having finally had a leisurely afternoon to fully realize it, i must declare that i have a crush on harper’s magazine. not only do they have a column featuring probably the funniest thing from the whole weekend: “cards used in puttanopoly, an italian board game in which players are prostitutes trying to survive life on the streets”, the best by far which was “They find your skeleton in the forest. You lose all your money and the game,**” but also a curious article on the real role of compulsory education being to homogenize and sedate minds instead of inspire achievement and foster intellect. Here’s a fun quote to tempt you to read the article yourself and teach your kids (assuming you ever have any) not to fall prey to the machine.

“We want one class of persons to have a liberal education, and we want another class of persons, a very much large class, of necessity, in every society, to forgo the privileges of a liberal education and fit themselves to perform specific difficult manual tasks.”

–Woodrow Wilson, then president of Princeton University, to NY City School Teachers Assoc., 1909

for a six page article, i found it very thought-provoking, and it made me wonder how i would have turned out had i not escaped to a specialty school for promising young nerds instead of completing a full, normal public high school track. i know some of my early nihilist tendencies which later abated to simple thoughtful independence of opinion really took hold thanks to some challenging and unique teachers i’ve had, all due to my ‘honors’ status. i’d like to think that no matter what, my literary tastes would have kept me at least informed and intelligent, and led me to my own questioning and considering instead of nodding and accepting. though i am very grateful to have received a jump start from some respected minds who had something to offer.

sometimes i feel like i should teach some day just in hopes that i could break a few people out of the track to plainness. of course, trying to change peoples’ lives seems to be frowned upon by the school system, so perhaps i’ll just start a cult. or a book club. wouldn’t that be neat!

[now hearing this: soundtrak – ‘available memory’. opened for hey mercedes, were pretty good, and are downloadable here.]

**footnote: the original read, “your skeleton is found in the woods…”, but we all agreed that forest sounded funnier. it’s all translation anyway, you know?