One Hundred and Forty Nine

I seldom remember my dreams now.  I know they’re not good only because I always wake feeling depressed.  This morning I remembered why.

Last night I dreamed I was back in school.  It was graduation day, and all the other students were celebrating. 

Everyone was dancing except me.  I made my way between the dancers, walking slowly towards the door of the principal’s office.  I had a question to ask her, but I was sure I already knew the answer,

She told me my degree was worthless.  I already knew that, so hearing it confirmed didn’t surprise me.  But it did fill me with pity for my fellow students, who were celebrating because they didn’t yet know what I had always known.

The immediate cause of this dream was a television documentary I watched last night about the privatization of the public schools. 

It featured a waitress who said she’d paid her way through a privatized school by waiting tables, only to learn on graduation day that the school wasn’t accredited, so her degree was worthless.  I remembered wondering how she could not have known this.  Didn’t she investigate the school before applying?       

Then I remembered thinking it didn't matter because all schools are worthless. 

I attended what was considered a good school (although the teachers complained to me that it wasn’t what it used to be; the destruction of the schools - of everything we used to call civilisation - has been going on for a long time), but no school prepares us for life; not the life I should have lived, the life we all should live. 

Teachers prepare us to live in this society by telling us to forget what every child knows, and believe - or rather suspend our disbelief - in our society's myths. They do this not out of malice or jealousy, because they want us to fail as they did, but because they know living in this society without the illusion of hope is unbearable.