely sewing and real estate. Also my CNA class definitely helped.  (But I actually got paid for that one, it’s a long story). 

I believe I’m pretty scientifically illiterate, but definitely not as much as someone who say, goes to the pediatrician and demands antibiotics for their child and doesn’t understand that antibiotics won’t work on a virus. I’m not that scientifically illiterate. I just don’t 100% “get” the scientific method. I’ve worked with kids a lot, and I saw the scientific method once compared to a baby or toddler exploring the world around them. That made a little more sense, because I had so much experience working with kids.  But I still don’t understand really how research works or “peer reviewed” anything. Once I finally made it to the university in my 30’s, methods in research was another class I basically bull shitted my way through, just like sophomore and junior high school math. Scientists will act like they know everything, when clearly (I guess?) the point of the scientific method is that you don’t. 

All of this and more is why I consider myself an unschooler at heart. I just believe in everyone finding their own way, learning as they go in whatever way is best for them, and having choices. I don’t like the educational system very much, but I do support anyone who wants to go as a choice. Kevin told me his grandmother paid for his college education, but if she didn’t, he would have never gone. I’m jealous of that. I was told, you have to go, and you have to pay. When I was 18, I didn’t know that I suddenly had choices. If Kevin’s grandmother had been unable or unwilling to pay, he’d just be in the exact situation he’s in now, and that’s ok. 

A lot of people who’ve gotten burned by higher education will kvetch about it online, and then people will always argue “what about the doctors”. It’s tiring. 

My cousin/best friend is a doctor. She has never told me her student loan balance, but she has said that it’s equal to her mortgage. I just don’t think that’s fair. Doctors must also do residencies that do not pay well. My cousin/best friend said you can defer paying your student loans for two years during residency.  But residencies are four years. She responded, “Actually most are 3-8 years.”  Ok, but you still only get to defer paying for only two?  

That’s wrong, imo.  If that keeps happening, we’re going to run out of doctors. 

In the end, I just want to keep doing what I need to and what I want to do, and learn along the way. Sometimes graduations are seen as the “end of learning” when there can really be no such thing.  It creates a false monopoly on learning. I’m actually not even sure my daughter fully realizes that you learn all the time. I’ve preached it to her, but I’m 50/50 on whether she’s noticed it in her own life or not.