The red carpet, the gowns, the formality followed by the requisite beach or bush parties, and general elevating and quick trashing of one’s soul… for what? Too often young people emerge from secondary education fog with little self-knowledge, not enough to half-fill the bindle-stick they’re going to take out into the world with them.
Truth: no one ever died from dropping out
But too many have died from staying in: the bullying, the sense of failure, the loss of self-knowledge — or skewed sense of self. It can be too much.
Where a Ninth Grade Education Might Take You
I have a brother who builds timber-frame homes, with cedar tree trunks in the living room. He has a grade nine education. Yet he is able to draft plans and execute, passing all inspections. These are not regular rancher-in-the-suburb plans, but mansions set into the sides of lake cliffs, and requiring vertical crawlspaces and engineering.
photo: courtesy of Travis Acheson
At the age of thirteen, he — coincidentally — built a four-story tree-house in our backyard maples. He is a classic example of “follow your passion.” It is not always so straightforward.
photo: courtesy of author—that’s me on the second floor, fourth floor out of sight
Less Straightforward
He at least completed grade nine. I did not. Halfway through that year, I decided to walk away and get on with life, so I stopped, went to hairdressing school, and owned a hair salon by age twenty-two. But was bored out of my mind, and returned to college, a very appreciative and mature student at twenty-five. The thought of skipping a class…? No!
In hindsight — 20/20 — I have to recognize that hairdressing school and writing saved me. That is, they allowed me to do that significant thing: connect with Life. Stick around on this planet, and make use of my time.
Hairdressing School
Hairdressing school had a requirement of one thousand time-punched hours, the only time in my life as a card-carrying member of the clocked tribe. That was six months for someone like me, who never missed a day. Those six months became a degree-worthy life program, with intense studies in geography Where are you from? West Indies? Portugal? Czechoslovakia? what…you escaped? It was 1980. And studies in gender and sexuality. Sure I’ll help you, young Chinese-Canadian fellow classmate, buy eyeliner across the street at Sears. At a time when to be young and male and buying cosmetics was tricky.
To another classmate: What do you mean, you are trying to be straight — is that even possible? and women’s studies. Why does your Czech husband not want you to learn English? There were Anger Studies too: a young woman, recently acquiring an ex-, decided to ink ex’s name across the forehead of her mannequin head, then shave the it’s head, and gouge out the eyes.
Oh my. I never looked at my own required mannequin quite the same way after that.
With daily eight and a half long hours in class, and four and a half hours traveling by bus, those were months of intense learning and growth. I learned more history, more sociology, philosophy, music… more, more, more… than I would have in any high school. I also learned a few things about finger waves, how to create a blonde, and what to do with a fourth strand in a French braid.
I was the youngest person by at least two years in that school. A lifetime exists between ages sixteen and eighteen. Most had completed high school. Some few hadn’t, but had worked minimum wage jobs and decided to acquire a skill.
An education in six months
Over those one thousand hours, I gained self-confidence. I also made lifelong friends, one of whom, in particular, has been a kindred spirit to this day. You cannot ask for more from a six-month period in your life.
My mother’s fear — that spending such time with people older would be problematic (my kindred spirit was twenty-two to my sixteen) — that they would try to entice me with “ways of the world” — proved grossly unfounded. My school-mates were caring people for the most part and watched out for me. Most were people who had traveled through challenges and were now resolved to make their choices work for them and even to extend that to others. In a word, they were good… though I’m not convinced my Fundamentalist Christian parents would have seen that.
Where Reading Might Take You
But our lives take a path and along with the dollar-earning of hair-cutting, my time was often spent in books. In my two years of apprenticeship, I worked in a number of salons, growing with each leaving. In the final salon I worked, before owning my own, I would read in the staff room between clients. I remember the owner, passing through that room, and doing a double-take at the book in my hands, The Brothers Karamazov. He asked, “Why are you reading that? You’re a hairdresser!”
Those words were a stopping point, a mirror I looked into. I liked only parts of what I saw.
The next week, the same man raised his eyebrows over my reading Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass, annotated edition. I’d been going to night school classes at the local community centre to take creative writing, taught — class after class — by an ageing woman from the UK, who was quite open about her beliefs that she was a “cultural missionary” to the Canadian wild-er-ness. I had a passion for those classes. Mondays nights I would walk far, over the Granville Street bridge into the West End of Vancouver. I eked the tuition from my skinny paycheck. Even then, I determined that someday I would write — whatever that meant. “You’re a hairdresser!” would not define me.
Writing too
I wrote as much as I could, writing around a fifty-five hour-plus work week standing on my feet all day, arms in the air with a blowdryer, succumbing to others’ assorted vanities. I wrote a lot. Except when I couldn’t. Except when I was smitten with what I’ll call “age block.” aka ‘Nothing to Write About.’
I didn’t publish my first novel for children until my early thirties. Honestly, I can’t remember exactly when. That’s all right. I knew I was no Mordechai Richler. It was all on my own timeline: “Embrace your life,” the Tao Te Ching says. That means being okay with the age at which you accomplish or experience failures, no? At fifty-eight, I can chart the oxbow-river tendency in my life: it looks so strange, the meandering, and makes its own sense.
At Risk
I was asked, as a writer, to share a presentation on “Careers in the Arts.” The teacher of the group was concerned about these young people I would be speaking with. She said they were “at risk” of dropping out. What does that mean?
Of course I know what it means… but I’m asking the question again, anew.
What would grind to a halt if one of those young people just left and found some work or even vocation, and began the process of adult self-knowledge? What would burn to the ground? Who would die? What would it matter?
But we behave and react as if it is the end of the world, as if high school supplies one with answers for how to have a job one feels somewhat enthusiastic about, and how to have a relationship that sustains us, and in which we can do some sustaining for another, and how to be a generous and caring friend, a wise parent, a mindful consumer.
What, exactly, does high school do for any of these quests? Why not acknowledge, and then seek out, what it is we want from our short lives in this place? Maybe secondary education has a role in that. And maybe it doesn’t.
Wonder is respect for life.
~ William Steig, words accepting his Caldecott Award for illustrated work for children
A quote I stop to consider often in my life and my work.
Is any young person filled with thirteen years worth of wonder as they walk down that red carpet?
Suicide, Bullying, and High School
Some years ago, all over the news, was the story of a young man taking his life. The word “bullying” featured in the reporting. I remember reading the note he left behind, which his parents chose to share publicly. I remember the words in that note that most wrenched my gut: words about the remaining years of school being too much to bear. The focus in the media and by school officials on that note was on the bullying. But my thoughts went to the nature of school itself, and the question of why did this young man feel he had to endure any more time in that place, even one more eternity-long minute of classroom doldrums, that stagnating existence, with no wind in any direction. The sense of being abandoned to fate.
Why not just leave? Walk away? Find a space that is a place of reprieve—as hairdressing school was for me . It might be a different town or city, or a new home, or a school to learn a specific set of skills, or a workplace. If some secondary courses are necessary to an end, then take one or two via distance learning; find a mentor. Even—horrors!—work in a coffee shop and meet other humans! Learn how to ask good questions.
Where Do You See Yourself?
The last time I endured a job interview, I was age fifty-one, and my spouse had died four months before after a year of intense illness. I was asked, “Where do you see yourself in five years?” A not atypical interview question, but my response was to burst out laughing. “Really? That’s a serious question? I have no idea where I’ll be.” Five years before I would have answered with all earnestness.
Why do we insist on timelines and adherence to them? We are supposed to be finished school at age eighteen and have a completed post-secondary degree by twenty-two, and a partner (yes, still… how is it that we still think this way?) by, what, thirty? And a child shortly after… why? All of these timelines place absurd pressure. And, if we’re honest, are meaningless.
Will the world tip from its axis if we own a business before we finish high school, or if our third child is flower-boy for our first wedding?
I do understand if there is a question of a young person spending their days doing nothing, staring at a screen, or lying in an unmade bed for months. But these are other issues, and require professional guidance. But if a young person goes out into the world and finds a place to be and do, wish them a good day.
I knew a woman who was fired from every job she ever had
Showing up to do something that someone else asked of her was just not motivating. Then, following an urge she had one day, she took a class in arranging flowers. And fell a little in love. She began to do this, finding business with hotels, and filling her old vehicle with flowers and driving them about. It became her full-time work. She stills does this, decades later. And although there may have been days when she was tempted, she’s never had to fire herself.
No one ever died from dropping out of high school
Maybe, in truth, the young person hasn’t a clue about their self. That might be a distinct possibility, given the system they have spent the past decade more or less within. Or they may not know their self because they have had no challenges. Or too many.
In Robert McKee’s book Story, about screenwriting, he says that an audience or reader cannot know a character until they experience the character facing a challenge and making a decision. And then more decisions. Maybe a decision that seems surprising. Yet isn’t, upon reflection. (If the reader has come to understand the character; if the character/person has come to know their self.)
Could it be that young people need to go out into the world, make decisions, have the choice backfire, or grow with the result? To learn who they are? Why do we hold them back from this?
Adults can be convinced they know better; even yesterday I had such a moment with my twenty-year-old, with the quick realization that I made an error in judgment. What DO I know?
A thought occurs to me: I was seventeen when I left home. I needed to leave home. Not because my parents were abusive, or some step-father was threatening me, or or or… so many possible “or”s. No, I needed to leave home because I chose not to follow their beliefs about religion, and I knew that as long as I lived under their roof, I could not become what I needed to be. Not a legal or seemingly serious situation, but to me, life and death. So I left home. And I was able to do this because I had full training and certification in a trade. I had a job, in an area in which I knew that if I lost that job, I could find another — quickly. I knew I would be able to take care of myself, and not end up “on the streets.”
Leaving home young was not something I planned
When I made the decision to leave school and go to hairdressing school, I was just following my gut, with an urgent need to get out of daily homework and math and science and those doldrums. For me, the leaving worked; it proved to be part of my path. I was actively “embracing my life.” The not-planning, the embracing life, sometimes dictates that we do things — we act — without fully understanding the why. To fully understand (and I’m not at all convinced we can) might mean waiting around, doing nothing… and sometimes, most times, I’ll dare say, we should DO… and trust that our do-ing follows our be-ing, our how-we-are, who we are. Young people need to do this too, maybe even especially. I’m not talking about rashness; I’m talking about when something feels intrinsically right, and one needs to act on it. We cannot learn that too young.
And we cannot understand all of what is behind others following their paths. I have a quiet moment of amusement remembering how the mother of a friend, when she learned I was leaving school, spoke with me. “You’ll need to learn how to type,” she said. “A girl can’t get through without knowing how to type.”
She did this out of love, I do know that.
Eleven published books later, and I’ve never learned how to type.
No one ever died because they walked away from high school.