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Tag Archives: education

University of Chicago Convocation, 1983

words and images Posted on June 11, 2019 by dlschirfApril 7, 2020
University of Chicago commencement, 1983
University of Chicago
AB degree, English Language and Literature

It was 36 years ago today . . . wait, that sounds like a Beatles song. Anyway, here I am, young, hopelessful, and unemployed. When I woke up on Monday, June 13, it was the first time in my life I had nowhere to go. Adrift. Typical because planning isn’t my forte, but it wasn’t a good feeling. I was too burned out and poor for graduate school to be an option.

After spending part of the summer selling Chicago City Ballet tickets by phone (really), I found a full-time job starting in late September through the classifieds in the Chicago Tribune (really).

One job I interviewed for that I didn’t get — a writer/editor for a dietitian association (if I remember correctly). Why didn’t I get it? I couldn’t type fast enough.

Still can’t.

Posted in Blog, Life | Tagged Chicago, education, nostalgia, photo, work | 2 Replies

Don’t let the sun go down on you

words and images Posted on August 24, 2005 by dlschirfJanuary 10, 2019

I’m not through with silly advertising, but I’m going to take a very brief detour into slightly different territory — a t-shirt I observed downtown the other day on the back of a young man. The text was:

Where the only thing to go down on you is your GPA.

T-shirt

“Hmmm,” I thought. “That sounds like something that someone at the University of Chicago [A.B., 1983] might say.” I discreetly stepped up my pace and took a look at the front — where the shirt sported the University of Chicago name and logo.

This wasn’t a lucky guess on my part. The University of Chicago ranks high academically, but near or at the bottom socially. If you want to learn how to think and analyze, go to the University of Chicago. If you want to have fun (however you define fun), go somewhere — anywhere — else. And if you want to not have fun with people who look like they’ve stayed up all night in an earnest attempt to find something original to say about Thucydides and who enjoyed the exercise, you’ll definitely want to attend the University of Chicago.

If you want to have fun with someone who looks like they don’t know and don’t care who Thucydides was and who is gearing up to get through their public speaking class on the road toward that coveted mass communications degree, then the University of Chicago is a good place to avoid.

Of course, if students at the University of Chicago wanted to surround themselves with fun peers, they might think twice about wearing discouraging t-shirts that advertise the university’s renowned lack of appeal to the party animal extrovert. But then it’s just possible that surrounding themselves with people who read Thucydides is what passes for excitement.

At this point, I’ll admit that I too wore such a t-shirt. It had been designed for the all-male house next door. It showed the Brooks Brothers sheep on the front; on the back, under my long hair (which people would boldly move aside), were the words:

Upper Rickert: Where the men are men and the sheep are nervous.

A former t-shirt

I wore the shirt for years — even after someone helpfully explained to me what it meant.

Twenty-five years ago, someone would have had to explain to me, “Where the only thing to go down on you is your GPA,” too.

No wonder we didn’t have fun. We didn’t know how to.

Perhaps the University of Chicago needs to add sex education to the Common Core.

Posted in Blog, Reminiscence | Tagged Chicago, education, Hyde Park | Leave a reply

Overscheduled child

words and images Posted on April 2, 2005 by dlschirfJanuary 8, 2019

Years ago during the Yuppie Era, a free Chicago magazine featured a story on “Relief for the Overscheduled Child.” I don’t have children, and my friends with children live far away, so this struck me as amusing, but it didn’t mean anything to me. Later, I would read more about stressed parents taking stressed children from one planned activity to another, filling nearly every waking minute with structure.

While a certain amount of structure is important, this concept in child rearing struck me as rather sad. There’s enough time for structure when you’re an adult, working your 9–5 day or 11–3 shift and having superiors tell you when you’re to work on which projects, when you’re to attend meetings, when you merit a raise or a promotion, and even when you’re free to take a few days off.

School provides a similar structure for kids; why do they require their time to be planned 24 hours a day, 7 days a week? Especially if they would need “relief” from this hectic schedule? When do these children lie back on the grass and find the dragons among the clouds? When do they empty their minds and let their imaginations inspire their dreams? When are they alone long enough to hear only the voice in their mind that tells them who they are? When do they find their individuality? When do they form meaningful bonds with the members of their own families? In some cases, when do they see members of their families outside of a structured activity? When are they free?

At the same time, a coworker would tell me about her children’s education. Like many parents in Chicago, she didn’t trust the Chicago Public Schools, so she paid money that she couldn’t afford to send her kids to Catholic schools where the academic standards are presumably higher and which graduate more of their students than CPS. As they got older, she told me ruefully, “My kids made the honour roll again. In fact, 80% of the kids at the school made the honour roll.”

To me and to my coworker, this sounded like only truants and kids with behavioural issues missed making the honour roll. Where is the sense of accomplishment, of pride, in being recognized simply for not being a bad student, for being adequate? Where is the motivation to excel? To achieve all that you can, when the reward is apparently the same for all? Part comes from within, but when working hard earns the same reward as getting by, how long can internal motivation last before it burns itself out for lack of external fuel?

These issues are still around in 2005. Recently, the UCLA Center on Everyday Lives of Families, one of six long-term projects sponsored by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, examined the intersection between family life and work. Researchers found that children and parents are so wrapped up in their activities that they often do not bother to greet each other. The family life that everyone seems to idealise and work for through all these structured activities is far from ideal. From an MSNBC article: “The American kids spend less time at home and virtually no time in the yard. Play time tends to be organized and supervised by adults.”

What is the result of all this structure, all this family “togetherness”? According to the MSNBC article: “Using computers, scientists mapped the location of each family member throughout the home every 10 minutes. Originally, they planned to conduct this electronic roll call every 20 or 30 minutes. But they found themselves chasing their subjects from room to room as they orbited one another, hardly pausing.

“Ochs says families gathered in the same room just 16 percent of the time. In five homes, the entire family was never in the same room while scientists were observing. Not once.”

60 Minutes recently aired a segment on the Echo Boomers, currently ranging from grade school to college age. They make up one-third of the U.S. population, so they are attracting the interest of marketers and researchers alike. These are the children of the Yuppie Era. These are the “Overscheduled Children” of the magazine article.

As one commentator noted, Echo Boomers have been told what to do, when to do it, and where to go every moment of their lives. It was also pointed out that they have been rewarded for everything they do, e.g., achieving honour roll as a reward for not failing school. One Echo Boomer girl said, “Everyone gets a trophy.” If everyone gets a trophy, what meaning does the trophy have? How is a trophy any different than, say, a sandwich? Everyone gets a sandwich, too.

Asked about Echo Boomers in the workplace, a researcher said that they expect to rise fast. They require praise. At the same time, they are unable to plan for the long term. They cannot think strategically. They also demand instant gratification; they grew up with FedEx and movies-on-demand. The Echo Boomers are heavy consumers as well; when a young man was asked if he has an iPod, he replied, “Isn’t it a law?” One implication is that, “We are all the same, as we should be.”

What does this mean for the future?

Possibly not much. Great minds, those driven by ambition, curiosity, and ideas, will continue to achieve great things, as they always have. The rest of us will continue, as we always have, to produce what our society requires, more or less efficiently.

I suspect, however, that the work performed will be mediocre, produced as it is by consensus, often without vision. What are the implications in a competitive, global marketplace? We used to complain that everything was “Made in Japan.” Then it was made in Taiwan, now China. The U.S. has adopted a service economy, a type well suited to the Echo Boomers, who would rather please than produce or take risks. But they will be a nation of consumers who produce nothing.

How will the Echo Boomers raise their children? The same way in which they were brought up? Or will they rebel against structure and mediocrity — like their flower child parents once did before achieving “maturity”?

How many times has this cycle repeated itself, each time more intensely?

It would be interesting to be around in 50 years.

Posted in Blog, Rumination | Tagged education, society | Leave a reply

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