I usually don’t think much about my lack of formal education (I dropped out in the 9^th grade), but my latest botch made it the irresistible focus of this blog. I recently wrote a ZNet commentary, Consciousness for Classlessness, emailed last night, and posted today. In the opening paragraph I wrote:

“Analysts and pundits alike all have common understanding of the following words for explaining and remedying the current state of the U.S. economy: ‘recession,’ ‘inflation,’ ‘housing crisis,’ ‘economic stimulus package,’ ‘rate cuts,’ and ‘injections.’ However it doesn’t take an economist, a Wall Street banker, nor a collage graduate to understand these could also be euphemisms for summarizing what has been happening: Class War in the opening of the 21^st Century….”

The awake eye will have noticed immediately that I spelled “collage” when I meant to spell “college.” Of course this morning I would see this---after it’s been emailed to 7,000 people! Despite the embarrassment I do appreciate the irony of this particular slip, and so thought maybe I’d try to reclaim some dignity from my patch-work education (which seems to have not only compromised my spelling, but also my ability for math…). The third definition listed for “Collage” on Dictionary.com is given as such:

“an assemblage or occurrence of diverse elements or fragments in unlikely or unexpected juxtaposition”

I would say this is a pretty good definition of my education. I have always been envious of college students, and my brief experience attending a couple university courses, made me thirsty for that kind of academic immersion and rigor. However, for many reasons, including Class, I never had the opportunity to really appreciate the institutions of higher learning. And really, I doubt I have the capacity for it. I seem more cut out to be an organizer in this world, and that is hard enough. Maybe in a better world I’d spend more time at school, but really, I think I’d rather focus on making music, cooking, taking film courses, and for manual work I’ve always liked labor intensive stuff like body work on boats or mechanics. Maybe my balanced job complex would include all these things.

Beyond that though, the focus of sarcasm in my commentary towards “economists,” “Wall Street bankers,” and “college graduates” had everything to do with class indoctrination in service to power, and nothing to do with the intrinsic qualities of education, of which, I think my “collage education” has had plenty of.