EricMacKnight.com

Graduates,

I’ll begin with a story. One of my former university professors came to see me years ago for advice about starting a garden in his back yard. As we talked, I realized that he had no interest in gardening: he only wanted giant broccoli and giant strawberries. So I said to him, “Find a really good produce market and buy giant broccoli, and buy giant strawberries. Then go home and do something you enjoy.”

I’ll let you think about that for a while, and then I’ll tell you what it taught me.

Commencement speakers are expected to give advice: the elders, scarred but wiser because of their experience, attempt to save the young from making the same mistakes they made—or pass on some ideas that have worked. It’s not a bad tradition, so I’ll stick with it.

First. Take care of your body. Here’s the problem: by the time this seems really important it’s too late—you’re overweight and out of shape, with teeth that look like Swiss cheese and half a lifetime of bad habits to keep you that way.

You know you should floss your teeth and stay out of the sun, so do it! And stop eating garbage! Why do we believe that profits for food processing corporations mean good nutrition for us? Eat vegetables mostly, a bit of meat and fish as side dishes, fresh fruit for something sweet. Drink water. Don’t believe the milk lobby: read up on lactose intolerance and do your bowels a favour by leaving the milk for the calves.

You won’t lose weight by exercising—you have to stop putting all those calories in your mouth. You do need to exercise to stay fit, but you don’t have to buy a membership in a gym or run triathlons—a few sit-ups and push-ups, every day, will do the trick. Above all, keep your abdominals strong. You only get one body in this life, so treat it well.

Second. As some of you may know, I’m a big fan of cultivating good habits: they make life so much easier and more pleasant. But I won’t advise you to plan your life. Leave some room for chance, for surprises, for unplanned adventures. I will advise you, however, to plan your retirement.

When I was your age, men typically retired at 65, puttered about for a couple of years, had a heart attack, and died. Their wives, if they were lucky, were left with a comfortable pension and life insurance annuity. Living for two years without a salary was not such a big problem. Today, people retire at 60 and are then in danger of living another 20 or 30 years. By the time you are my age, it may be as much as 40 or 50 years.

Even 20 years is a long, long time to live without a salary. So however you live your life, plan for your retirement. Buy property, and hold on to it. Put money aside from every paycheque, no matter how small it is or how many bills you have to pay. Every paycheque. Seriously.

Third. Don’t vote for leaders who want to start wars, who appeal to fear, who try to divide people by making them afraid of each other, who want to keep the poor in their place and keep all the power for the rich and the corporations. We’ve had enough of all that, don’t you think?

Fourth. Try to find something or someone to live for besides yourself. Those of you who have had a positive community service experience will understand that the person who gives gets a lot more than the person who receives. By doing something to help others, something to make the world even a little bit better than it was, you will give your life a richness and significance that no selfish endeavor ever will.

If you’re not asleep yet you may still remember my former professor who wanted giant broccoli and giant strawberries. The story became for me a fable about choosing a career. Gardeners love every part of gardening: planning the garden, laying out the paths, digging the beds, preparing compost, sowing seeds, transplanting, cultivating, watering, and harvesting. If they get giant broccoli at the end, that’s nice; if not, they’ve still had all the other pleasures of the work. If you work only for the giant broccoli you get at the end, and you hate all the days leading up to that moment, you will be miserable. Instead, find something you enjoy doing every day; something you would do without being paid, if you could afford it. Then you will be happy in your work. Sigmund Freud, asked for the keys to happiness, famously replied, “Love and work”. I’ve given you best advice I have about work; for love, you’re on your own.

Thank you, and good luck.

Want to make schools better? Start with kindness and respect.

Imagine a school in which teachers always speak courteously to students, especially when pointing out a problem with their behaviour. A school in which students are never bullied into participating, but are invited without coercion. A school in which every teacher knows that before the obligations to teach students well and use their time productively comes the obligation to be kind.

Imagine how many students, with just that one change, would like school so much more. And begin learning more.

Teachers need a professional motto. Physicians have “Do no harm”, which would be a good beginning but doesn’t go quite far enough. How about a Golden Rule for teachers? Stated and restated by the Greeks, by Jesus, Muhammed, Confucius, and many others, it carries the dual force of universality and simplicity.

“Treat students as you would like to be treated.”

Is that so hard?

Apparently it is. But on the other hand it costs nothing, requires no negotiations with boards or unions, or even permission from the principal. Every teacher can begin implementing this revolutionary educational reform, right now.

I say, let’s start.

in which The List, it turns out, is not where the real work lies

My list is short:

1. Purpose. The purposes of schooling are too numerous, are often unclear, and frequently conflict with one another.
2. One Size Fits All. Educational Psychology 101 tells us that each individual grows and learns at his or her own pace, and in his or her own ways. We then put kids in classrooms according to age and teach them the same stuff at the same time and usually in the same way.

Kind teachers, enthusiastic teachers, inspired teachers can make a bad situation better.

But so long as the school is trying to do a long list of contradictory things instead of focusing on a short list of well-conceived goals, and so long as we group students by age with little regard for individual needs, nothing fundamental will change. Amelioration is the best we can hope for.

Underlying Assumptions

As I look at that short list, I realize that it will be helpful to dig a bit deeper. What’s my beef, exactly, with the purposes of schools? And learning theory aside, what’s so bad about kids going to school with their peers?

Schools are not charitable organizations—they are instruments of the state, and are designed to benefit the state. Much as I understand this, however, I don’t much care. The interests of the state interest me very little. It’s important to the state that our children be raised up to vote for one of the major political parties, and that they be prepared to hold jobs so they can pay taxes and contribute to the GNP. Fine. Wake me up when you’re done.

I do prefer to live in a society where people behave well, and where people are well-read, thoughtful, knowledgeable, healthy, and curious. These would be the aims of my ideal school.

As for the factory model of schooling—students grouped by age and taught on a conveyor belt—well, it’s all about the money, isn’t it? An 18th-century aristocrat, say, would never have sent his child to a school; he hired teachers to come to the house and, in the best of all possible worlds, a gifted and inspired teacher sensitively guided the child to explore his interests and discover new ones in a way and at a pace suited to that particular child. Of course children benefit, too, from interaction with their peers, but they don’t really learn much (academically) from each other, not at least until they are young adults. And they can interact very well with each other by playing together, doing sports together, going to camp together, etc. The success of the home-schooling movement shows how unimportant the school is. Let’s face it: if we could only afford it, we would all hire gifted, inspired teachers to teach our children one-on-one.

However, of course, we can’t afford one-on-one teaching. So we send the kids to schools that are funded by taxpayers who want their money spent well, i.e., as little as possible and never on activities whose value is controversial. And once the kids are in school Mom can go back to work, which is pretty much required these days, and that brings us to one of the most important purposes of schools as they exist today: babysitting. (If you think babysitting is only an accidental side-effect of schooling, ask any school administrator about sending students home for a day or two so that teachers can participate in professional development workshops.)

And therefore . . .

This line of reasoning brings us back to my list of the two most important problems in the field of education and tells us that neither of these problems is actually important, because they are part of the fundamental nature of schools. Or rather, they are not problems so much as they are essential characteristics of schooling. It is possible to pursue education without schools—home-schooling being the one viable example I know of, cyber-schooling being perhaps a derivative of home-schooling or perhaps, someday, something more. But so long as we are talking about schools, the two problems on my list will never go away. For the vast majority of students, therefore, we should focus instead on the pragmatic, unglamorous work of amelioration: what can we do within schools as they exist to make them less bad?