From Start to Finish: What's Important in Education

Examiner column for January 13.

            Next week a new semester begins at George Mason University, and that has led me to think about how we view education while we’re part of the process, compared to our views as we look back.

            What do my students want from my advanced composition class in the new semester? They want to improve their writing, and get a good grade—not necessarily in that order.

 

            Students realize that a high G.P.A. makes it easier to secure a job, or go to their graduate school of choice. Gone are the days when employers competed for the best graduates with signing bonuses and moving allowances. Employment is now a seller’s market.

            Teachers understand the grade-based mentality of their students. It’s no different from the test-based mentality by which society judges students, teachers, schools, and school systems. Much as we pay lip service to the idea that education is about love of learning, when we make decisions about where to go to school or where to move our families, we look at test scores.

            So we’ve bought into numbers-based evaluations of education. Yet spending time before the semester with Ruth, age 93, the last of the many friends my mother had during her lifetime, has led me to reassess what’s of lasting importance in education.

            What counts towards the end of your life is having the skill to tell your story. Students in my writing classes seldom recognize that value. “Our lives are boring,” they tell me. “We have nothing to write about.” Part of my job as their teacher is convincing them that their stories are as valuable as the fascinating ones passed down in their families.

            Although Ruth finished her formal education 70 years ago, she signed up for a writing class so she can record part of her life for posterity.  No one needs to convince her her stories’ value.

            For her first assignment, she’s chosen to write about the day she met her husband. “It’s only one page!” she complained. “Writing is much harder than I thought it would be.” As I looked at the page she thought was so inadequate, I saw great strengths: her humor, and her use of dialogue to capture the voices of those involved.

            I suggested she expand her descriptions to include more concrete detail—including colors, sounds, and shapes that would make her writing more visual. This is what I advise all my classes, advice many students consider part of my particular writing “bias.” What students don’t realize is that visual detail and inclusion of voice is precisely what makes a story memorable.

            Ruth will easily be able to expand on her excellent page, but what she knows at her age is something I wish my students could understand as they start classes next week. Education as a passport will help advance careers, but education as a tool that allows you to pass along your voice, ideas, and soul is more than a grade--it is a legacy for those you leave behind, for their children, and their children’s children. That aspect of education is immortal, and will allow generations to appreciate the day Ruth and her husband met, as well as your own family stories.