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A personal example...
Sep. 27th, 2011 03:26 pmIn continuation of yesterday's tappings about choice, I recall my senior year in high school as the year of the great "relevance" debate, although if memory serves, there wasn't much interest on the part of those who deemed the school's curriculum as "irrelevant" to do much else but demand that it be made relevant, echoing much of what was going on at various college campuses around the country. The one time I managed to ask a question at a student meeting—something along the lines of "How can we, who are coming to school to learn, pick and choose what is 'relevant' to our studies and what isn't?—the chair paused for a second, and then proceeded to recognize another speaker, leaving my question unaddressed.
As it turns out, I would have been my own best example of the kind of thing I had in mind, though it would be decades before I realized this to be the case.
Ninth grade, my last year of junior high school, saw a large percentage of my fellow students applying to special high schools throughout New York City; schools such as Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, and the Bronx High School of Science. My goal was much more modest: I applied to and was accepted in the "Pre-Engineering" program at Newtown High, in Elmhurst.
A curious twist in my schedule at Newtown involved skipping biology, which is what most tenth graders in my college-bound academic track took, and dropping directly into chemistry. This didn't bother me at the time, as I didn't really see myself—as an engineer—needing any biology background.
From chemistry in tenth grade, I went to physics in the eleventh grade (and basically coasted in my senior year, by which time my parents had moved to Nassau County, outside of NYC). I never did study biology past the material I was introduced to in the first two years of junior high.
So what did I miss? Was biology truly irrelevant, as I had thought?
Oh, I could probably wax eloquent on the subject, but it'd all be high-level, conceptual stuff. The bottom line about what I missed is this: I have no idea. At least, not in terms of how it might have affected my life, on the whole.
What is incontrovertible is this: The decision to skip biology and schedule me for chemistry (and my subsequent ignorance—or lack of curiosity—of what I might be missing) basically shut me out of any field of endeavor where biology plays an important role.
As it turned out, this "hole" in my knowledge has not been any kind of show-stopper in my life or career (or more accurately: I am not aware that it has been a show-stopper, which only make such holes ever more insidious).
On a related note, I wonder what my life would have been like if I had pursued—or been made to pursue—say, music lessons?
Cheers...
As it turns out, I would have been my own best example of the kind of thing I had in mind, though it would be decades before I realized this to be the case.
Ninth grade, my last year of junior high school, saw a large percentage of my fellow students applying to special high schools throughout New York City; schools such as Stuyvesant, Brooklyn Tech, and the Bronx High School of Science. My goal was much more modest: I applied to and was accepted in the "Pre-Engineering" program at Newtown High, in Elmhurst.
A curious twist in my schedule at Newtown involved skipping biology, which is what most tenth graders in my college-bound academic track took, and dropping directly into chemistry. This didn't bother me at the time, as I didn't really see myself—as an engineer—needing any biology background.
From chemistry in tenth grade, I went to physics in the eleventh grade (and basically coasted in my senior year, by which time my parents had moved to Nassau County, outside of NYC). I never did study biology past the material I was introduced to in the first two years of junior high.
So what did I miss? Was biology truly irrelevant, as I had thought?
Oh, I could probably wax eloquent on the subject, but it'd all be high-level, conceptual stuff. The bottom line about what I missed is this: I have no idea. At least, not in terms of how it might have affected my life, on the whole.
What is incontrovertible is this: The decision to skip biology and schedule me for chemistry (and my subsequent ignorance—or lack of curiosity—of what I might be missing) basically shut me out of any field of endeavor where biology plays an important role.
As it turned out, this "hole" in my knowledge has not been any kind of show-stopper in my life or career (or more accurately: I am not aware that it has been a show-stopper, which only make such holes ever more insidious).
On a related note, I wonder what my life would have been like if I had pursued—or been made to pursue—say, music lessons?
Cheers...
