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We want to do well at school for an obvious reason: because – as we’re often told
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– it’s the primary route to doing well at life. Few of us are in love with the A
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grades themselves – we want them because we’re understandably interested in one day
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having a fulfilling career, a pleasant house and the respect of others. But, sometimes,
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more often than seems entirely reassuring, something pretty confusing occurs: we come across
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people who triumphed at school – but flunked at life. And vice versa. The former stars
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who once knew exactly how to satisfy their teachers may now be flatlining in a law office,
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or relocating to a provincial town in the hope of finding something better. The path
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that seemed guaranteed to lead to success has run into the sand. We shouldn’t actually
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be surprised: school curricula are not designed by people who necessarily have much experience
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of, or talent at, the world beyond. School curricula are not reverse engineered from
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fulfilled adult lives in the here and now. They were intellectually influenced by all
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kinds of slightly random forces over hundreds of years of evolution – shaped by, among
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other things, the curricula of Medieval monasteries, the ideas of some 19th-century German educationalists,
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and the concerns of aristocratic court societies. This helps to explain the many bad habits
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that schools can inculcate. They suggest that the most important things are already known; that
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what is is all that could be. They can’t help but warn us about the dangers of originality.
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They want us to put up our hands and wait to be asked. They want us to keep asking
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other people for permission. They teach us to deliver on, rather than change, expectations.
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They teach us to redeploy ideas rather than originate them. They teach us to respect
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people in authority – rather than imagine that – in rather inspiring
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ways – no one actually knows quite what’s going on.
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They teach us everything other than the two skills that really determine the quality of adult life:
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knowing how to choose right job for us and knowing how to form satisfactory relationships.
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They instruct us in Latin and how to measure the circumference of a circle
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long before they teach us these core subjects: Work and Love. That said, it isn’t that
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all we need to do to succeed at life is flunk school. A good life requires us to do two
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very tricky things: be a very good boy or girl for 20 years; and simultaneously never
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really believe blindly in the long-term validity or seriousness of what we’re being asked
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to study. We need to be outwardly entirely obedient while inwardly intelligently and
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unashamedly rebellious.
