January Series Reflections: Pedro Noguera

NOTE: The content of this post was originally authored for a class I'm taking this Interim on Calvin College's January Series. This content was written to be a short, one page reflection prompted by a speaker's presentation. Therefore, this post does not have much context and has not been edited (or perhaps through out) very well. It is essentially just some of my very rough, incoherent thoughts that will not be backed or exegeted well due to the nature of the original assignment.

Being raised in the rural, remote Upper Peninsula of Michigan, thinking about inner-cities and all of the problems they face is a difficult task for me. I feel that Dr. Pedro Noguera did a wonderful job in getting me to better grasp the true depth and breadth of the problems that public inner-city educational systems face. A list of such problems is quite extensive: poor or no healthcare, overpopulation, economically depressed neighborhoods, broken families, poor and dangerous living conditions, instability, and perhaps most of all, a lack of hope.

Perhaps the greatest contributing factor to this lack of hope is the frustration that we all feel at seeing politicians and government officials make the same plans and promises as their predecessors: plans and promises that we all know will fail and be broken. Yet, I don’t think that most of us believe that the politicians and officials are stupid or purposefully being wasteful and ineffective. Rather, I think we realize that there is a large disconnect between the people and the policymakers; an abyss separating the two. Both sides wonder why they can’t reach the other while an abundance of resources is futilely thrown into the chasm. The people can’t figure out why they aren’t receiving the resources they believe they are entitled to and the policymakers are scratching their heads in bewilderment at the ineffectiveness of the resources they are distributing. If we are to begin addressing and fixing the inner-cities’ myriad of problems then we must first effectively deal with the central problem inner-cities face – providing a quality education in public schools.

To best do this I believe that policymakers need to have more direct contact with both the people they makes policies for and the environments in which such people live. Looking at reports and lists of statistics and numbers may be useful to some extent, but creating policies and solutions solely based on such figures isn’t good enough. The public education system not only needs, but deserves more. Policymakers need to spend ample time in the worst public schools and the harshest neighborhoods that such schools’ students come from. If we don’t have a full, comprehensive picture of the problem (specifically all of the problem’s factors rather than just how the factors manifest themselves) then how can we expect to have a real chance at solving the problem? Can you really expect to solve a complex math problem by only looking at the numbers and not the operations involved? Without practical, firsthand knowledge of public schools and their students our theoretical and detached knowledge becomes very limited in usage capability as we have no proper way to apply it.

Can we fix public school systems? Sure, but it’s clearly going to take a lot of work and not just on the part of policymakers. While they do need to go out and engage with schools and communities, the schools and communities need to reciprocate such engagement, opening up and joining in the difficult process of helping outsiders understand a specific brand of culture. Not only do they need to be open and helpful, but they also need to better understand the sense of entitlement that so many of them possess. What are people currently entitled to in regards to their public education and what should they be entitled to? What does such entitlement presuppose from the individuals that possess it? These are the questions that we must all come to answer if a better public education system is to be achieved. While answering them may be challenging, choosing not to answer them will only lead to greater challenges.

Film Ideology: An Education

I realize it's been quite some time (over two months) since I've updated my blog so I've decided to post something I wrote about six months ago just to having something new up here. I am hoping to write a short series of posts on a few various topics relating to Christianity (including things such as the negative influences of Platonism on Christianity, "reasonable" hope, Christian conflict, animals in The Kingdom of God, and the economics of Christianity) over the next few months or so - I've been extremely busy this semester taking 18 credits of Spanish, Physics, and Philosophy which is why the posts won't be sooner. Anyway, I hope you enjoy some of my thoughts on the film An Education. (Note: If you haven't seen the movie there are spoilers in my post so go and watch it - it's an excellent film - before reading this post)

“The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.” – Aristotle

In today’s world one can see, and in no short supply, conflicting views on not just what an education is worth, but also what an education is. Some call high school a proper education; others may scoff at this sentiment, going on to say that college is the truly adequate education. The arguments don’t end there however, with certain individuals declaring graduate school as the only worthwhile education and others completely rejecting the concept of institutionalized education all together, saying that one is not “educated” until he or she has begun to independently live and work among the general population. In the film An Education, this power struggle regarding the meaning of an education takes center stage, compelling viewers to examine and perhaps even reevaluate their view on the meaning of an education.

An Education is a 2009 BBC film following the development of a teenage girl, Jenny, in 1960’s suburban London, and how an older man, David, enters into and drastically alters her life. The movie contends that an education is more than any sort of institutional degree, arguing that it’s experiencing things first hand - making mistakes along the way that profoundly shape an individual’s life both positively and negatively. What the film suggests is that an education is in fact what many would call a worldview with an emphasis on experience shaping it. The film acknowledges that institutional schooling is important, but seems to argue that it is a means to opportunities in life rather than a direct path to developing a worldview. It is the opportunities in life, and an individual’s responses and experiences regarding these opportunities, that shape who people are as individuals.

An Education makes a strong argument for experience being the cornerstone upon which individuals build their worldviews. “’Action is character.’ I think it means that if we never did anything, we wouldn’t be anybody. And I never did anything until I met you.” In the film, Jenny, the protagonist, seems to routinely be caught between the ideals of her proper, traditional middle-class parents and David, an exciting, vibrant, thirty-year old. There is a stark contrast between Jenny’s parents’ dull, conservative lifestyle to whom playing the cello is a hobby, and apparently the only thing their daughter should do outside of school work, and David’s live-life-to-the-fullest-every-second-of-every-day-no-matter-what lifestyle. Due to her upbringing coupled with her recent experiences with David, Jenny completely misunderstands the meaning of “action is character.” Having lived a life of relative boredom with her monotonous parents and now experiencing all kinds of sophisticated things with David, Jenny uses this as a confirmation that her parents are in fact nobodies and that she is doing the right thing by continuing her relationship with David. Her whole string of thought is rather ironic in the context of where it occurs in the movie. Just previously to this scene, Jenny finds out that David is nothing more than a glorified confidence man and thief, seemingly doing whatever he can to make a buck - Jenny finds this out after watching David steal someone’s painting. David is able to justify his actions, to himself and Jenny, by saying, “We’re (referring to he and his friends) not clever like you so we have to be clever in other ways; because if we weren’t, there would be no fun.” Since Jenny is eventually taken in by his arguments, her worldview is forced to change in order to accommodate the meaning of “action is character.” Instead of taking it to mean (as she likely would have before she met David) “the type of actions one does reveals/builds his or her character” she now can understand it as “doing anything” is character in and of itself. There’s no denying the importance of experiencing things in individuals’ lives, and, as one can see with Jenny, these experiences do radically shape people’s lives and views.

No experience shapes a life more, and causes one to question the choices that he or she made, than that of a mistake. Mistakes are almost always recognized in hindsight rather than in the moment, partially due to individuals’ own pride and stubbornness and also due to an incorrect worldview. By observing Jenny’s father, Jack, this fact becomes perfectly clear. Throughout the film, Jack is seen as a rather stingy, uptight, slow-witted fellow. He can probably be best described as one of those people who acts as if nothing gets by them when in fact just about everything does. Jack pushes harder and harder throughout the film for Jenny to go to Oxford. It becomes clear that his reason isn’t for her to simply get an education and become a better person when he routinely puts money ahead of Jenny’s education and own interests. What viewers eventually find out is that Jack values financial security more than anything else. He only becomes aware of how foolish this philosophy is after Jenny drops out of school and finds out that David is a married man. He’s extremely upset with Jenny and her actions until she points out that silly school girls are always seduced by older men – their parents are the ones that shouldn’t be. Jack realizes that he’s made the mistake of allowing David to hurt Jenny’s life due to his mistaken belief that financial security is what matters in the world. “All my life I’ve been scared and I didn’t want you to be scared. That’s why I wanted you to go to Oxford.” Jack’s allowed his own vision of what he thinks the world should be like, Jenny marrying a rich husband, obscure how the world actually is - Jenny being tricked by an unscrupulous man. When at last he accepts this, Jack can finally take the correct view, encouraging Jenny to go to Oxford so she can learn and be happy. This, along with Jenny’s complete experience throughout the film (that there’s no easy way in life or as she says, “The life I want, there is no shortcut”), shows us that any education worth having comes with its share of trauma.

As much as one would like to say that an education is a good thing, after having many experiences and enduring suffering to get it, one realizes that everyone’s worldview is different and both positive and negative things stem from just about any worldview. David clearly has had his fair share of experiences and mistakes. These however haven’t seemed to give him a good education or positively affected his worldview. A line David says early on in the film, although said in a joking manner, probably best describes his worldview formation. “I study what I believe they call the university of life. I didn’t get a very good degree there.” We see throughout the film that David’s education has indeed failed him. Yet, even Jenny’s worldview at the end of the film isn’t without its own negative aspects. An Education was based on the memoirs of Lynn Barber, whom the character of Jenny is based off of. Here’s what Lynn had to say about her entire experience, “What did I get from Simon [The David character in the movie]? An education - the thing my parents always wanted me to have. I learned a lot in my two years with Simon. … My experience with Simon entirely cured my craving for sophistication. By the time I got to Oxford, I wanted nothing more than to meet kind, decent, straightforward boys my own age, no matter if they were gauche or virgins. … But there were other lessons Simon taught me that I regret learning. I learned not to trust people; I learned not to believe what they say but to watch what they do; I learned to suspect that anyone and everyone is capable of "living a lie". I came to believe that other people - even when you think you know them well - are ultimately unknowable. Learning all this was a good basis for my subsequent career as an interviewer, but not, I think, for life. It made me too wary, too cautious, too ungiving. I was damaged by my education." The film shows how wonderful, and yet still terrible, an education can truly be. It also illustrates how profound of an impact individuals’ mistakes can have on others close to them. When it comes to developing worldviews, it would appear that many people have some sort of stake in the process.

An important thing to remember is that a worldview is not a static thing; it’s dynamic, incorporating all of one’s mistakes and experiences. This in turn means that individuals’ worldviews can continually impact their lives in new ways, both positively and negatively. With so many variables and choices in a person’s life today, living a good, positive life may be seen as an extremely intimidating task. However, people can take comfort in the fact that everyone makes mistakes and that these mistakes can only make one stronger if one is willing to acknowledge and learn from them. Yes, getting an education and developing a good worldview is hard, but the end result is sweet.