Higher
Learning
April
28 2022
The
common term
at
a place of higher learning
is
“get an education”.
As
if it's a neatly packaged object.
to
be administered, traded, bought.
Like
ground pork
stuffed
into its tight skin casing
and
slipped down your throat,
holus
bolus
at
too young an age
to
be sure just what you ate.
It
comes
with
a certificate of authenticity,
like
a specially raised pig
from
an exclusive terroir
with
its own appellation of origin.
A
credential that's good for life;
no
need
to
go on learning,
and
with little concern
how
much or soon you'll forget.
But
I wonder about that wise old man
who
taught himself everything,
and
is still
curious
as a three year old
hungry
as a teenage boy.
Even
though he's trying to be vegan,
not
the omnivore
he
used to be
before
he knew about such things.
He
wouldn't call himself an educated man,
with
its implication
of
the past tense.
There
is too much to know
and
think about,
and
he's aware just how vast
his
ignorance is.
He
doesn’t speak much
quietly
observes.
Has
learned
that
experience helps
and
failure teaches.
Knows
that
it works its way
from
information
to
knowledge
to
wisdom.
And
that humility is key,
because
he's been wrong
more
times than he'd care to admit.
He
has no degree
and
earns a good enough living
driving
a bus.
But
I've noticed the books
stacked
under his seat,
the
hand-written journal
that
sits in his lap.
The
faraway look in his eyes
when
the idling bus
is
stuck in rush hour traffic.
How,
on rainy days
passengers
who
are short of cash
get
seated anyway.
And
how long
he
waits at the stop
for
the pregnant lady
he
sees frantically waving
in the rear view mirror,
who
is running late
and
breathing fast
and
trying hard to catch up.
This
week's Freakonomics podcast was about higher education. Especially
the elite schools, which admit few, charge a lot, and depend on
scarcity and exclusivity to enhance the value of their degrees. The
expression get an education came up a few times, and I've
always found this an unfortunate one. But one which also says a lot
about instrumental learning vs curiosity-driven learning,
credentialism vs education, and compartmentalized learning vs
lifelong. I thought the best way to illuminate these contrasts was
the autodidact, who is self-taught and doesn't stop just because he's
graduated. And just as the prestige of his credential doesn't matter
to him, neither does the status of his job. Because what a man does
and doesn't do count for so much more than the conventional markers
of educational attainment, or social and career success.
I
think a bus driver came so immediately to mind – really, I could
have picked any blue collar job – because I had just read this
beautifully written piece, the First
Person feature in today's
Globe and Mail.
A
LIFE IN TRANSIT
The
Globe and Mail (Ontario Edition)
28
Apr 2022
Jessica
Magonet lives in Vancouver.
ILLUSTRATION
BY MARY KIRKPATRICK
I used to treasure my bus commute, where I
was not my name or salary or job title, just a blurred face in the
window, Jessica Magonet writes.
The bus is a liminal place. A kind of
in-between or nowhere. Sometimes the bus is quiet and sometimes it is
not. Sometimes children or adults cry on the bus. I’ve cried on the
bus before. I like that you don’t have to do anything on the bus.
There are so few places left in the world where you don’t have to
do anything any more. Of course, you can do lots of things on the
bus. You can knit or paint your nails or read a book or scream. You
can make a friend or call your mum or write a poem or pray. You can
even answer work e-mails on the bus if you really want to and you
have data on your cellphone plan. I do not.
You can gaze out the window and watch the city
unfold before you, the subtle shifts between neighbourhoods, you can
watch townhouses and cafés give way to condos and skyscrapers, ocean
and clouds.
Or you look around inside the bus and study
your travelling companions, their outfits, their habits. The bus
creates a temporary community for people whose paths might not
otherwise cross.
The city buses have taken me home so many
times. They have sheltered me from rain. I used to dread rainy
mornings on the No. 19: so many people crammed together, the unbidden
intimacy with unknown shoulders and purses, necks and hair. But
during the early months of the pandemic, when I mostly stayed home, I
daydreamed about this crowded bus, this place where I was overwhelmed
by touch. It seemed otherworldly.
I like being a passenger, in motion, in
transit. I like being fleeting. On the bus, I am not my name or
salary or job title. I’m just a blurred face in the window.
I love reading on the bus, getting so lost in a
book that I miss my stop. I love writing long letters, too.
When I moved to Vancouver in 2018, I spent a
lot of time on the bus, travelling from my home in Mount Pleasant to
my job downtown. I treasured that commute. It was a part of the day
that belonged entirely to me. My work was stressful, but on the bus,
I didn’t owe anything to anyone. I could be anonymous, invisible. I
was so lonely when I moved here, but the people on the bus kept me
company.
Often, I would curl up in one of the bus’s
plastic chairs and write long letters to my friends in Montreal.
Often, I would read. Riding the bus gave me permission to indulge in
these luxuries.
In Vancouver, people don’t often talk to
strangers. It is a difficult place to make friends. But reading on
the bus sparked conversations.
A woman interrupted me while I was reading Bad
Endings by Carleigh Baker on the No. 8 to tell me how much she loved
it. I spoke to a man reading In the Realm of Hungry Ghosts by Dr.
Gabor Mate on the No. 19 and he shared his experience working at a
legalized drug injection site with me. Books on the bus were portals
to connection.
I remember one February evening, shortly after
I moved to Vancouver, waiting for the bus in the rain. It was cold
and dark and I was crying. I had just attended my first appointment
with a new therapist and it had been a disaster.
The bus pulled up and I stepped inside. A
passenger in the first row was reading a book of poetry. This Wound
is a World by Billy-Ray Belcourt. “I loved that book!” I told
her. She offered me the seat beside her. “Are you a poet?” she
asked. “Yes,” I replied shyly. “And you?” She nodded. We
exchanged names and contact information.
It was then that I realized I was on the wrong
bus. I bid my new friend, author Elena Johnson, goodbye and hopped
off.
Later that week, I checked out Elena’s book
from the library. I fell in love with Field Notes for the Alpine
Tundra, with Elena’s sparse and quiet poems. And I was amazed by
the kismet of our encounter. Elena wrote her book while she was the
writer-in-residence at a remote research station in the Yukon. I had
participated in an artist residency on the Yukon River the previous
summer.
When I told my dad about befriending Elena, he
said: “That’s a wonderful story. But you weren’t on the wrong
bus.”
I love making new friends on the bus. But I
also love finding familiar faces in the crowd of passengers. I love
encountering my partner on the bus unexpectedly, their features
coming into focus, the moment of recognition when our eyes light up.
I love sitting down beside them and taking their hand.
I used to know Vancouver’s transit routes by
heart. But after months of pandemic restrictions and working
remotely, this knowledge has left me. Now, I have to Google the route
before leaving home. This feels like losing a map or a language I
once spoke. In the context of the past two years, this loss is a
small one. But it still deserves its place in the catalogue of
losses.
In February, I finished reading The Book of
Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki while riding the 99-B line. “I’m
intrigued,” the bus driver said, motioning toward the cover.
“What’s it about?” I closed the book and considered. “Zen
Buddhism, books, hoarding, hearing voices, jazz … oh, and a bunch
of it takes place at a library inspired by Vancouver’s Central
Branch!” “Jazz, eh?” he replied. “I love jazz.”
Through the window beside my desk, I hear the
whistle of the Skytrain circling the city. This sound winds its way
through birdsong, wraps itself around my home. I think of all the
buses making their way through busy streets, leaving no trace of
their paths. The crowds of faceless people stepping through their
open doors.
