What I want to be when I grow up...

I've decided that tomorrow...the last day of classes before the winter break...I'm going to give grades out...which are all pretty good, really...and then I'm going to skip the homework we haven't graded, yet...and only grade it if it will improve folks' grades...

And then we're going to talk and write about what we all want to be when we grow up...me included...

I decided that I'd much rather have the kids thinking about their own dreams over the Christmas break...than fractions...which are, really, only a small part of life...compared to that much bigger question...

You know when were my favorite times in school when I was a kid?...those unstructured times...when we just kind of hung out, together...in a classroom that was otherwise a lot of bustle and effort to get stuff done and still get some social interaction with peers in under the watchful eye of our teachers...

Three of my all-time favorite learning/school moments are:

1) Sophomore year, high school...we're reading To Kill A Mockingbird in Ms. Hudson's Honors' English class...and I stay home...sick...I drink several milk cartons full of water in hopes of peeing out whatever it was that I'm dealing with...and I spend the whole day in bed reading what turns out to be my favorite novel ever...I finished To Kill a Mockingbird, that day...and its not an understatement to say that it changed my life...

2) Junior year, high school...late one night...on a weekend, maybe...but maybe even on a school night...I can't remember...I stay up all night over the course of a week, I believe...I can't quite remember...reading Henry David Thoreau's Walden...and commit myself to transcendentalism...did I mention that I love Henry David Thoreau...

3) Senior year, college...I've finished forensics...and I've met this brand new really great friend to transition me into a more primarily academic-focussed life (though...truth be known...only known to me, now years later...I was far more academically focussed than most people my age, forensics or not)...she and I study together in the political science/liberal arts and sciences building at Wichita State University...both writing papers...I re-write a Latin American microenterprise paper I've had for awhile into some bullshit anthropology final paper (and get an A)...she's doing something much more legitimate...but it's just nice to have the company of someone who takes the learning seriously, too...

And some more...

4) Sixth grade...Mrs. Legg's class...after being previously informed in the year that to "assume" makes an "ass" out of "u" and "me," I'm already much-impressed with my very pretty and wise sixth grade teacher...then...one day...she takes the class out to the playground...to sit underneath a tree...and to either read a book or just initiate the most frank and respectful discussion of sex that I have had with a teacher up until that point...it was so sweet...so unexpected...and such a beautiful thing for a teacher to do...

5) Senior year, college...my 4th year of school...my last year of forensics competition...Bond Benton, my best friend at the time, and my parliamentary debate partner, and I, go up to Willamette University in Oregon, that year, to compete at the National Parliamentary Debating Association's National Tournament...we travel with Bond's mom and her best friend up the coast of Oregon, Northern California, and Washington, making a trek, for the sake of his mom's friend, to see all of the covered bridges along the Northwest coast...they are beautiful...I pick up a copy of a National Parks' book with writings from famous conservationists like John Muir, Henry David Thoreau, and Ralph Waldo Emerson...and I write poetry, while visiting the Redwoods in Northern California, about coming to terms with my father...who he is, versus who I fantasized him to be...Bond and I unexpectantly get knocked out in octafinals (Bond and I were very competitive that year)...we very disappointedly continue our trip along the coast...and take solace in the beauty of our surroundings...

6) Senior year, college...post-forensics (I had several seniors year...three, to be exact:):):)...I have several one-on-one meetings with my favorite professor, David Ericson...my modern political theory class...I wonder if Dr. Ericson knows how much he influenced me with that class and with those meetings...Dr. Ericson is my primary advisor on a very good senior thesis on the Smith-Hughes Act of 1917, the first federal legislation in America touching education below the college grade, that I never submitted to a committee...Dr. Ericson and I spend several weeks talking about the nature of politics in democratic countries that profoundly affect the way that I think about politics...and touch me...that this brilliant man would spend so much time talking with me and helping me develop my own intellect...

7) Brandi and I spend 3 months in Washington, D.C., learning about politics...about love...and about the world...all at once...it was a total coming of age for both of us...and I learned so much, I can hardly count all of it...we go see Cornell West and Eugene Rivers, on Brandi's prompting, speak about race and poverty...we see just about every artsy theater movie that comes out within our vicinity...two very gay-friendly young kids from Wichita, Kansas with not a ton of experience with gay culture spend time just kind of absorbing D.C.'s gay district, Dupont Circle...we go to a gay bar where the patrons sing musicals, only to find very few people singing...but plenty of gay men to chat with...Brandi is the first girl that I rent pornography with...we work together...we live together...we take the metro back and forth, each day, together...I learn more about people in three months than I ever have before in my life...with one of the most people-savvy persons that I have ever met in my life, other than me...and I learn what it means to be deeply in love...an experience that I have yet to duplicate still today...

I think that last one takes the cake, really...and all of the subsequent learning Brandi and I do together...

8) Senior year...grad school...it's getting clearer for me that I'm starting to develop original ideas...the idea of which, itself, is exciting enough...not quite realizing, yet, just how much potential impact these ideas might have...I'm still very much mourning losing Brandi, but I'm getting stronger...and her leaving has prompted a flurry of study of every relationship/psychology/people book I can get my hands on...I read Stephen Covey's 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, Abraham Maslow's Farther Reaches of Human Nature, and Amartya Sen's Development as Freedom in that year, as well as a million other books...none of which are on a class reading list...all of which profoundly transform my thinking about people and the world...

9) December 2002-December 2005...I leave grad school to work on my original work, independently...frustrated with a relationship with an advisor that has begun to feel like an imposition and an obstacle to my education...I work several average joe jobs...learn about poverty, first hand, involuntary...learn a lot about the world outside of school, which I have been in for the last 12 years of my life...and write more independent, more original, more personal, more profound work than I have ever written in my entire life...Brandi's ghost never totally leaves me...but her cutting off all communication makes it clear that she is renigging on her promise to remain friends, no matter our relationships...I'm getting used to Brandi making the switch from always considering my feelings, because we were best friends, to never considering my feelings, because we were once lovers...an arbitrary change that I have no real control over...and I begin to depend less and less on friends and more and more on myself for final calls about my life...subsequent friendships only reinforce that trend...

10) 2005...Hurricane Katrina...I finally understand Joe Nye's caution that we take security for granted until it is gone...and I finally understand Hobbes...security and freedom are no longer abstractions for me...and Hobbes becomes my new best friend...though I'm still wedded to Mill and Locke and freedom...for good reason...because they are what all that security is for...

There's more...debate and forensics tournaments with Conrad Jestmore in high school and with the Wichita State team in college...my junior year Honors' English class with Elizabeth Taggart, as a beautiful liberal counterweight to the libertarian influence of Mr. Jestmore...Billy Budd and my senior year with one of my favorite teachers of all time, Zenobia Washington, for A.P. English...

And a million others, really...

All my best times have been either in school...or around learning and education, really...structured or unstructured...

My favorites are clearly unstructured...but it's much clearer to me, now, how, just as my freedom is only assured with adequate security...so are my more freely-explored educational experiences only made possible or as strong by my more structured educational experiences...

People who say that they're educations didn't matter...or that school didn't matter...to their lives...to their success...to their experiences...

Are bullshitting themselves...pure and simple...

The world doesn't turn out as well as schools because so few people really aspire to make the world that good...

But the world gets better...because of schools...and because of our time spent there...I'm sure of that, now...

I know my life was made better...

And thank you to every teacher -- formal or informal -- who made that possible...

Love,
Ben