Back Alley Education

Something that gets me into no small amount of trouble is how I picked up the little bit of education that I have. I tend to describe it as a "back alley education." And it is across the board---academics, writing, business, esoteric---there is really no area that the majority of my education came from approved and honored sources.

In the literature classes, I have a hard time buying into the basic concept of literary theory---the idea that the writer meant to imply great ideas and social commentary with the use of characters and imagery---which is one of the reasons that I struggle with literature. Maybe if I had a classic education, I would have an easier time buying into it.

But I didn't have a classic education. In fact, I am a student that was shuffled back and forth between advanced classes and short bus classes clear up to junior high. For some reason, talking with a German/Yiddish account makes one an idiot, and having a high pitched girlish voice makes one a moron. On the other hand, being able to pass tests with a bare minimum of study and completed homework makes one a frustrated genius.

Clue, I am not a moron or idiot, and the genius train refused to honor my ticket.

School districts and teachers literally did not know how to cope with my "special needs." It also did not help that we moved around so much. About the time, a school district figured out what to do with me, we would end up moving again.

None of this helped my social skills either. There is no point in being nice, polite, or pretending to be normal if you are going to lose any friends that you make within a couple of years because you have to move to yet another house.

And in high school, outside of the token speech therapy and social worker, there was a general lack of effect to address the weirdness that is me. In the school district's defense, it was a small town; there were budget issues.

In the end, I dropped out of high school. One class short. Freshman composition.

Yes, I said freshman composition. In my defense, there were some familial issues in play.

(A few years ago, I did manage to pass the GED tests...without studying for it. I used it to get into a community college, and then somehow managed to transfer to an university. Someone obviously was asleep at the switch. It looks like I might actually get a degree.)

So given this background, it is amazing that I managed to learn anything at all. Especially when you realize that I took my "how to learn" cues from my father, who did not even finish junior high.

My father made sure that I was surrounded by books. And he did a lot of reading himself.

What he could not pick up directly from books, magazines and newspapers, he picked up by questioning people. If you even find yourself being questioned to death by me, blame my father.

I have followed this pattern to the letter. For many years, while I was working in restaurants, my co-workers swore that I had to be going to college---there was no other possible reason that someone would read as much as I did otherwise. And I was not reading the current best-sellers either.

If I ran into someone with knowledge about a subject that I knew nothing about, I would grill them about all the ins and outs of the field. I have no problem with admitting that I know nothing at all.

And the amount of writing I did was ungodly. I was always writing something or other.

Of course, that is one of the reasons that I have a hard time buying into the basic premise of literary theory. I did too much writing without having any higher education. I wrote because I wanted to, and because occasionally I could con someone in writing me a check for something I wrote.

This leads to me having an attitude problem when someone claiming that Victorian writers had all these great social commentary ideas that they concealed in their writing. No, no, no---they were getting paid to write long tedious novels; one does not need to know anything more to explain their writing.

Yes, I am still a problem student today.

I am also a problematic business manager. I do not care what your business or economic theory is. If I have seen something like it fail, and fail big, then I am going to refuse to believe that you with a perfectly good academic degree know more about business and economics than I do, someone who just happens to have a decade plus of running a business under his belt.

I am also a problematic occult student. For many years, I had access to a handful of books. Literally, I could count the number of occult books I had access to on one hand. For me, one does not need a multitude of classes, books, or memberships, to understand the occult. One just needs to be doing the work while having an open mind that one techniques can be improved.

Obviously, this means that the whole purpose of the three Order system (Outer, Inner, and Third Orders) has slipped me by. I picked up the majority of my occult theory before joinning Golden Dawn, gained a lot of my practical experience before making my way into Inner Order. And I talk back way too much to ever have anything to do with Third Order. I am not big on secrecy and absolute obedience.

Maybe if I would have been exposed to the way the esoteric Orders were originally set up, I would feel different. But I wasn't. I learned more about Golden Dawn, talking to my sponsor and mentor over a cup of coffee than I ever did in lodge or from reading Regardie. The same goes for every Advanced Adept Advisor that I have ever dealt with---it is the side-tracks that I am learning from, not the lesson of the day.

This background creates a major attitude problem, or so people who claim to be more advanced than me have told me repeatedly.

I have been reminded of this recently while watching the debate about Pat Zalewski's latest book. I could care less about what the various groups think about his alchemical lore. Pat wrote his book for a single person.

And that is the only person's opinion that matters.

Yes, I feel that the only opinion of Pat's book that matters is that one lone student. Are they actually finding the book useful? If so, then Pat has done good.

Of course, the very fact that I have this opinion proves that I completely missed something important in my esoteric education. But then again, what do you expect from someone who did not go though the proper approved and honored channels to gain the skill and knowledge that he possesses? I have a back alley education, after all; and it shows up all the time in my bad attitude and inability to understand the most basic esoteric concepts in the manner that the higher Grade individuals would like me to observe.

Qod Seth Godin on Schools and my response

Over on Seth Godin's blog, Seth wrote, "As we get ready for the 93rd year of universal public education, here’s the question every parent and taxpayer needs to wrestle with: Are we going to applaud, push or even permit our schools (including most of the private ones) to continue the safe but ultimately doomed strategy of churning out predictable, testable and mediocre factory-workers?"

And my answer is, "Yes. Yes, we are."

Not that I personally want to see this happen, but the politicans and general public are sure behind this idea. My proof of this is the fact that politicans want to see standardized testing be applied not only to lower education (elementary, middle and high schools), they also want to see standardized testing applied to higher education (colleges and universities).

Unfortunately, standardized testing kills all independent thought; it marginalizes all subjects that are not testable in the standardized testing envirnoment; it insures that only subjects tested on are given decent budgets; and it generally leads to standards being lowered so that students can pass the tests.

So what does this have to do with Golden Dawn? A lot actually. It ensures that we keep getting applicants who can barely spell, have no command of written grammar, who struggle to cope with the required reading and memorization work, and basically know nothing about philosophy and symbolism beyond the latest teen makeout flick.

Ok, it is great for those Orders who want brainless easy-to-control members. But for the rest of us, we better start figuring out how to teach all the subjects that Rosicrucians presumed an apprentice would have before they walked into the field of alchemy and philosophy.