Misanthrope's Corner - Americans hate learning, love education - Brief Article - Column

National Review, Oct 1, 2001 by Florence King

No day goes by that I am not reminded of the achy-breaky emptiness of my life as a childless spinster. My sources are the endless stream of how-America-lives coverage on TV and the Family Section that no newspaper would dare go to print without. Both outlets regularly run features about mothers who get less sleep at night than I get in my afternoon nap, and who worry constantly about child car seats that eject little passengers, swimming-pool drains that suck out little guts, Cracker Jack prizes that get stuck in little windpipes, pierced teenage tongues that develop infections, exposed teenage navels flashing stop-and-go lights-you name it, I've missed it.

This year, however, I came in for a surprise. For the whole month of August we were bombarded with features about what I always considered a routine errand, but which has now been bumped up to a crisis: shopping for school supplies.

Yes, you heard me right, but your mental picture is all wrong. It's no longer a matter of stopping by Woolworth's for a pack of notebook paper and a few pencils. There is no Woolworth's now, and since "stopping by" Office Depot or Staples is physically impossible, the typical feature showed a shell-shocked woman pushing a supersized shopping cart down an endless glittering aisle arrayed with a city block's worth of paper clips.

It was a Bataan Death March movie, with the grinning Japs played by children poking and prodding their captive parents through the blister- pack jungle to fill the cart with items they cannot be educated without: daily planners, organizers, calculators, spell checkers, electronic dictionaries, electronic translators, electronic pencil sharpeners, sequin-dappled gel pens, backpacks in every color, theme binders to match the backpacks, index cards to match the theme binders, rulers to match the index cards, and scented highlighters.

When you alert Americans to their latest problem you must bring in experts to back you up. The usual bevy of earnest child psychologists and family-relations gurus held forth on how backpacks engender a sense of belonging, what to do when color-coordinating turns compulsive, and how peer pressure "impacts" loose-leaf notebooks (three holes for nerds, two for the in crowd). On the practical side, consumer-affairs mavens offered ten tips on how to make a no-nonsense shopping list and, for mothers who weaken, how to cope with what one maven actually called "sticker shock."

What in the name of Good King Herod is going on? There is more to this than the familiar marketing strategy of creating demand for products that people don't really need. What struck me as I followed these stories was the sense of almost giddy pleasure tinged with relief that came through the comments of experts and parents alike, as if the spectacle of children lusting after notebooks and pens proved something they desperately needed to believe.

It does. Like the doctor's bag and the carpenter's tool belt, school supplies are the outward, visible sign of a purposeful life. The shield hanging over the medieval guildsman's workshop that identified his area of expertise survives today as the backpack hanging over a slouched adolescent shoulder. American parents are only too happy to risk exhaustion and bankruptcy to stuff it with designer composition books and talking thesauruses because they can then tell themselves that if kitting their children out is this much trouble, they must really be scholars.

Self-delusion pervades every aspect of American education. The humble "diploma" is no more; now it's called a "high-school degree," and what used to be the schoolground has been promoted to "campus." The time- honored symbolism of the cap and gown, initially travestied when high- school graduations appropriated it, has been rendered meaningless now that elementary schools increasingly are making it the attire of choice for graduates of the sixth grade. The watchword here is the fancier the better: fire-engine red or kelly green satin gowns and gilt- tasseled mortarboards for little phartlings who can barely read. Stand by for the beneficiaries of social promotion to start wearing master's hoods.

We kid ourselves in these ways to avoid facing an unpalatable truth: Americans love education but hate learning. If you doubt it, parse our revealing catch phrase about the need to "make learning fun." The obvious retort-"Dammit, it already is fun!"-is fatal because it requires you to draw a distinction between education and learning, and once you do that, you threaten everybody, because hatred of learning is our only remaining source of national unity. We can't very well pearlharbor it with the old bromide, "It brought us together," but in fact it has: The egalitarian Left scorns learning as "irrelevant," while the philistine Right chortles, "It won't help you make a living." Actually, it makes life worth living, but if you dare say so, both sides will call you an elitist.

I have tilted at each of these windmills. In 1970, having made some real money for the first time in my life, I decided to go back to college and perfect my French as I wanted to do in my girlhood. I didn't want a degree-I already had one-I didn't want credits; I just wanted the intellectual pleasure. I contacted a department head at a New England college, but I couldn't make her understand. She kept talking about degree requirements and teaching jobs, and I kept talking about my intellectual pleasure, but the phrase meant nothing to her. We were talking past each other. It depressed me so much that I shelved my project.