Okay, fair warning: this is going to be one of those, “Back when I was a kid . . .” columns. Anyway, back when I was a kid, we actually went to school. Well, okay, not really—but at least we had the common decency to pretend we were going. We got up in the morning, put on our school clothes, ate a healthy breakfast, grabbed our backpacks, kissed our mothers goodbye and then headed down the street to the bus stop—whereupon we climbed into the back of a Bronco filled with teenagers and cheap beer and spent the day goofing off at the river, only to show up back at our houses at approximately the same time school let out sunburnt, dehydrated, and full of “learning.”
Today’s kids, however, will have none of that. When they don’t want to go to school they simply stand in the kitchen and say things like, “I’m not going to school today (this week/this month/ever again).” And then they turn around and go back to bed while we are still standing there, all dressed for work and gibbering.
The ensuing battle usually ends up with them being resentfully deposited in front of the school, us being late for work, and everyone else looking up “gibbering” on their iPhone. (“Oh, I see: ‘to speak inarticulately or foolishly.’ Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.”)
Those of you without school-age children (the non-gibberers) are probably reading this and thinking, “Well, so what? At least this way they actually end up going to school; they actually end up learning.” Which, in a way, is true. They do end up in school. They do end up learning. Unfortunately, though, what they end up learning is only the stuff that can be found in books.
Hey, I’ve got no problem with the stuff that can be found in books (see gibbering, above). But on the road to adulthood there’s quite a bit more to be learned than how to use the subjunctive (as it were). There’s other stuff, too. Important stuff. Stuff like, well, how to ditch school. And when they stand in the kitchen and announce their intentions not to go to school they certainly aren’t learning how to ditch. (True, you could argue that they are learning how to argue, but saying a teenager needs to learn how to argue is like saying a fish needs to learn how to swim. Learning how to ditch, however, is another matter entirely—that’s more like teaching a fish how to get the worm and still spit out the hook.)
My worry is that we are raising a generation of kids who have no idea how to malinger; kids who don’t even have enough sense to hold the thermometer on the lightbulb when they pretend to have a fever. Who don’t know how to create convincing cover story for a fake sleepover. (“No one answered when you called the number I gave you? Yeah, that’s because they’re super religious—they’re not allowed to use technology after midnight on Saturday. Midnight in the Old Country, that is. So, like 6:45 here.”)
I am sure there are some people out there who are still saying, “But why would we want our kids to learn how not to go to school?” For those people, the answer is this: because the kid who doesn’t know how to get out of school (without whining to their parents) grows up to be the adult who gets every crappy assignment at work because they never learned how to “ghost” out of the boss’s way. Or worse yet, gets the crappy mission during wartime because they were the only soldier in line who didn’t know to step back when the call went out for volunteers to “step forward.”
Actually, that last reason is really all you need.