Back to School

Life is cyclical and it works well that way. An interesting example of this is the annual pilgrimages to Target or Staples each August. Kids who three months prior would have pulled their own teeth if it could get them out of even a week of school are now giddy over things like pens and notebook paper. Having forgotten completely the drudgery, students cannot wait to get back to see their friends and find out what's new in the world of schooling.

Even though it seems a little juvenile (imagine that) to get excited about school, there is something refreshing about it as well. School somehow reflects both what is wrong and what is right about the American experiment. It takes so much from our children, especially in terms of freedom and creativity. And yet, it must also give something back as well. Not merely in terms of data and social formation but in terms of the location and identify that it provides. If kids know nothing else, they know school. It is their thing. It is their place in a largely placeless world. Of course, as a pastor, I would prefer that our children's place would be the Church. But while we are working to reclaim such an honor, there are certainly identities worse than school.

Increasingly, we hear discussion of "year round" schooling. The phrase is somewhat misleading because it does not really mean more school. It is rather a reallocation of those other 180 days. The traditional three months of summer vacation do not disappear. They are simply broken up over the course of the entire calendar.

The arguments on either side are generally compelling. Personally, I don't like the idea of doing away with summer vacation but its probably just because it is what I know. And I like the thought of at least a couple of months in which kids don't have to sit still for six hours a day.

If there is anything at stake here beyond mere preference, it might be that renewed look of hope that we see on those faces in Target come August. Somehow, there is a genuine sense of newness spawned by each successive school year. Despite everything that takes place between September and May, all (or at least much) seems forgiven by the time it all starts up again. There is even a sense of anticipation--an incalculable hope that this year things will be different!

We all need this, I think. Room to get over what happened yesterday... Space to re-imagine the world... Time for hope to be reborn. Of course, we know this in the faith. But perhaps the earth itself needs this. Perhaps cycles and seasons are more than simply a way for us to measure time. Sunrise and sunset, plant and harvest, work and rest... Are such things purposely woven into the very fabric of Creation? And might this be for the very purpose of rekindling hope?