“Who here wants to go to college?” I ask a classroom full of first-generation high school juniors in the hood.

30 hands go up

“Why?” I ask.

A young man, with two studded earrings, a tight fade, and a collared polo shirt confidently says, “So I can be somebody.” The class murmurs in agreement, heads nodding, then quiets to hear my response.

I tilt my head, understanding what he means, but also hearing what is beneath what he is saying—the unconscious statement, the subtle admission of that which he has already accepted. I retort, “Be somebody? But you already are somebody.”

The class lets out a collective sigh followed by a hush, and the boy sinks back, not in defeat but in reflection. He now understands what he said without meaning to, or if he does not understand it, he is aware of the presence of an idea he had not been able to name before. Profound—deep, and largely unknown—the self and the assumptions driving the self in this world of living things.

I know. I can hear you saying, “But that’s not what he meant, you’re exaggerating!” I know what he meant. He meant, “So I can make something of myself,” or “So I can be someone of respect.” Many people will say that he really meant, “So I can be successful and a source of pride to my family,” which most people would say means, “So I can get a good job that pays well,” but I think there is a lot of assumption in that too. Did the boy mean, “So I can get a good job…”? Perhaps, and if I had said, “Do you mean so you can get a good job?” he would have probably accepted my authoritative rephrasing and said, “Yeah,” but I think there is more to it. I don’t know that I agree that I was exaggerating when I said, “You are not no one now, you are someone now.” I think that for the young man, it’s more than just getting a job, it’s about entering into a class of people that is respected in society, and with that respect—is safe from abuse, from evictions, from police brutality, from injustice, from ridicule…that he and his family will belong and be accepted into this society which he has felt outside of for most of his life. I wish I could go back and ask him, “What do you mean?” But because I can’t, because I opened my mouth too quickly, I can only guess at it, and my guess is that his statement would have been, “To be someone worthy of respect in this society.” It is profound.

There is an idea at play here, in our culture that the young man’s statement screams out. It says, “There are some people who are not really people,” and also, “There are people who are more fully people than others,” and as a part of it, “The best way to become a real person is to go to college.” Another aspect of the statement, and perhaps the most heartbreaking part of this idea is the acceptance that some people are treated with less respect and dignity than others, and that the best way to fix this is to go through the college process. This is troubling because it means that there is an underlying belief in our culture that there are people who are undeserving or unworthy of respect by the simple nature of their existence. In other words, I believe that there is a prevalent idea that we must earn our dignity and common respect and safety in this society, and that those things are not things we are all naturally born with.

At a more superficial level, however, there is a definite belief that says, “People who go to college live better lives than people who do not go to college, on average. They make more money. They get jobs more easily. Life is better when you go to college.” But is this true, and if it is true, why do we accept that it should be this way? Why do we accept that a custodian or a fast food worker should be forced to constantly work overtime or have a second job, just to make ends meet? Why do we accept that they shouldn’t also enjoy time off for leisure, and real vacations? Why do we accept the idea that a college trained architect will be better for a job than a middle school drop-out from Oaxaca who has built homes and buildings most of his life? In other words, why do we accept the gross social and economic inequalities in our country, or why do we accept the unequal ways that people and labor are valued? I understand that our society believes that it is ok for a lawyer’s hour to be worth thousands of dollars and a field laborer’s hour to be worth $5, but why? We have to ask that question because in that valuation there is also, whether intentionally or not, a valuation on each person’s life, their family’s life, the future of their children, and so on. So long as we accept these ways of valuing people, we are accepting the incredible poverty & wealth that most of us hate.

People will quote basic economic theory here and talk about the high demands for certain kinds of labor matched with the high supply of other kinds of labor. The problem with this basic theory around supply and demand, however, is that it ignores the needs of society, and confuses those needs with the needs of the owners of capital—aka the rich. In other words, who are the people with “High and Low Demand”? Is it society that is determining the demand, or is it the owners of capital? This is an important question, because very often we say, “Well, high tech people are what our society needs right now,” when, in fact, we are confusing the needs of Society with the needs of the Market, and the Market is not dominated by the common will of the people, but by Capital, or money, and money is controlled by the rich.

Does society need “high tech people right now,” or does society need counselors, community medics, popular schools? Does society need more tech, or does it need different conceptions of production and consumption? We are not in the business of meeting society’s needs, we are in the business of satisfying the market. “We help young people get into the fields that are most in demand right now!” sounds like a noble, even generous thing, until you realize that another way to phrase this is, “We are helping develop as many high quality employees to meet the needs of wealthy corporate leaders who own and direct capital.” We are not in the business of developing humans, we are in the business of developing workers and a workforce, and we do all of this to our own detriment.

At the center of the conversation around college, is the question of labor, and at the center of the question of labor is the question of the worth of people, and the fundamental debate around whether some people are more valuable, or should be more valuable than others…and why.

What am I saying in all of this? I’m saying that everybody is somebody already, and if society does not recognize you as an equal somebody, it is society that needs to change, not you. I am repeating to that young man, “How can you want to be somebody when you already are somebody?” You are somebody, just like I am, from my first day until my last, just like the small farmer and the girl at the gas station and the trucker, and we are much more than these things too.

But who are you? You are somebody, but who is that person? What are the things that person believes about themselves, about family, about the world? You are somebody, but if you don’t know who that somebody is, you’re like a fool walking around in another person’s clothing. What are you good at? What are you passionate about? What brings you joy? What do you want out of life, and why do you want it?

For me, teaching was never about the subject, it was about life, and the questions above. Assignments and discussions were never about this king or that war, they were about challenging ideas that drive kings and wars. For me, the classroom was a place for discovering oneself in the company and with the aid of others. Everything else was boring to me.