Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Never too cool for school

School_bell_for_web_3



"You don't need to go to school to be a journalist."





Charlie and I were sitting in the Royal Oak in Ottawa's Glebe neighborhood. I'd just ordered another vodka and cranberry. He was drinking some green-bottled Canadian beer.





"Yeah, but I want to make some contacts," he said.





"Really, save your time and money," I told him. "You're a great writer. If you don't want to be a news person, just keep on writing and selling stories."





Charlie didn't take my advice. This month, he is shelling out big bucks to add a dash of world-weary flavor to the pap of 18-year-old first years.





Other than honing his skill at keg stands, I don't really think Charlie's going to learn too much at Carleton. He is a strong writer and he's already selling his bitter, biting first-person stories. He might get some technical know-how, but he already knows how to write.





Charlie didn't take my advice, but I wrote a hand-out a few weeks ago that might do him some good at Carelton. It's basically a compilation of the essential journalism skills that I absorbed at Kings College -- a handout for the workshops I'm delivering here on journalism and human rights.





All that money, all that time; all I�ve got is four pages. I shook my head as I watched the pages spitting out of the office printer.





I was able to spend seven years dilly-dallying in my undergrad: studying part-time, working in coffee shops, swapping majors as often as a beach bunny swaps bikinis.





The profit margin of four separate universities benefited from my lack of direction and ambivalence. It took me a while to realize the only thing I really liked was asking questions.





I don't think journalism school made me a better reporter than I would have become working under a good editor for a year. After five years in the field, I still think my reporting would improve immeasurably from a solid year working under a hard-nosed boss.





Other than a few great teachers and some basic technical training, all I got from seven years of part- then full-time school was debt and classroom fatigue.





That debt is now paid off, but the fatigue has not gone away. "I'll be quite fine if I never see the inside of another lecture hall or exam room, thank you very much."





But it seems that everyone in Kenya is crazy about school.





My lawyer housemate works full-time and goes to school every evening.





The AWC receptionist is studying business management because, "some day I want to run my own NGO." "What kind of NGO?" "Any kind."





Rosemary, the AWC director, spends so much time on the road attending and speaking at workshops, I have no idea how she gets any 'real work' done.





People here amass seminar, training and conference certificates like Canadian campers amass mosquito bites. Kenyans are covered in credentials. I imagine their resumes are swollen with degrees and continuing education courses.





"People in Kenya believe in education," Wilson told me a few weeks ago. "They have seen what it can do for you."





Wilson himself is a testament to the power of education. He grew up in a poor rural community in western Kenya.





"You know chiggers?" he asked.





I thought of a doctor friend telling me how to diagnose a chigger infection - the bugs usually dissolve the skin of their human hosts in three spots before they fall off: breakfast, lunch, dinner.





"I had chiggers during my whole childhood. They'd live in your feet and make you itchy all the time," he says.





He wore shoes for the first time on his first day of high school.





"My mother used to buy a pencil and cut it into three, to share between the kids. Oh, I wanted my own pencil so badly! I knew education was my way out. I promised myself I would never drop out of school."





Through a combination of scholarship, sponsorship and hard work, Wilson put himself through high school, college and post-graduate studies. He's got lots of pencils now, at his three-month internship in Washington, D.C.





The dream of a brand new pencil is not Wilson's alone. I heard it years ago from a Haitian man who was in an international studies class with me. In fact, his story is the main thing I remember from my semester in that dimly-lit lecture hall. He's the reason I packed boxes of pencils in my luggage, to hand out to children who beg for money.





But for the kids begging in Kibera, in Eastleigh, at Toy market, education will pay off.





People respect education here. Spending time in school and in professional workshops builds the social networks (Charlie's contacts) that are critical for finding work in a country where about 45 percent of adults are unemployed. Multiple degrees and a fat curriculum vitae are a nearly-universal prerequisite for good-paying jobs.





But for the many thousands of Canadian dollars Charlie and other journalism students will spend on school this semester, I still think they could learn more, more quickly by being thrown into an internship under a tough boss.





Would-be engineers and doctors should go to university. Artists and reporters just need to do the work.





Oh, and reporters need to read my four-page basic journalism skills hand-out. It's pretty good. Now if only I could remember my own advice...







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