A conversation about education
P: So that was really interesting, wasn't it, that TED Talk thing?
J: Oh, the one with Ken Robinson, about education?
P: Yeah.
J: Yeah, it was really good, he's– I liked some of the things he was talking about because when I was a kid we had a lot of different kinds of things to study, like music and drama, singing – chorus, they called it – and then it was– those programmes were all cut out because in Southern California there was– they needed to change the money – have the money go somewhere else and so they took out a lot of those programmes in schools. And I was really interested in them. So I thought that was a big disappointment.
P: Yeah.
J: Did you have a similar experience? Or did you– did your school prepare you better for things later in life that you could really use, do you think?
P: Let me think, yeah, I guess. Well, I went to a progressive school in Switzerland. It was sort of an international place, so there was people from all over. So I guess– Well, I learnt two languages fluently, and I had a kind of good basis in a third language, so that turned out to be really useful later on in life.
J: In school?
P: Yeah.
J: Oh.
P: And also I did– we did a lot of kind of artistic things. I mean, in this school they gave equal weight to academic things and also kind of manual things in theatre and sport and so on. So in the mornings we'd do like three hours of academic things, like math and the usual stuff, and then in the afternoons we had this huge choice of, you know, more practical things, and I always did drawing, for example.
J: Drawing.
P: Yeah, drawing, and I– Even when I was really– like when I was six years old I started taking drawing classes and I never really stopped. And I also did printing and calligraphy and all these kind of things, and yeah, that was a really good preparation for, you know, my job now, which is I'm a designer and an illustrator, so yeah.
J: Course, if you didn't have that you could have– you might have ended up doing a different job.
P: Exactly.
J: And all those things you were taught in– at what age? What age range, for example?
P: Well, I went to the same school from primary and secondary school. I was there from– right till the end.
J: Cause we had, we had ceramics class, I remember, woodshop at that age, but we didn't have, really, languages until high school, which is more between–
P: That's kind of late.
J: Yeah, well, we had a little bit– Well, where I went to school in Southern California, we had a little bit of Spanish around age 12, but then not until about 14 to 18, we took a year of a language every year.
P: Right.
J: Well, you only had to do two years.
P: But you did learn Spanish, didn't you?
J: Yes, I learned– I took Spanish for four years in high school, and then not until I went to college, I took French also, which I only did for a year, and then more Spanish.
P: So what things didn't you do at high school that you – or at school – that you would have liked to have done?
J: Well, when I was really young we did creative writing.
P: Mm-hm.
J: Everything from writing the story, illustrating it ourselves with our coloured pencils, and we even bound the books and put them in the library for other kids to check out. And I really liked that. And also when we did drama, I was part of the plays, I acted in the plays, and I really liked that. And I would have liked to continue those things, but those were part of the programmes that were cut when it came down to money. And then in high school, I didn't– there was– I don't remember there being any creative writing programmes in high school, but there was drama, and I didn't do it because I think I was just a little bit inhibited by then. What about you?
P: Yeah, well, one of the things about this school where I went to school was that you were allowed to choose your own subjects.
J: Uh-huh.
P: So there were certain things that I kind of avoided, like I wasn't very good at math – they forced me to do some math, but I just did the minimum. And I never did any chemistry or any biology. And that I'm kind of sorry about now because I kind of feel there's a huge gap in my knowledge.
J: But that's the sort of thing you look– you regret later. Like at the time, I was the same. In high school I had to take biology, and then I took the minimum science and math. And also in college, when I went to university, I looked at the minimum requirements, and took that, of science and math. And then I took, you know, English, literature, journalism – I studied journalism as a major, so I did a lot of things related to that. And like you said, later I think, Oh, now history is more interesting or I wish I knew about these things, or science – chemistry I never took either – these things are more interesting now. But at the time, when you're a teenager, ugh, and you don't want to–
P: Yeah.
J: –study these sorts of things. But then there's a lot of people that really like science and now they're making the big bucks.
P: Yeah, exactly. Not like us. ... Oh, and another thing that I really remember which was quite important for me was at the end of high school I was preparing for, you know, college entrance exams, and I needed to do– I guess I had to do Latin and something or other–
J: Mm-hm.
P: –and there was no group, there was no teacher. And so my supervisor said, "Look, why don't you just prepare on your own?" So I got– I went to the library, I got out the books, I got some course books and I worked through them on my own. And then I started doing these practice exams on my own, and then–
J: Did you wish you had a group to study with?
P: No, I actually really liked this. This was really, really good. And then by the time I had to do the exam, I felt really confident and I did really well. So that was like a real revelation. It showed me that I could, you know, do this on my own, I could learn independently from– I didn't need a teacher. And that was really good. And what about you? Is there anything else like that?
J: Well, we didn't have so much independent study – I mean, there was homework, but – I mean I think that's really good because people do learn in different ways and.... I do remember that I had this one teacher when I was about 12 and I was always turning things in late. Anything that had a long deadline, you know, like a book report or something, I would always be turning it in late. And she once took me aside – and she saw that I was having trouble meeting deadlines, and she took me aside and would give me smaller deadlines, like Have the book read by this day, and Write a little bit by this day – things like that. So that really helped me to learn to manage my time better. And I think it was really good that there were teachers like her that saw differences in individuals and helped according to what each person needed, rather than just, Here, everybody do this.
P: Yeah.
J: So that was, I mean, that was– We did do those things on our own, but you know, it is like homework, and like I said, I didn't manage my time very well at the time and she helped me with that. And another thing I learned at university was it turned out that you would write things or turn work in according to what the teacher wanted. It could be the same– It could be two different teachers with the same course, for example, and one teacher wanted more essay and another teacher just wanted bullet points or something like that, and you kind of learned to just do your work according to what they wanted, not to necessarily what was the best way for you. So I felt that fieldwork or internships that I started doing later were more helpful. I would really encourage people to do that because it was more helpful than writing papers geared toward what each teacher wanted. Did you do any fieldwork or internships when you were a bit older?
P: No, I didn't. Certainly not at university. I did a terrible, deadly, boring, old-fashioned degree course.
J: Yeah, well, I thought the internships were really good if you are able to do that, especially sometimes the school gives you credits for getting this, basically, work experience while you're still at university. So when you go out into the world you don't have zero experience behind you.