I’m a complete autodidact. Some people are born independent-minded, and I’m definitely one of them. My rebellious nature was in full swing by the time I was in nursery school (maybe this had something to do with the fact that I attended the notorious McMartin Preschool, although admittedly thirty years before it became a national cause celebre), and things only grew worse as I got older. I had problems in elementary school, though they weren’t academic problems. I didn’t like many of my teachers, and the feeling was mutual. Still, I did well enough academically to be able to skip eighth grade and go straight from middle school to high school, do not pass go, do not collect $500. But by my sophomore year I was jumping out of my skin. I didn’t mind the classes (except math, at which I had no aptitude whatsoever, and PE, at which I not only had no ability, but I also loathed on philosophical grounds), but the petty tyranny of high school was agonizing. My high school had strict dress codes, arbitrary rules, a politically regressive (to put it kindly) administration (the school administrators were, largely, members of the John Birch Society) and a completely rigid schedule. The latter bordered on the absurd: for instance, you had five minutes between classes, but often you had to walk, say, from the gym to a classroom that was clear on the other side of the campus. The campus was large, and such a distance often took more like ten minutes to traverse, but if you showed up at your next class six minutes after the bell rang, you were automatically written up, for what I’m not sure. Two such “transgressions” got you a “talk” with the vice principal (guess who did the bulk of the talking); if you had five, you were suspended. If you racked up more than two suspensions in a semester, you were put on probation, and then if you transgressed again, you were formally expelled from school. Monty Python’s John Cleese, if he’d had an American accent, would have been a model administrator at my high school.
This may sound like science fiction to high school students today, but believe it or not, that’s what high school was like, at least at my high school, in the early ‘70s. In my case, it simply made me want out. I didn’t finish my senior year, primarily because the administration didn’t want me there. My grades weren’t at issue, but because I had either refused to participate in PE or had failed it during the previous three years, the diabolical administration employed a rather devious strategy to get rid of me. The VP told me that since California law required four full years of PE with a passing grade to qualify for graduation (regardless of a student’s academic GPA), I would have to spend my senior year taking nothing but PE, or fail to graduate. In those days, I might add, there was only one PE program. As I recall, it mostly consisted of volleyball and track for girls. You couldn’t susbstitite modern dance, swimming, or archery instead, the way you can today, and which I might have done if it had been possible. So of course I told the VP to fuck himself. I did not graduate from high school. Did I care?
In retrospect, the question would seem to be what the hell sort of guy that VP, Mr. Cameron, was. Even then, high school administrators weren’t supposed to emulate the Gestapo; they were there, at considerable taxpayer expense, to see that students received an education, not to kick them out when they proved a bit problematical. Mr. Cameron, I guess, had trouble discerning the fine line that separated these niceties. I was not a disruptive factor in high school. I did my homework, got decent grades (except in math) and I was smart enough not to mouth off to my teachers, even if I did disagree with some of them. My problem was that I didn’t fit in and I didn’t try to. I hated pep rallies, assemblies, the dress code, and the whole “rah-rah” hoo-hah. I just wanted to get through the school day so I could write and play the guitar. If anyone in the administration had been an educator rather than a martinet, they might have realized that despite my eccentricities, I was educable if approached the right way. And if I had been in a similar situation today, I probably would have simply been transferred to a magnet school for music or writing, where I would have found the atmosphere a bit more congenial, but in those days there weren’t any magnet schools, just “regular” school and that most dreaded of institutions, “continuation” school, where the curriculum was mostly grand theft auto and Drug Lab 101 and many of the students’ next “school” tended to be the California Youth Authority or the county jail. Not surprisingly, I had no desire to go there, so my only option was to drop out. And, I might add, everyone seemed relieved when I did.
So I never got a high school diploma, and never attended a four-year college. I attempted to go to a community college for a couple of semesters, but I found I couldn’t pay enough attention to my courses while earning a living at the same time, so I had to let it slide. And in all honesty, I didn’t think about it much for a long time. I managed to get by, more or less, with freelance writing and editing jobs and the occasional musical pursuit. Nobody ever asked to see my high school diploma, so I figured I’d beat the system. Besides, higher education had never been an option for me anyway, so why worry about something I could do nothing about, especially after the fact? I had neither the time nor the desire to attend “night school” or become a 30-something first-time college student (with, by then, several books in print). Especially when friends of mine who taught university courses in literature were in the habit of having me give lectures to their classes. And later, when I became embroiled in petty academic politics as a result of writing about Mark Twain (being ignorant of the fact that the academic world considers him their exclusive property), my prejudices against academia were only reinforced.
Lately, though, I’ve been thinking about the interrelated issues of education, knowledge, and quality of life. I’m nearing the half century mark, and it seems a logical time for self reflection. And the truth is, when I look back at my life so far I can’t complain; it’s been interesting, if not especially easy. As my friend John Tabacco would say in his succinct way, “It is what it is.” But I can’t help wondering, a little, if it could have been different, and what things might have been like for me if I had taken a different approach to my basic life issues. Attending a university and getting a degree might have opened doors to me that otherwise have not only been closed, they’ve been welded shut and then bolted for good measure. After all, attending a university is as much a process of making potential connections for the future as it is of acquiring knowledge. Listening to Eric talk about his four years as a biology major at USC, that becomes quite clear.
Then, too -- and please excuse me if this sounds less than charitable -- I know of more than one person who has used academia as a springboard to a much better life than they ever deserved. Moreover, my research and ideas have on more than one occasion been “misappropriated” by academically-connected individuals to pad their own resumes and lists of publications. If my work has received such back-handed but undoubtedly sincere compliments from academics despite my status as an autodidact, what might have I accomplished if I’d “joined the syndicate”? Food for thought, most definitely.
