Reading, Sorting and Education

I have always had a love-hate relationship with reading. In elementary school I found reading out loud to be very challenging and I think if it hadn’t been for my brother, I might have been sorted into the lower ability group. I struggled through and eventually got the hang of it. Fortunately for me, my brother was a year ahead of me in school and I almost always got the teachers he had had. He was always good in school. He had (and still mostly has) a mind that can retain facts and theories and then organize and use them appropriately. I never felt that bright, but assumed I was tracked into the ‘smart’ group because my teachers assumed that I had the same natural ability as my brother.

In high school, when it came time to consider what colleges to apply to, I brought my list of Dartmouth, Amherst and Princeton to the guidance counselor who said that although these might be appropriate schools for my brother, I should look into the next tier. American schools are essentially about sorting children into various ability groups. This sorting presents itself as necessary, rational and merit-based, but is actually unnecessary, irrational and privilege-based. And college admissions is the ultimate educational sorting mechanism—the ultimate manner in which the privileged can ensure their privilege passes on to their children. All presented in the guise of a meritocracy.

My father was a small-town church minister and growing up, we didn’t have much money. But he was a ‘professional’ in the community. My mother and her mother with to Smith College and my grandfather had a PhD from Cornell University in soil science. From the time I was twelve years old, a paper-back copy of somebody’s guide to colleges and universities was in permanent residence on the coffee table of my grandparents’ house. My brother and I eagerly poured through it with the same enthusiasm we looked at baseball gloves in the Montgomery Wards’ catalogue.

In the ‘Monkey-Ward’s’ catalogue, there were always three categories of gloves and Louisville Slugger bats and bicycles and the other things we coveted: good, better and best. The best was clearly extravagant and while we were careful to say that we would be happy with good, we figured that better was probably worth the extra money. So we were well-trained in quality ratings and understood that ‘most selective’ meant most desirable.

I loved looking through that catalogue of colleges. The thickness and weight of the book was a reassuring reminder of the wondrous life that lay ahead of me. The exotic names of schools in far places—Occidental, Harvey Mudd, Pomona—had me dreaming of the hidden worlds of promise that would open to me. I carefully studied and read each school’s strengths and considered whether big or small, urban or rural would be best for me.

In my family it was important not to appear inflated in expectation or wants, but it was clearly important to understand the relative positions of these schools and, if possible, get into the ‘best’ one possible. Doing well enough in school to get into one of these schools (on scholarship) was one of the many never spoken assumptions of my upbringing.

I ended up going to Wesleyan University, not a brand-name school at that point, but clearly a ‘quality’ school. I had done an overnight visit to Amherst College and was incredibly impressed that the fraternity house where I was put up was ‘on tap’ 24 hours a day. I even had a half-glass of flat beer one afternoon that tasted like soapy water. This was clearly the good life even if I didn’t quite understand it all yet. But someone told me that if I liked Amherst, I should check out Wesleyan.

Wesleyan changed exposed me to people and ideas far beyond the world in which I grew up. I learned to read enough to get the gist of things and found out that it was not just my brother paving the way for me, but that I had the capacity to absorb and consider new ideas and perspectives.

I actually meant to write this morning about the piles of book that regularly grow in my bedroom where the bookshelves are filled beyond capacity and I still order important books. I’ll never be able to read half of what I would like. I wish I loved sitting and reading more than I do. After half and hour, I get creaky and impatient to move, but I treasure the knowledge and perspective I continue to get from reading. I love the feel of a book in my hand and the thrill of new ideas that spark connections in my head and I underline the important parts and make my notes of agreement and association in the margins.

But I am grateful to my parents and grandparents who did, through this all, instill in me a love of ideas and a curiosity about the world. How can I repay their generosity in supporting me to go into a world beyond their understanding with their blessings and wishes that I might find my way and use my talents to serve this burning world.