I’m sitting in Jennings 225 with all of the lights out, struggling to stay awake. The end of the semester is stepping in, and my ability to maintain healthy sleep habits has stepped out. Tonight, my 6-10 p.m. April accelerated class is in full swing. The course is “Moral Lessons/TV Classics,” where we watch a lot of black and white TV and talk about what it says about us as humans. These nights are always long, but I like that I’m in that class with my friends.
Normally, I try to contribute to the discussion at least a little, but tonight I zoned out through most of the first episode of “Father Knows Best,” an American sitcom that ran from 1954 to 1960. Created by Ed James, the show was originally a radio program in the early 50s before transitioning to television. “Father Knows Best” follows the everyday life of the Anderson family: mother and father Margaret and Jim and their three children, Betty, Bud and Kathy.
When the second episode starts playing, I’ll admit I was thinking about curling up in my warm bed in about an hour. On the projector screen, Betty is up in her room fixing her hair and talking to nondescript blonde friend number one.
“My father would die if I didn’t go to state. He went there, my mother went there, and now it’s a big fat tradition,” Betty says.
I lift my head off of my hands. That’s the exact narrative of so many people who go to college. Turns out the whole episode is filled with one relatable moment after the next, reaching through over seven decades to make me laugh, tear up and think “yeah, same.”
Betty is a senior in high school, excited to go on her first college tour at the school that both of her parents attended and met at. As the episode goes on, Margaret and Jim become more interested in reminiscing about their old college experience than actually showing Betty the school. They just want to make sure she goes here so that they can live vicariously through her for the next four years. They tell her that she’ll walk the same halls, take the same classes and audition for the same roles in the same plays that they did. After all, why wouldn’t she want to go somewhere where the ground is already broken and she can become a mini-clone of her parents?
I see a lot of my friends struggling with pleasing their parents while in college. Whether it’s a major change or even something as small as which professor to take for a class, they work hard to find something that pleases their parents and that they actually want to do. And sometimes, pleasing the parents wins out. I get that most parents just want what’s best for their kids. I’m not a parent, but I’m sure it can be hard to let go and watch your child make their own mistakes when you feel like you could prevent them.
The episode gets to a point where someone has to take action, or Betty is going to end up being registered for 18 plus hours next fall at a college that she doesn’t even want to attend. Finally, Betty expresses her fears and tells her parents that she’d rather go to community college with her friends and become her own person. Her parents are upset and don’t understand why she’s “throwing away this opportunity,” but lucky for Betty, the dean had overheard the whole conversation. He pops out of his office with a piece of archived essay Jim had written when he was a student. Jim says that’s nice dean, but where’s the registrar, and the dean says Jim, I really think you ought to read that.
“The purpose of education is to stimulate, not to regulate. To provoke thought, not to choke thought. It is to teach you not what to think, but how to think.”
An ironic laugh track plays in the background as the dean gives Jim a knowing smile.
“Education should not turn out students as though it were turning out stamped and cut particles in a factory.”
