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Old School

By Ken Wright

"School's out for summer. School's out forever."

- Alice Cooper

It's that time of year: Back to school. And already there is general somber sadness among my two teens and their friends.

And why not? Because the end of the summer means the End of Summer - not just as a seasonal transition, but as an arbitrarily-assigned tectonic shift in way-of-living. As a traumatic altering in way-of-being. With both transitions being toward unnatural and unwanted daily situations and mental manipulations. Toward a life of sitting all day performing forced and seemingly meaningless mental tasks inside the tight, repetitive confines of The Big Box - the on-the-ground overall experience of so-called "school" for the vast majority of kids.

Teens, of course, have felt this way about school since there's been school. It's only natural: As teenagers, they're growing ever-more aware of the state of the grander Real World outside The Big Box; and as they slide toward young-adulthood, they hormonally and genetically crave release into that Real World - to experience ANYTHING real, to do things involving tangible challenge and offering palpable meaning.

Instead, from their perception (and actual experience) going back to school promises only another academic year that is essentially the same as every other year of their 10 or 12 years of servitude to school thus far: indoors, "experiencing" vicariously through books and films and lectures, learning about things that may as well be Martian they are so far from their actual daily experiences.

This is particularly harsh after Summer - not the celestial event, but that unique, powerful, and treasured slice of the calendar year when kids get to be outside a lot, to move and use their bodies in expansive physical space, to have some control over their time and lifestyles, to have new and varied experiences in living and exploring.

That is why going back to school gets kids down. And sometimes worse.

But even if a general somber sadness is a valid, healthy, normal reaction to this incarceration/parole/re-incarceration cycle, kids here in the early 21st century suffer an added element of frustrating - even infuriating - fruitlessness to this teenage torture: Today's is the first generation in history in which the future looks worse than the world we live in today. And not just worse: For them, the world they will graduate into (and finally, some day, take control of) looks downright doomed.

This vision of a dark and unforeseeable future also means that, as adults and parents, we don't even have that handy old saw "Do well in school because I want you to have a better life than I did" to persuade our kids that going to school everyday isn't an absolute shameful waste of a teenagers' natural curiosity, energy, enthusiasm, and excitement. Because in the face of war, disasters both natural and unnatural, economic depression, loathsome politics and vile business practices, these kids today ain't buying it.

As well they shouldn't. Because I, myself, agree with them. About school, obviously; but also about where we are in the history of the world. Because I can foretell for you with absolute certainty what the future will be: Humanity will achieve a population that can be supported by, while sustaining, the land and air and water supplies of Earth; and we will do that by shifting to whatever economies and technologies can work with and within that sustainability.

It's the getting there that's, well, nebulous. But we will get there, whether by force-of-nature or choice-of-humanity, under duress or by process. And, of course, what that "there" will look like - Mad Max, Clan of the Cave Bear, Soylent Green, or Star Trek - has yet to be determined. But we will get there.

So, given that rather uncertain, but certainly changing and challenging, world that awaits them - a world that absolutely will not be like ours - what do I say to my kids about what their world will be like? And what do I - or we - therefore teach them to prepare them for that unfathomable future?

One thing I know: I won't sugarcoat it. All I can do, as a loving, caring, concerned father, is to tell my kids the truth. So here's what I'll say:

The world, kids, is just fine. The world - physical, political, economic, social - is doing exactly what it has to do.

Oh, yes - there is big-time shifting afoot out there. Our economic system is finally crumbling like the unsupportable house of cards it has for long been. And payment is coming due on generations of intercultural karma in many parts of the world. And the earth's climate and ecosphere are, like a load shifting in a rolling ship, sliding toward some as-yet-unknown new positions of repose, compensating for the weight of our hyper-cultivated, chemically-altered, and mega-populated civilized world.

But that's what happens. That's what has to happen.

And, yes, the world you're going to be living in is going to be a lot different from the world I, or your grandparents, or your ancestors, or perhaps anyone anywhere has ever has lived in.

But it's still The World. Our world. Your world.

And you can, and will, thrive there.

That, my friends, is the story that my kids aren't being told. That is not the story delivered in the news and media. It's not the story taught in school. It's not even the story many of us even have taken the time to work through ourselves.

But It's the oldest human story of all: adapt and change, survive and thrive. It's a story of a species that has survived ice ages and climate change and war and catastrophe before. It's a story that transcends any time or place or circumstance humans have confronted. It's the story written in our very genetic beings.

And because of that, it's also the story our kids - like every human before them - will have to uncover and write for themselves.

Our task as adults and parents, then, is to give them tools to research and write that story. And that does not happen in school. But it does happen in the Summer: when kids get to explore, learn, and live, on their own, their own way, in the real world that they own.

My job, then, as a parent and adult, is to make that Summer-learning their school all year round - to bring them to the real world, to give them real experiences, to teach them how to think for themselves and adapt to whatever is. To really live.

Because that's the oldest schooling of all.

Ken Wright lives the Summer life year-round in Durango. His most recent book is The Monkey Wrench Dad. Learn more at monkeywrenchdad.com. You can also follow his blog at sanjuanalmanac.com.