Current Affairs: Education and Beyond

Referencing an ongoing controversy about curriculum, research, unnecessary course studies, the value of chosen required reading and the like on the Great Lettuce Head site, I am tempted to offer that “Because I said so!” in answer to “Why do I hafta know this…?”is within acceptable reason and should carry some weight. But to those who would argue the point, I offer this more liberal reason: How would one learn to think outside the box if one is never shown the edges? Education is the giving out of information known to date. The general idea is for students to store the information and to expand on it through reading and listening throughout one’s life, or if in an area of particular interest, challenge to improve or refute it. Until the day when we can afford to assign six experts in their fields to an individual student based on his own area of interest, the curriculum will remain “rounded.” For the many students utterly bored by Chaucer, look around to the one student whose eyes fairly glow with growing interest and love. Many decades ago, my high school Freshman English teacher, Mrs. Virginia Baltay (oh, where you be?) introduced me to Poe. Her own eyes sparkled with enthusiasm and she was wise enough to note that she was connecting with me on the man. “While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping,” (Poe, The Raven) –yes, a tapping to awaken something in the mind of the student sitting next to you that will change his life from that point onward. I mean, like running to the bookstore to spend half of your first paycheck from the real world beyond graduation on “The Borzoi Poe”. Meanwhile, I carry an invisible raven on my shoulder “Evermore.”