Education Medication

I started preschool when I was five. I don’t like to brag…except that I do actually like it. So if you’ll bear with me, I’ll share with you my greatest accomplishments of 1997.

Did the teacher give YOU a certificate for best memory? Maybe so. But I still have mine. Show me yours. Bet you can’t. That’s right, guys. At the ripe age of five years old, I had the BEST memory. I’m sure it was this big of a deal to me then, too.

At some point in the year I guess we did some kind of thing where we drew a picture and then told the teacher what we drew (as much as I wish my handwriting was that great back then, too). Here are a couple of signs that I was destined to one day be the next Bill Gates.

“I wrote my name. It’s a gun. It’s a crayon gun. It’s shooting my name. It’s shooting bullets out.” Yep. Genius. The police were only called once, I think. 17 years ago is still a little fuzzy to me. I can say with authority, though, that I was not a violent child and I only killed two people with my crayon gun.

“That’s an old lady. I know an old lady who swallowed a goat. She thought it was for dinner. She ate all the other animals. She swallowed a cow. I don’t know how she swallowed a cow!” I must have lost touch with the lady with an appetite bigger than Hulk Hogan. Maybe she died from a protein overdose.

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So there I was, guys. Ready for elementary school and everything that could possibly come with it. I was armed with the best memory, a violent mind, and an imagination about elderly people eating live animals. I was going to take over the world.

Until it all changed.

I took my best memory through elementary school with ease. I didn’t have any trouble remembering something until I was in 4th grade. On Fridays we had a spelling test over the words we had been learning that week. I don’t like to brag, except that (again) I really kind of do, but I was runner-up in the 4th grade spelling bee that year. I took the Matt Elementary cafeteria by storm in front of everyone. I made it to the last round with some chick Chelsea who probably has a kid now and the word was humidity. I didn’t ask for a repeat, so I thought I heard a different word. I spelled the wrong word and lost. I moved on. Eventually. Anyway, that week I had been having trouble with the word ‘thoroughbred’. The pressure was real with that silent ‘ugh’, so I wrote it on my hand. I was busted for cheating and was told that I would never be able to do it again and get away with it. (Hey, Mrs. Moore. You were wrong.)

I knew that my parents wanted the grade, so I chose to cheat. My teacher wanted the grade. Everyone involved with influence cared more about me making a grade than they did about my learning. Learning is not evidenced by what someone can put down on a test paper.

So I cheated my way through school. I’ve never really had to flex my brain until my Communication Law class (damn you, Greg Lisby). In the last 17 years I’ve written answers on my hands, arms, desk, shoes, and phone case. My camera roll is full of photos of book pages on test day. I’ve recorded myself speaking, bought clear headphones, put them underneath my long hair, and put the voice track on repeat. I’ve gone into my professor’s office when she wasn’t there to change test answers. All to make a grade, because I knew that was the ticket. Who cares what you learn, as long as you’re able to put it on a test paper.

I, along with any other college student I know, have cheated my way through school to make a grade, because school superintendents, governments, teachers, mothers, fathers and presidents value grades over growth. They think that grades are sufficient evidence of actual learning when they’re not. Teachers are forced to teach to the test, cram concepts into short time periods, and even these days are on merit-based pay where their salary is based on performance of standardized tests– standardized tests for students that are anything but standard.

The cost for me to attend Georgia State University in what will be my 5th year is $17,140. If I needed a loan to cover that, at least the federal government cares about college students. I’m able to sign a piece of paper and borrow as much money as I want! (With 8.5% interest…) No, we live in a world where not even the highest form of government gives a damn about anything besides test scores and dollar signs.

I learned how to count in school, but not how to do taxes (or what taxes even were). I learned how to identify the red elephant and the blue donkey, but never how to register to vote. I learned how to write my name, but nothing about the signature line at the end of contracts or legal documents. But thank God I know that (say it with me) A SQUARED PLUS B SQUARED EQUALS C SQUARED.

If learning was something all kids enjoyed then maybe more of it would take place. It’s all about the numbers. It’s all about grades. It’s all about state test scores. Getting into college is all about your score on a standard test while they claim to ask you to define why you’re anything but standard. It’s all wrong. School is expensive and the cost is rising. HOPE scholarship is dwindling and will one day be gone, and eventually I think the educational bubble will burst. As it should.

Schools kill creativity when they should foster it. 

So here I am about to graduate. My major is public relations, but never has any professor of mine taught me what it actually is. My memory is still pretty good, but I can say with authority that college has taught me nothing other than that it’s a cruel world out there, driven by egocentric guys in suits who only care about numbers.

School sucks. It never even taught me why that old lady swallowed that damn cow.