BFTP: Is school just practicing life?

In response to Seth Godin's manifesto, Stop Stealing Dreams: What is School for? back in 2012 I suggested 10 big questions that as educators we spend too much time avoiding and too little time discussing that deal with the purpose of education:

1. Should education be more than vocational training? If so, can or should schools measure how one's quality of life increases because one is more thoughtful, more skeptical, more creative, and/or more humane?
2. What is a good balance between learning content and learning processes? How much do I want my dentist to know about best established practices and how much do I want her to know how to keep learning new best practices?
3. At what age should a child be able to determine for himself what is in his best interest to learn? How important is exposure to a broad (and possibly irrelevant) range of experiences, opportunities, or ideas? If a child develops a passion for a topic early in life, should all her learning revolve around that passion?
4. To what extent do we honor individual learning styles and needs? Is learning how to deal with problems (a teacher or topic one dislikes, for example) an important part of education?
5. Should technology be used to support all educational practices or only those which are constructivist-based?
6. Should we insist teachers who are effective without using technology be required to use it? Yes, I really do think that is a necessary question, as unpleasant as it is for many of us.
7. Do libraries and librarians have a role in the era of digital information? Yes, I really do think that is a necessary question, as unpleasant as it is for many of us.
8. How many of us are less enthusiastic about libraries or technology but are simply excited about alternate ways of learning - and libraries and technology offer means to those ways?
9. What kind school experience do I want my own grand/children to have? How should that guide me as an educator?
10. How should educational organizations demonstrate their efficacy? If we don't believe in test scores, what do we have to show those who fund us that we are doing good work?

Increasingly I think about question 4 "Is learning how to deal with problems (a teacher or topic one dislikes, for example) an important part of education?" The most memorable challenges my own children dealt with in school were along the line of:

• What can I do about this teacher I dislike?
• Why do I have to learn this subject/take this class?
• How do I get others in my group project to do their work?
• How will I get everything I need to do done?

How are these questions much different than those we ask as adult workers?

• What can I do about this boss I dislike?
• Why do I have to learn this new work skill?
• How do I get others in my team to do their work?
• How will I get everything I need to do done?

What if the best education is simply one that gives us a chance to practice the skills we need to use everyday regardless of our profession or stage of our career? Is school a place to make "safe mistakes" from which we can learn? 

Oh, my standard answer to my children when asking some of the questions above was "Formal education is primarily a weeding tool used by society to determine who is willing to play by the rules, willing to conform, and willing to delay gratification. For those people, there will be a place in an ordered work environment that is somewhat secure." 

Original post 9/5/17

Have you ever been fired?

My StoryWorth question for this week was "What did you learn from your parents?" I thought that was a pretty boring topic. So I selected an alternative: "Have you ever been fired?" It was kind of fun to write and I hope some Blue Skunk readers might share their experiences in this department...

While I have a pretty good professional work record, I was fired twice from jobs I had in college. I’m not exactly proud of that fact, but not real embarrassed either.

The second semester of my freshman year in college in 1971 was spent at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion. My wife had a grant to attend there, so we both took classes that term. I washed dishes in the dining hall during the semester, but needed a full-time, better paying job for the summer. The $4000 I had saved before leaving home was running low after living on it for nine months.

So I got a job as a silage truck driver. Silage is just chopped corn stalks that are fed to cattle. The Vermillion area was rural and they had a big silage plant just outside of town at the bottom of a very long hill. My job was to simply drive a big dump truck to the fields where the corn was being cut, wait for it to be filled, and drive it back to where the contents would be dumped in a conveyor for processing. And repeat all day.

I drove grain trucks quite a bit for my dad on the farm, so driving the truck was not a new experience. And the first day went just fine. But midday on the second day, the brakes on the truck went out when I was about half way down that very long hill. I am guessing I was riding the brake too hard instead of downshifting and the brake fluid evaporated. The road made a sharp turn at the bottom of the hill, and I did not make the curve, instead going off the road and across three sets of railroad tracks, demolishing a small building before coming to a complete stop. I managed to drive the truck back to the plant where I truthfully described what had happened.

I was fired on the spot. 

I went home and told my wife the bad news. Later that day there was a knock on the door of our apartment. It was a police officer who said I was being charged for leaving the scene of an accident. So Sue immediately called her auntin Ft Collins and her uncle offered me a job as a hod carrier in his masonry business. We rented a U-Haul, loaded our stuff, and left Vermillion the next day. (We did not own a lot of stuff.) That’s how I wound up going to school in Colorado. There may well still be a warrant out for my arrest in South Dakota.

I worked for Uncle Paul for about nine months, but his jobs dried up during the winter and I was laid off. I was sort of glad since it was the most physically demanding job I’d ever had. I soon found another job working for a large furniture store delivering furniture and doing general custodial work. The next summer, we moved to Greeley where I enrolled at the University of Northern Colorado (now at instate resident rates!) and worked for the same furniture store chain that had a branch there. 

I’d been working at that store part time for about six months when my boss hired a new delivery driver. He was a big rather dumb character who only had sight in one eye. It seemed after he started helping me, we managed to scratch or dent about every appliance and piece of furniture we delivered. (Once he flicked a cigarette butt out the window that blew back in the panel delivery truck and set the packing blankets on fire, but the boss never found out about that.) 

After one angry customer called in to complain about a scratched washing machine, the boss started to chew me out. But I’d had enough and said, “Well, you are the dumb sonofabitch who hired that one-eyed idiot. Don’t you know a person doesn’t have any depth perception unless he has two eyes?” I found out later that the boss and the other driver were relatives.

I was, once again, fired on the spot. 

I soon found another job working for a commercial laundry that did sheets and diapers from nursing homes all around the northern Colorado area. I kept my job there, working full time while going to college, until I left to do my student teaching back in Iowa in the spring of 1976.

Since that time I have had a number of jobs from which I had rather hoped to be fired, but I never was. I’m not sure if there is any lesson to be learned from these experiences, but they do make a pretty good story.

BFTP: My academic career in librarianship

Been using some of my time in COVID isolation re-reading old blog posts. Found this one from a few years ago kind of fun. Other librarians who may have struggled with academia may identify...

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Considering I barely made it through the program, I find it somwhat ironic that I was chosen to be one of the alums to be given a WHOLE PAGE in the latest newsletter from the University of Iowa's School of Library and Information Science. The issue explores the 50 year history of the program. 

Let me explain...

After spending two years as the world's worst HS English, Speech, and Drama teacher in a small Iowa town from 1976-78, I decided I needed a career change. I had always loved libraries, and more importantly, wondered what job could possibly be easier than that of a librarian? Order books, keep kids on task, and read a lot. Even more importantly, how much does a person really need to know to be a librarian anyway so how hard could it be to get a degree in Library Science? Getting an undergraduate degree in English Ed was primarily reading literature and then bullshitting on essay tests, and I felt that was about my academic ability level.

So I applied (not giving those reasons for my interest in the field) and was accepted into the program, where immediately that first term I discovered that my fellow classmates consisted of about 30 of the most brilliant, hardworking (obsessive?), and serious women I had ever met in my life. That first summer I barely hung on by my finger tips, especially in the cataloging class where I was the only person handwriting catalog cards. I was given a mercy C for the course if I remember. I promised the instructor to never, never accept a job as a cataloger.

But I managed to work my fulltime evening job to support myself and small family and still get through the program. I was the beneficiary of reverse discrimination, being the only white male in the school library part of the program. Two full semesters and two summer sessions later, I had my degree and was back in a small Iowa school, this time as a junior high school librarian.

And I loved it, continuing to work as a school librarian for the next 12 years. Like the library school program, the job itself was more involved that thought.

So now you know the rest of the story.

I am deeply grateful to the U of I's SLIS and very proud to have been selected as a profiled alum, regardless of how mistakenly the decision was made.

Original post 9/12/17