The Student Life

Chapter-6

Polishing symbols

Just about everything that happens in school /colleges after second grade involves rearranging symbols.

We push students to quickly take the real world, boil it down into symbols, and then, for months and years after that, analyze and manipulate those symbols. We parse sentences, turning words into parts of speech. We refine mathematical equations into symbols, and become familiar with the periodic table.

The goal is to live in the symbolic world, and to get better and better and polishing and manipulating those symbols. That's what academics do.

I f on the interval then, If converges, then so does .If diverges, then so does

.

I love stuff like this. The manipulation of ever increasing levels of abstraction is high fuel for the brain; it pushes us to be smarter (in one sense). For everyone else, it's a distraction from truly practical conversations about whether to buy or lease a car, or how to balance the Central budget. Symbol manipulation is a critical skill, no doubt. But without the ability (and interest) in turning the real world into symbols (and then back again), we fail. Pushing students into the manipulation of symbols without teaching (and motivating) them to move into and out of this world is a waste.

It doesn't matter if you're able to do high-level math or analyze memes over time. If you're unable or unwilling to build bridges between the real world and those symbols, you can't make an impact on the world.

Back to the original list of what our society and our organizations need: we rarely stumble because we're unable to do a good job of solving the problem once we figure out what it is. We are struggling because there's a shortage of people willing to take on difficult problems and decode them with patience and energy.

My ignorance vs. your knowledge

School /colleges is not merely occupational. It used to be, a long time ago, but then, in addition to work training skulking up, the Academy skulked down. It became important to our culture for even the street-sweeper to know what a star was, to have a basic understanding of the free market, and to recognize Beethoven when he heard it.

In the rush to get a return on our investment, sometimes we forget that having knowledge for the sake of knowledge is a cornerstone of what it means to be part of our culture. The shift now is this: school /colleges /used to be a one-shot deal, your own, best chance to be exposed to what happened when and why. School /colleges was the place where the books lived and where the experts were accessible.

A citizen who seeks the truth has far more opportunity to find it than ever before. But that takes skill and judgment and desire. Memorizing a catechism isn't the point, because there's too much to memorize and it changes anyway. No, the goal has to be creating a desire (even better, a need) to know what's true, and giving people the tools to help them discern that truth from the fiction that so many would market to us.

I don't know what your destiny will be, but one thing I know: The only ones among you who will be really happy are those who sought and

found out how to serve.– Albert

Seek professional help

There seems to be a cultural unfairness against getting better at things that matter. School/colleges has left such a bad taste that if what we need to do to improve feels like reading a book, attending a lecture, or taking a test, many of us tend to avoid it. Consider how easy it would be to get better at:

Giving a presentation

Handling a cooperation

Writing marketing copy