Classroom tables
Photo by Ivan Aleksic on Unsplash
November 27, 2024
There are the neat rows with the desks bolted to the floor. The curriculum is a parade of Pythagoras, periodic tables, and the precise dates when one despot succeeded another—a relentless march of facts and figures, all dutifully recorded, memorized, and regurgitated. Amid this meticulous routine, they forget to mention a few things.
They don't teach us that life is less a linear equation and more a chaotic scramble, a tangle of variables that refuse to balance. While we're busy calculating the angles of an isosceles triangle, no one warns us about the acute angles of moral dilemmas we'll face, the obtuse decisions we'll inevitably make. They neglect to mention that the world doesn't fit into the tidy boxes of multiple-choice questions; it's an essay exam with prompts that mock preparation.
We're left to navigate the labyrinth of credit scores, mortgages, and the dark arts of taxation with nothing but a vague recollection of pre-algebra. They drill us on the exports of distant nations but remain silent on the economy that will govern our every move. The stock market is as foreign as the moons of Jupiter, yet its whims will sway the ground we stand on.
Emotional intelligence is treated as a byproduct, an incidental outcome of social interactions in overcrowded hallways. Teachers don't delve into the complexities of the human psyche. Depression, anxiety, the gnawing void of existential dread—these are absent from the glossy posters promoting college fairs. We're expected to navigate the emotions of adolescence, untrained and overwhelmed.
Relationships are reduced to cautionary tales of abstinence and vague warnings about heartbreak. There's no syllabus on love's taxonomy—the infatuations, obsessions, or quiet comforts of long-term companionship. They don't explain how to mend a fractured friendship or when to walk away from a toxic entanglement. We're left to learn these lessons in the theatre of real life, often at significant personal cost.
They fail to teach us that failure is not a dead end but a detour, sometimes the most enlightening part of the journey. The stigma of the red ink and the shame of a low grade instill fear of mistakes that can paralyze ambition. Innovation is lauded in textbooks but discouraged in practice; conformity is the curriculum. Original thought is an elective few can afford to take.
The art of skepticism, the discipline of questioning the given—these are glossed over in favor of compliance. Yet the world is rife with half-truths and manufactured realities where nothing is quite what it seems. Without the tools to dissect and discern, we're at the mercy of those who construct the narratives.
They forget to teach us how to be human in an increasingly inhumane world. They neglect to teach us how to cultivate empathy in a culture of self-interest, find meaning in the mundane, or remain sane when the absurd becomes the norm. Then again, maybe it's not a matter of forgetting but a deliberate omission. A humane populace is dangerous—capable of critical thought, prone to random acts of kindness, and unafraid to challenge the status quo.
We emerge from institutions, diplomas in hand, ill-equipped for the realities that await. The lessons that matter most are those we must learn on our own in the unforgiving classroom of life. There, amidst the chaos and uncertainty, education begins—a curriculum without end, a series of lectures delivered by experience, punctuated by the occasional epiphany.
They forgot to teach us. Yes, that’s right. Some knowledge can't be spoon-fed; it must be tasted firsthand to be truly understood.
This post is republished from the Rev. Richard Bryant's Substack blog "Elevate the Discourse."