Every once in awhile you encounter a situation that makes you step back and think about how society shaped the way you dealt with it. At work a few days ago I was a little taken aback by a very inquisitive customer. He was in town house hunting and was a little bit too excited to finally find a native working in one of the shops. At first I thought I was dealing with a case example of "man comes in looking for his wifes lotion in hopes to surprise her with a lovely thoughtful gift" and began using my skills of fragrance deduction to discern his wifes tastes. However, the conversation went something like this:
"Does she like floral or fruity scents?"
"Are you from here? Like I mean were you born here?"
"Uh ya..."
"Where are the good neighbourhoods you know good for families I'm up from Toronto house-hunting"
"Uh... well I grew up in Barrhaven its great for families, full of them" (people call it Vanhaven there are so many although I didn't think this was an appropriate comment)
"Oh Ok whats the real-estate like there?" (do I look like I know anything about real-estate I'm trying to sell you body butter!)
"Uh I wouldnt know I'm with my parents at the moment..." (not that I would know these things anyway...)
"Oh you're back with your parents? What were you doing?"
"I went to school in Toronto."
"Oh what did you take?"
"Anthropology."
"Oh ya I have a cousin who does that he's doing really well right now doing a dig up in Northern Ontario right now finding some really interesting stuff."
"That's Archaeology..."
"Oh what's Anthropology?"
"Study of cultures... basically...."
"Oh... .... what do you do with that?"
"Well nothing right now I'm saving up for teacher's college."
"Oh ok... so what were you showing me?"
At first I thought 'that was a nice digression from the regular drone of boring closing shifts'. Then I thought 'creepy he just found out shitloads about me so incredibly effortlessly - I just spoonfed him my life story and didn't even think twice about it'. Thirdly - wait a second what was with the "What do you do with that" question? And why did I react to it that way?
His question just got me to thinking about how education in our society is seen to be something you do that will take you somewhere. We go to school so we can become something - a doctor, a lawyer, a teacher, a dentist, a boring government employee - but we seem to rarely portray education as simply education. Advertisements for post-secondary institutions constantly state their stats for graduates landing jobs afterwards, departments make lists of jobs that you could pursue with their degree. It's like from high school we're looking at education from a top bottom perspective. Your counselor will make you first find out what you want to be when you're done and then help you find out how to get there. I didn't realise how ingrained this way of thinking is until I noticed how effortlessly I threw off that customers "What do you do with that?" question, as if it was something completely normal for a stranger to ask.
The more I think about it the more I realise how twisted it is that the average persons first remark after you tell them what you studied is "what do you do with that?". And how scary it is that my first reaction was to answer it plain and simple. It's like we've all forgotten what education should be and what post-secondary education can be. If you're going to spend four years of your life studying something and get yourself into 20 grand worth of debt then I think you better be loving every minute of your time there. If our counselors just asked us to go pursue something we found fascinating and then let our futures shape themselves from there than I think the result would be a much more open minded and innovative population. Without the constant stress of the "will I be able to get a job when I'm done?" question and the ever present pressure of the impending "future" maybe more of us would actually be able to engage in our education.
Looking back I wish I'd answered him with, "It doesn't matter, I spent 4 years studying something I found really fascinating and I really enjoyed it and isn't that what education should be about? It gave me an interesting perspective on the world, its people, why we live the way we do and how we came to be this way too and that's enough of a gain for me to have made those years worth it."
