In 1972, Alice Cooper effectively captured emotions shared by many American children as the public school schedule gives way to the freedom of summer. Decades later, it still serves as a sort of anthem for students looking forward to summer plans. In fact, while looking for the lyrics, I had to sift through numerous blog posts using Cooper’s words to title their end-of-year post.
“The end of the year.” Even though it is June and, technically speaking, the middle of the year. But the school schedule is so much a part of our culture that no one thinks twice.
The Sheldon Art Gallery at the University of Nebraska has an interesting sculpture which also captures this feeling most Americans seem to have regarding their own education. “Torn Notebook” by artists Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen, depicts a torn notebook, its loose leaves fluttering about the campus.
Claes went from Pop Art to redefining what is public sculpture,” says Neubert, a fellow sculptor who has known Oldenburg for more than 30 years. “When you look at the last half of the 20th century, Claes is one of the key and pivotal geniuses who broke through and re-defined what is an appropriate subject for a democratic society. The timing couldn’t be better for us. He is internationally respected as one of the true contributors to the re-establishment of the public monument. Statewide Interactive
Yes, a public monument to American education. NETV (our PBS station) featured this piece in a documentary, hailing it a celebration of life long learning. Even if it appears to have the same message as the song recorded by Alice Cooper: School’s out. And we celebrate by destroying the products of twelve years of labor. But what do those torn notebooks and burned text books contain that have any lasting value? Nothing worth preserving, apparently.
A public monument to American education. A celebration of higher learning. Scattered to the wind. Perhaps the monument is more appropriate than we would like to admit.
I contrast that with a comment my son made recently. Pulling out the folders he’s made over the last year and lining them up on the couch to look at, he asked,
Mommy, why did we stop? When are we going to do more?
There is no destruction of labor here, relegating it to the trash heap. But still, we are told that public education is the model, the standard. Irreplaceable for its social value, its “democratic” effects. That the difficult relationships, the cramming for tests, the seemingly irrelevant knowledge is good for kids. Even as we watch them tear up the fruits of their labor as a declaration of independence from the system, we force more children through the system and question those who think there might be a little bit more to education.
Perhaps if I were to construct a sculpture celebrating the learning in our house, it, too, would use torn work as inspiration. But I would somehow have to incorporate my son’s tears when he realized his baby sister had gotten hold of it and torn the cover of the mini-book he had dictated to me. And the tape which holds it together because around here there is no celebration when work is destroyed. As my son continually pulls his work out to add more ideas to it, we also realize that the work of learning never really finishes, either.
A better metaphor for life long learning than scattering notebooks to the wind, I believe.
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“Torn Notebook” is from oldenburgvanbruggen.com
My son’s lapbook consists of a series of mini-books he dictated to me then glued in a scene.
I enjoyed this post!
Homeschooler notebooks are different in important ways even when they’re “the same” on the surface, in my experience. A difference that for Favorite Daughter, persists even now that she’s actually in regular school with regular college notebooks. To her they are hers, very personal, that she creates and offers to the school as her contribution. Not something the school requires and forces on her, that she can’t wait to escape. Big difference.
Here’s something personal she wrote about a school notebook, not torn but lost. To me it speaks volumes about the difference between an independent learner=thinker and a dependent, captive one:
“On Leaving a Book of Poems in the Math Building”
I enjoyed the poem…sounds like me. I hated math, and thought myself incapable of it. Got through college calculus on will-power alone.
I must say that I do still have a little bit of the work I did, especially for German. But then that was a personal passion of mine you couldn’t have beaten out of me if you tried. Maybe I should dig up my honor’s thesis. There was some great commentary on youth issues in some of the postwar German literature.
Yes! Great post, Dana.
My son used to tear up his papers if he got frustrated, but he usually regretted it. Every wrinkled, taped paper reminds him of his hard labor. And my little girls were thrilled to get notebooks. Why does that excitement disappear the longer students attend school?
I had a college TA who said it was the job of public education to stamp out creativity wherever it reared its ugly head. That its greatest achievement was its ability to change the question children most often ask from “Why?” to “Why do I have to know this?” and “Will it be on the test?”
For most children, a love of learning isn’t something that needs to be inspired in them. It just needs to be nurtured.
Very interesting!
I could never destroy what we have chosen to accumulate here. But having public schooled teens, let me just say that what they tend to destroy is the busy work that is required… not the stuff they enjoyed doing. Those assignments/projects they tend to save for years to come and eventually discard as clutter (as I did with my own university course work and texts after about 10-12 years.) But of course, that could be your point… homeschooling is about doing/learning what you enjoy.
And I absolutely LOVE that sculpture… and I am not one for abstract art nor pop art LOL I see it as a shedding of layers to revel what is core, rather than a destroying of 12 years of schooling/labor: what was absorbed and became part of the individual is kept, the rest just blows in the wind.
Thank you for this post, Dana. It nicely sums up the difference I’m trying to make by homeschooling my children. The growing, becoming, building upon who we are as people… Education isn’t something to ‘get over with’ or get past.
Shawna, I like the sculpture, too. It is one of the few which really seems to interact with the environment it is placed in. There is one in Melbourne I really like, too. Maybe I’ll dig up a picture of it someday.
The story goes that the artist commissioned to do a sculpture for the museum became frustrated. He found nothing inspiring about Nebraska, tore up his notebook and threw it over his shoulder. Looking back at it, he decided that would be his piece. It is full of NE symbolism, with the words scrawled on the pages taken from NE history and geography, and the tears mapping out the Platte River. I don’t know if the story is true, but one of the artists is known for recording his ideas in notebooks and tearing them up when he doesn’t like them.
Thanks, Heidi!
Can I use your comments to test my gravatar?
Sure, why not! And lovely gravatar!
My older son Patrick attends public school and scoops up all the half-used notebooks from the trash and pencils all around. He sells pencils and paper to unprepared students through the year for a dime each and has amassed $20 in wealth this year for his efforts.
It’s against school policy though, so you didn’t hear it from me! But it’s strange the stuff you throw away is sometimes the stuff you need later.
I like the sculpture, too.
Ah…enterprising young man. I like him already.