Too often intellectualism has been treated as the mark of a schizophrenic–of someone whose thought processes are divorced from reality. But also too often have intellectuals refrained from truly translating their theory into practice, supporting the anti-intellectual’s case by default.
I often express the more poetic side of my nature in my free time, but somehow have never seriously considered doing so more fully in my life. Monday morning arrives and I arise to subject myself all over again to the emotionally abusive grind. The analytical part of me, however obnoxiously and to my dismay, continues to writhe up from its oppressed innards to my mind’s surface. It shoots out of my searching piercing haunting eyes as my unceasing ruminations on society and nature push me ever further on my life’s parabola-not toward a schizophrenic theoretics but toward a different sort of mental illness-a more general madness (or is this sanity?)–an increasingly anxious malaise.
All of the apparent and persistently espoused logic that made my mother insist on my going to law school (the same logic that made me refuse to go to law school) continues to propel me down a path of learning and questioning to formulate solutions to whatever problems I ponder. When I was a kid, I’d lie awake at night trying to figure out how the world could be saved (seriously). Fortunately, the bigger picture doesn’t keep me up at night anymore; I’ve learned to focus on a smaller locus of control. At the end of every question, I found that love and education were always the answers, and so I have arrived at certain beliefs in solutions and am willing to commit a lifetime to contributing toward their pursuit. That is all that saves me from giving up on everything that surrounds me.
I grew up in a slightly shady part of South Baton Rouge, and my knowledge of North Baton Rouge extended to the intersection of N. Foster and Gus Young where I attended Greenville Elementary for five years. EBRPSS’s desegregation plan had me on a school bus for about 2½-3 hours per day, taking me from a majority black neighborhood in the Burbank/Gardere area to the larger majority black area where Greenville Elementary sits. From first through fifth grade, prior to attending McKinley Middle and Baton Rouge High, I sat in Gifted/Talented classrooms full of mostly white and Asian students. At recess, there were sometimes memorable playground interactions and incidents between the “gifted” kids and the “regular” ones that served as lessons, especially when I would report them to my mom in the evenings after school. She was vehement in her reminders to her young daughter that I was no better than any of the other students in my school, or anyone else. I was in my twenties before I realized the extent of North Baton Rouge and learned that the oft-joked about intersection of Airline & Plank wasn’t a true intersection at all.
Because my job has me working with schools strewn across the northern half of my hometown, I often find myself making new connections between my city and my perception of it as I travel down old roads, past old houses, for the first time. I reflect on how a decades-long desegregation case failed to fix our schools. I reflect on what I know needs to be done to get good teachers in every school. I reflect on all I am ignorant of that needs to happen. I reflect on how, in that revolutionized system, I would do whatever it took to be worthy enough to gain a teaching position. And if I were not good enough, I would respect that, too.
For those on the outside, our low-income youth are often viewed as a faceless, nameless lot, devoid of individuality or talent. That perception is a lie. It reduces them to a mass-produced stereotyped shell that in no way encompasses the vitality and potential that lies therein. Too many people still call the problems of poverty ‘insurmountable’-those people are ignorant. There is hard proof to the contrary; the problems are surmountable indeed. Without condemning families and communities that have had to struggle historically and presently to get by, we need to expand the attractive life choices available to these kids.
Disenfranchisement comes in many forms. Education has been perverted in our culture, so that it not only keeps disenfranchised our low-income youth, but it disenfranchises an entire generation of capable, educated adults who see few options to live comfortably while thoughtfully, diligently and positively shaping our society’s culture. Most see no benefit to being an educator of students in pre-K to 12th grades and so take alternate routes into supposedly lucrative careers of medicine, law, or business; intellectual careers in higher ed; or, at a loss, stick to the service industry or state jobs. Or, like me, they work in education but outside of the classroom. ‘Educators,’ currently, are too often nothing of the sort. It is the fundamental problem in our educational system and general society, and, if fixed, would be revolutionarily liberating from the collective mental slavery that binds us and drives some of us to a limiting but functional madness. Education is the passing of culture. By how much we value these fundamental shapers of our shared reality, we make our own choice. If most people don’t do their job, people are inconvenienced. If teachers don’t do their job, our society will degenerate into increased chaos and move that much closer to its collapse. So instead of considering the artistry and analytics within me as opposing forces, I’ve finally realized (thanks to the CEO of Netflix) that creativity and discipline are both integral to balanced growth. I can consciously move on with positive passion and healthy doses of both, as the battle within me has ceased.