The Last Vaudevillian
Education's Preconditions
posted Saturday, 31 May 2008
Repeat after me: Education is not, can not, and never will be the cure for dysfunction. Learning enhances the functional. It stands on the shoulders of an already existing stability. Some moderate degree of stability and function will always be a precondition to learning. I never had much of what you would call a formal education. I had some good tutors as a child, but dropped out of school at 15 and left anything that might be defined as a formal structure to my life at 16. But the requirements of vaudeville instill in you a number of things by the time you are 5: a sense of purpose, the value of memory, the discipline of schedule, and the gift of improvisation when all else fails. A child that has these things doesn't have to be told why learning is a good idea. A child who does not wouldn't know what learning was for if it slapped him both sides of the head. When a child does not bring stability and function to learning it is not only a waste, but a cruelty: we make a looser out of someone who is already lost.
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