18-Feb-2007: Dropping Out
A recent event in my immediate family brought back a memory of the time I dropped out of high school. I like telling people that
I am a "drop-out," because, as I have mentioned before, I do not fit the preconceptions of others. One irony is that I went on
to teach senior high school English literature for eight years. Rather than languishing in "Mac-jobs" all my life, I went on to a very
high-flying high-paying career. To do all this, I had to go to university. I did that. Nothing brought the irrelevance of high school
into prospective as vividly as my first day of attending classes at a large university (Sir George Williams U., now Concordia U. in
downtown Montreal.) For the first time in my educational career everything fell into my hands. I could choose the courses of
study that interested me. If I failed, then no one would be shamed. The professors could care less. I was following my path, not
one set out in concrete by members of school boards and governments.
Most of my public school career was focused on failure. My hand-writing was terrible (so bad, I once got the strap for it); my spelling
atrocious. I ignored most of what was going on in the classroom, so I was always missing assignments that I hadn't heard about. I was
required to take courses I had no interest in (such as Latin). I would probably have loved science classes, especially considering my life-long
interest in the sciences, if it hadn't been all about rote memory work. I have a terrible memory. Maybe remembering the valency of oxygen
or the atomic number of iron is a good thing, but, in most of my real career, if I didn't know something, I would look it up. The concept is the
important thing, not the unvarying tabulated details. That's why I can do tax returns so quickly and accurately: I can look up the exact date
that child support ceased to be tax deductable for the payer and taxable for the payee if I need to.
But, that's just me. Other kids seemed to thrive in that kind of environment. With me, it was always adults shaking their heads wondering
what was wrong with me.
So, my attitude towards my children and problems with their teachers was to try to reverse the idea that high school is the most important thing in one's life,
and, that there was nothing wrong with my children if they did not achieve the standards the school boards set for them. I certainly wasn't
measuring their success by the number of "A's" on their report cards. I was always more interested in seeing them develop as self-confident independent
thinkers and individuals. I didn't always succeed in that. Heaven knows, I was not, am not, the best role model nor teacher. I let my children down too
many times that I am scarred for the rest of my life with guilt. And, there was the youngest, who struggled with the double handicap of being both
extremely bright and a victim of ADD. Put that together in a remote country setting where intelligence was measured by how much beer you could
consume and still avoid the cops on the drive home and you have a kid bound to experience school as one constant failure. I supported him the best I could,
and his mother and I spent many wasted hours with teachers and school officials trying to educate them on the rudiments of ADD. Towards the
end, I, out of frustration, started harping on his grades along with everyone else. I am sorry I did that. I was very much in his position at his age.
Despite the doctors, social workers, and school officials urging me
to get tough with him, I should have been more supportive and understanding.
Life is full of things I should have done.
When I was 17-18 my school career hit an all-time low. I have lots of excuses, like the fact that I was literally starving to death on a budget of
between $7.00 and $17.00 a month for food. The physical effects of that period are still with me. I was angry a lot of the time. Partly from general adolescent
despair, partly from having survived a difficult childhood with no, or little, adult support, and partly from my situation where I was forced to call teachers and
beg them for a meal (which I tried to restrict to once a week). But all that is an excuse. By that time my interests had shrunk to one subject: music. School
was a misery of trying to memorize long lists of Latin words or Pythagoras' theorems. I had no friends at school, having alienated them.
Still, I struggled with what others were telling me was the road to success: submitting to the rules and letting teachers define me in their terms. I'd
like to say that my decision to drop out was a considered philosophical one, but, it wasn't. I started sleeping all day. Eventually I simply stopped trying to
please the school officials and started looking for a job. It was a refreshing change to be able to buy food and to be among people who didn't give a damn
whether or not I could recite the names of Britain's monarchs from 1066 to the present, in order of rule.
Not that I was a very good employee. Far from it. I was still angry and resentful and still had trouble getting up in the mornings. But, as quickly as I was
fired from one job, I found another and somehow got through the next couple of years until I was stable enough to hold down a decent-paying long-term
job. Once I had accomplished that (by working in the Chemistry Department of the University of Toronto for 18 months), I went off to university.
I have often told friends that the reason I didn't push my sons to excel in the public education system was because I felt it was more important to be
self confident. They already have the brains. The rest is up to them to be what they need to be. They learned from their mother and me that there
are many paths through life and, hopefully, secure in the knowledge that we will always love them, they will find themselves and be happy.
Dropping out is not a failure, despite what the society and governments around us might think, but is simply giving up on a path that is not leading one
in the right direction. You'd have to be pretty stubborn or stupid to keep slogging away on a path that is leading east when you really need to go west.
All my life people have been proud to tell me that I'm going the wrong way—as if they know better than I do what I aspire to. If I do give them
hints, they give me all the wrong advice and don't listen to me. I like being the exception. My wife and sons are exceptional people too.