Noah Brand’s eccentric mother offered an alternative to his senior year in high school. He regrets turning her down.
There was a pretty predictable pattern with my late mother. I’d tell friends and contemporaries stories about how she did this or she said that, how she pulled this on someone or got off a punchline somewhere else, and they’d nod and smile the way you do when your friend spins a yarn you’re privately kinda dubious of. Then they’d meet her, and again and again I’d be told “Dude, holy shit. I thought you were exaggerating, but she’s really like that.” She was a character, an eccentric, a larger-than-life figure who left a trail of anecdotes behind her like the various reading glasses she could never find.
One of the ballsiest and coolest things she ever did is linked to one of my own greatest regrets.
The town I grew up in had the UC Theatre, a crazy old Depression-era movie palace with one giant screen, where a different double feature would play every day of the week. I’d go every so often when there was something cool-looking playing. Classic movies, foreign movies, weird little local art-house things, Rocky Horror every Saturday night.. Sometimes they’d have a film festival for a whole week, but most weeks it was months-long themes like Hong Kong Thursdays and Noir Mondays.
Also, real butter on the popcorn. That is not a small deal.
For unrelated reasons, I left my first high school after being “suspended pending psychiatric evaluation”, a phrase I would put on my résumé if I could. My mom was going to let me go back to school until she found out that they didn’t give a shit about me, they were just worried about their insurance rates. At that point she got furious and refused to let me return to that school because fuck those guys. (Her phrase, not mine.)
Instead, she made me an offer. She told me I could just take a year off of high school entirely. Instead, I would go to the UC Theatre every day and watch both features, no matter what was playing. She’d pay for the whole thing, including popcorn. But I had to go every day, even if it was something I wasn’t interested in. She pointed out that I’d probably get a better education from that than from a year of high school.
And I thought it over and said no.
Like a dimwitted teenage asshole who thinks Truffaut films are boring and high school is actually important, I said no.
DAMMIT.
I wound up going to a different school and had other adventures and learned other things, but I’ve spent nearly two decades regretting that sick, stupid teenage delusion that high school matters more than art. When I try to remember what I learned at my second school, literally the first thing that comes to mind is “long-distance driving” because it was three counties away. Possibly also a couple novels from English, but … nope, can’t quite bring ‘em to mind. Compare that to what I’d have learned from 600 or so movies from every genre and country on earth. In hindsight, teenage me wouldn’t know an education if it bit him on the ass.
When I’ve told folks about this, they often assume that my mother’s offer wasn’t sincere, that she was kidding or testing me or something. These are always, and only, the people who still think high school was important, who never learned better. Me, I did learn better, but too late.
Possibly just as well. An entire year of popcorn with real butter might have wreaked permanent damage on my arteries.
—Photo credit: o5com/Flickr
About Noah Brand
#epicfail (lol)
Seriously, though, I do think that we place high school as too high a priority for everyone. Some people need that push to finish, and finishing is important. And education is definitely important. But I think we have too narrow a definition of education, at the moment…and too narrow an understanding of the purpose of education.
Instead of using it as a tool to teach and open up minds and what-not, we’ve institutionalised it to the point where it can end up being nothing more than a bunch of hoops you have to jump through to reach the finish line: graduation. It’s a shame. Frankly it doesn’t help the people who aren’t interested in academics…and it doesn’t help the people who are interested in academics either. I went to a public high school and except for jazz band, drama, and my one calculus class, I was mostly bored to death.
What I would have given to skip year 11 and 12 and be in a learning environment with electronics, robotics, CNC machines and other stuff to play with. I LOVED electronics in school but we only did 1 project, soldering a storebought kit. That would have helped me more both in enjoyment and learning than the shit I put up with in year 11 and 12.
Too bad my parents weren’t rich and couldn’t just buy me my private tutor to learn with:P
Given the way that people who didn’t graduate high school are regarded I think we can say that maybe just a bit too much emphasis is put on the “you have to get an education or you will be trash!” line of thought.
Thank you for your article. This was the most education I’ve had in a long while.
“Education”
Isnt what you will have in the high school.
@Gabriel: Your question will lead you somewhere new today.
Nice story.
I did my high school at 43-46 years old, and I loved how much I learnt.
OTOH, if I did the same thing in my teenage years, I’d probably learnt a tenth of that…
Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
(Albert Einstein)
Education is a method whereby one acquires a higher grade of prejudices.
(Laurence Peter)
When a person discovers what he wants to learn – that’s when his real education begins.
(Duke Ellington)
There are obviously two educations. One should teach us how to make a living and the other how to live.
(James Truslow Adams)
I just finished my 5th year at my arts program (public and free) high school. I have been so lucky to be at a school where the teachers actually wanted to teach as much as they could and where students are generally kind (very queer-friendly school, very little bullying, no cliques). I managed to take challenging science and math courses, as well as the kind of arts courses that would send us to Torobto to create experimental public theatre, dance and music courses, university level art history, writer’s craft, and business courses. My teachers and peers introduced me to hundreds of ideas, inventions, poems, movies, theories, experiments, etc, and from this I learned about what education really is. Which is to say that I love the idea of 600 films as education, or homeschooling, or unschooling, or dropping out, or doing whatever will help you learn.
Post-script: Unfortunately, our school board (which, due to the way Ontario organizes education, only has two members from my city despite it holding the large majority of the population they serve) has decided to close my school to solve enrollment issues in other schools in this city (which led to some interesting lessons in civics when we protested, since the board responded with a variety of legal and illegal measures).