A Terrible Bind
One of these days, I hope to publish in Elle or Marie Claire. Why? Did you know that Walter Kirn writes for Elle? I didn’t, until I picked up a copy. One of my best friends has written a couple of pieces for Elle, which led me to browse. And man, they have some dynamite writers. A friend just told me that Ariel Levy has a piece in the new Marie Claire. Ariel Levy is my favorite writer. Now, I’m about as reluctant to buy an issue of Marie Claire as you might expect, but sometimes you have to suck it up and do right by your favorite writers. I’m told that Levy, America’s wittiest, most stylish writer (who is also crazily beautiful), writes on her adolescent acne, and that’s it’s a really thoughtful piece.
Some years ago, I read and enjoyed Keith Fleming’s The Boy with the Thorn in His Side, a memoir of his teenage years. He talks about his disfiguring acne, and about how no one in his childhood ever stated the obvious — he was moody, he was troubled for some inexplicable reason. Only Edmund White, his uncle and a pioneering gay novelists, noted his horrible acne and said, shortly after Fleming arrived in his care, that something needed to be done immediately.
I think about this sometimes — the immense frustration of being a teenager, and of being constantly told things that are obviously false. Which is why I think mentorship needs to be a far more important part of education — having people you like and trust to teach soft skills, and to cut through bullshit. This informs my very mixed feelings about the medical profession, but that’s an entirely different matter.
Which is why I think mentorship needs to be a far more important part of education — having people you like and trust to teach soft skills, and to cut through bullshit.
You’re perfectly right of course. The problem is, any set mechanism that existed to pair mentor with mentee would defeat the purpose, or so it seems to me.
— Freddie · May 11, 01:46 AM · #
Impressive blogging jag! I couldn’t ignore this:
…if only to give you a high five. I really couldn’t agree more. And I suspect this is an area where a centre-right, Cameronian approach to education policy might make an actual, positive difference in students’ lives. Now look out, because I’m going to start sounding like Andrew Sullivan, but it’s just like Oakeshott said: being conservative in politics lets you be radical in everything else. I’m a certifiable radical in education (secondary education especially) because I wouldn’t wish the actual education I got (at a middle-class Canadian public school) on anybody.
Freddie’s partly right to say that
but the point, I think, isn’t to “engineer” mentorship opportunities; it’s to create the conditions where mentorship emerges spontaneously. Of course, that’s a really vague statement, and purposefully so. Mentorship is the goal. The charter schools themselves can figure out how to make it happen in their particular context.
Tim Burke has written some good stuff about rethinking the liberal arts college ; I feel the same way about the bog-standard public high school.
Finally, all this fits my ‘four kinds’ Theory of Everything beautifully. We have, in North America, put too much stock into a one-size fits all system, and in a way treated the round pegs as if it their fault the square holes couldn’t accommodate them. It’s time for true acceptance that, hey, people are really freaking different, and diversity in learning styles has to mean genuinely diverse learning environments.
— Tim · May 11, 04:22 AM · #
Excellent point about mentors. Those soft skills really do matter.
— Ed · May 12, 06:07 AM · #