My Education in Five Chapters   

Chapter 1

My education begins.

I learn the faces of my parents,

and their moods.

I learn the basics: how to crawl, how to stand,

how to walk, how to speak.

I learn “please” and “thank you.”

I learn to ride a bike, smash a bug,

catch a fish, throw a ball.

I learn to make friends.

Chapter 2

Formal education takes control.

In public school,

I learn to read, to write, to do math.

I learn to fill out worksheets and take tests.

Teachers add rules

and expand my views.

Classmates add more rules.

I learn to share,

to show-and-tell, to put my things away.

I learn to stand in line, toe the line,

and cross the line.

I learn that good citizenship is hard work.

And I learn that I can get as much or as little

from my education as I desire.

Chapter 3

I follow the expected path: a college education.

Independent for the first time,

I learn to make my own rules,

to suffer my own consequences.

Class work guides me toward a career,

but life itself guides me toward adulthood.

I learn to balance my own checkbook,

do my own laundry, take care of my own car.

I learn to live away from home.

I also learn firsthand

that relationships can begin and end.

I learn that heartache hurts.

 

Chapter 4

An irony occurs:

The problem child becomes a teacher,

and he learns in the process

that no one escapes the need for education.

As an educator, I learn to teach others—

Some of whom

are as resistant to education

as I once was.

As an educator, I learn

that teaching is learning—

that, indeed,

learning may be the best part of teaching.

Chapter 5

The most recent revelation

in my education

arrives in the form of fatherhood.

I change diapers, feed hungry infants,

comfort them when they wake from bad dreams

or cannot sleep at all.

I sing them songs, read them stories,

build them snow forts,

hold the fenders of their bikes

as they try to learn to ride.

I discover

that my own parents were smarter

than I believed possible.

My children teach me

as much as I teach them.

I learn that the very cycle of life

keeps education alive.