I’m what’s called “self-educated.” My formal education ends with
the 12th grade; for reasons I can’t fully explain, I quit school
about 2 weeks before graduation. I was pretty stoned for most of
my senior year—the only thing I learned how to do well was to pack
a bowl and remove seeds.
I must admit, though, that I still consider the lessons the nuns
taught me about ducking responsibility to be among the most valuable
I’ve ever had. I spent the 13 years after high school getting high
every day and avoiding life as best I could, watching my friends
fall away and my mother slowly destroy herself.
I did have enough presence of mind to get my GED (I got my degree
before my friends that stayed in school) and to spend those 13 years
with my nose buried in books. I started with the old masters
and finally came to great works of literature.
By some grand miracle, I managed to absorb some of what I read,
despite the thick haze I was moving through.
People often remark upon how intelligent I seem and how well read
I am. “Where did you go to school?” may be the most common question
I hear. When I say—with pride and a feeling of self-worth—that I
am “self-educated,” I invariably get a sigh of disappointment. I
try not to be upset over this reaction. So what if I didn’t go to
some Ivy League school?
Is an academic pedigree the measure of someone’s intelligence? Am
I a moron because I didn’t graduate from Dartmouth or Harvard? Am
I somehow less valuable as a human being?
I should note that I cannot take all the credit for my education,
as much as I would like to. I was fortunate enough to make two very
important and influential friends early in my development, and I’m
even more privileged to still have them in my life. I refer to them
as my “mentors”,
without the least bit of irony or derision. I was also lucky enough
to have them be very patient with me and overlook my indelicacies,
which, looking back over the years, I recognize as being legion.
I now have two sons in public school, in the 5th and 6th grades.
They are both Honor Students and are, I think, extremely bored.
My oldest said to me the other day, “Dad, I’m learning two things
in school: that girls are cool and that school is boring.” True
story. Schools teach our children to stand in line
and fill out forms and follow directions, but I see very little
evidence of anyone teaching young minds how to think.
I’m not really talking about complex logical operations here, but
about the ability to reach an independent conclusion about something.
There is little encouragement to be truly “thoughtful” or to allow
the golden light of the mind to shine on every aspect of life.
They don’t teach kids how to be alive.
