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My mother wanted me to get a job. I am fairly certain of this because when she got pissed off at me or my siblings she reminded us that when we were old enough we 
were to get a job and then get the hell out.
Other relatives also reinforced the message that I should work hard, graduate and then get a job to help out my mother. It was what they believed to be true. I knew that my mother felt that 12 years of schooling was more than enough. It would have been tolerable if I had decided to go to a trade school; which in those days it would have required attendance at night school to learn how to be a secretary.
I wanted to go to college. I wanted an education.
Maybe my mother felt that it was a waste of time. Perhaps she was protecting me in not allowing me to dream past the practical. Perhaps my mother was protecting me from what she believed to be institutional blocks of class and race.
I don’t know. We never talked about it. My mother did not stop me from attending college. She also did not support or encourage my efforts. I was on my own in figuring out how to get into college and how to finance my education.
You see, I was paying attention to what my mother and relatives communicated. I saw how hard it was for her to raise a family on almost minimum wages. Being exhausted and underpaid does not inspire maternal June Clever warm and fuzzy behavior. It was hard. Some days it was too much to bear without anger or tears.
I worked part-time as a teen. I knew crappy jobs. I specialized in crappy jobs like the restaurant owner who did not believe in hot water. Part of my day was spent washing dishes in that joint. In winter.
I didn’t last long.
There were other jobs that cringe in memory. The people with “good jobs” who were miserable, cranky and about to go psycho at the least variation of their carefully constructed empire of cubicle power dictates.
Yet the mantra was graduate high school, get a good job.
I did not have illusions about going off to an educational Disneyland. I wanted to go someplace where people wanted to talk and think about the big questions.
I listened to the voice within. I went off to college. I struggled through disappointment. It seemed like a sped up version of high school. Teachers talking and I was stuck listening: some times to a fool. Occasionally there would be inspired exchanges but routinely I was bored.
It did not matter that I worked as I attended college. The rank troopers like Pepper and Skippy did teach me that there was an educational inequality in our respective public school education.
They taught me that the meritocracy they spoke of wrapped around their necks like a shield might have been their parents’ money and not necessarily any effort they specifically had put forth toward their education.
I did much better with the campus activities and groups. The school radio station, a community silk screen art center, or volunteering. My grade were ok. I just wasn’t good at being a student drone.
The days leading to my dropping out were filled with a counselor trying to tell me discretely tell me that not everybody is cut out for college, perhaps a trade school would be better. A instructor, who did not want female students in his class, did his best to purged out as many as he could.
I took longer than most of my class but I dropped out of formal education and created my own. I eventually found the right schools that actually meant what they said about education and dropped back into the fold, on my terms.
Why Am I Telling You This?
I feel the current debate about education is centered on vending machine outcomes. Not what a specific person needs at a given place and time. We are so locked into the mantra of if you follow a directed path you will get a perfect result and ipso facto a perfect life.
Life really doesn’t work that way. How many recovering lawyers do you know?
There are a range of educational options, not absolutes. The goal of education to me is to provide as much life flexibility as you can acquire. It is
