I was well armed and prepared to write about the lack of success of charter schools today, but then I read Babsray's Blog, and my head went off in an entirely new direction. So much today depends on how focused a kid is and what planning and action goes into their lives from early on. So much of their ultimate success depends on how their parents help them into their futures. Perhaps this has always been so to an extent, just more so today.
Then there are people like Babs and myself. Our parents raised free-range children. We were given some basics in human behavior and a work ethic at home. We were given some overarching basics at school on the American way and its ideals. Then we were cut loose to figure the rest out for ourselves. We were given very little direction. We were allowed to choose whatever we wanted as long as it made us happy and it was considered socially acceptable. We often hid those things that weren't socially acceptable from our parents and did them anyway.
Babs grew up in rural Northern Iowa and I in central Arkansas. We both had a degree of innate intelligence and were both reasonably attractive so we were both popular in school. Neither of us had a clue who we really were, nor who we really wanted to be. We both left high school with high hopes and a burning desire to get out of Dodge. We both ended up, kerplunk, at a university about 2 hours drive from where we grew up. Then life got complicated. Didn't have a clue what we really wanted from life and had to muck about for a while to discover what it was that was eating us up from inside.
I didn't know if I wanted to be a rock n roll star or a nuclear physicist so I got a degree in political science, went off to Illinois to graduate school, and somehow ended up doing improv comedy shows in bars. Paid the bills doing everything from loading trucks to clerking in bookstores to being a pharmacy technician. Did some acting, writing, directing, sang with garage bands, and hustled pool on the side. Moved around a lot and never got rich and famous. Somehow managed to get an education degree, an advanced education degree, and a certificate saying I could be an educational administrator. How'd that happen? Still not sure to this day.
As for Babs, she definitely muddled about a bit as well. She got lost in the immensity of the University of Minnesota, did a two year program in commercial art, sold car stereos, clerked in bookstores, eventually got a 4 year degree, and set off on a pattern that included proofreading, editing, writing for newspapers and magazines, writing for academics, and writing and writing and more writing. Guess what? She became a professional writer.
Along the way Babs and I have seen the world, the Arctic Circle, the Sahara Desert, and the remotest parts of the Pacific Ocean. We have transformed our lives from one of total lack of direction, just this side of poverty, to one that apppears to have substance and direction and has taken us to the Gold Coast in Chicago. Now we appear poised to move ahead one more time and find a comfy retirement in a warm climate, with swimming pools, tennis courts, and beaches. Sounds like we've done pretty well. It's just not the way anyone would advise you to do it. It has been a meandering path with lots of very interesting twists and turns and that is what makes us who we are.
My hope is that America will remain flexible for our children and our children's children's children. May it always be so that a person can meander and muddle and take every odd turning that presents itself and become a better person for it and have lots of wonderful stories to tell. May it always be possible for the unique individual to come through all of that unharmed and able to die in comfort, if not wealthy. Otherwise, what will become of our writers and musicians and artists of all ilks? Our society is enriched and better for it for allowing at least some of us to blunder into the future, rather than planning it all from the time we are in diapers.
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