The Gatekeepers

This is an essay that I wrote in April 2007. At the time, I had an English instructor who I felt was being extremely unfair in his writing assessments, and who was unwilling to discuss exactly what was “wrong” with my papers. So, in what might be termed as a “fit” of anger, I wrote and turned this essay in as my final paper. I received a “B” in the class. - Kyle

The Gatekeepers

I struggled at first to decide what to write about here. Despite many attempts at writing in the scholarly manner which seemed to be the precedent for all “well-graded” papers, I failed miserably, instead producing nothing but a steaming pile of dribbling garbage for which I wish I could make no claim. Alas, honesty prevents me from that.

But then I got to thinking: For what reason am I actually writing? Is it for a grade? Is it to please an instructor that I’ve known for less than four months? Or is it simply to satisfy the whims of some well-known yet cleverly-veiled aristocracy? Though there are countless papers written by numerous students over the course of their careers, how many actually reach out to those who might actually benefit from them? I would hasten to say very few, except for the older students, whose work is eventually published in a scholarly journal, left to rest on a dusty shelf in the far corner of a college library.

Students every day are stressed by one thing or another. We pay for a post-high school education at rates which we have no ability to affect. Granted, the choice of the institution is our own, but is it really? More often, our choices are limited by our ability to pay, and the judgments of our high-school gatekeepers who are given the responsibility to determine our range of opportunities at a time in our lives where we are only just beginning to understand the adult world.

We are tested for our abilities, during the stage in our development when we are only just beginning to discover them ourselves. Four years of testing, grading, marking, achieving or not, and our place in life is determined for us. Will we be granted access to the accredited halls of elite higher learning? Or will we be regulated to simply attend that local place of post-secondary education to prove to the gatekeepers that we deserve to attend their sacred place of education?

Commencement, that grand beginning of the rest of our lives, is presented with all of the pomp and prestige that might be mustered for such a mediocre achievement. All that is needed to attend is simply to survive. A cap and gown can be yours for merely attending, and scraping by with the bare minimum. We’re presented with a diploma, a certificate of recognition from a group of individuals whose faces still remain behind closed doors.

After a summer break, we’re left to choose for ourselves how the course of our lives is to be played out. “The world is yours,” they say. Well, that may be true collectively, but as soon as you dare attempt to make a claim of any sort, you are assaulted on all fronts with every manner of opposition, striving to coerce you into giving up that which you want to achieve.

Many strike out on their own, but all-too-soon come to the annoying realization that the skills that are learned in high school do not even approach abilities required in the real world. All the years of algebra and calculus come to naught when the only numbers you’re worried about are those that keep your bank account out of the red. Employers think little of the high school diploma, and it shows.

Just upon entering a college or university, again you find yourself at the mercy of gatekeepers. This time, they are left to play by their own rules, with regulations that require no approval, if they’re able to tip-toe just inside the boundary line. While before, school was required, now, you are actually paying for it out of your own pocket. And yet still, the gatekeepers stand in the way of your goal.

Your major is clouded, always just inches from your fingers as you are required to complete a mundane and ultimately useless barrage of courses for which you are also required to pay. Tuition costs are stacked upon an already growing number of bills, including rent, utilities, food, clothing, textbooks, supplies and possibly car payments, as you struggle simply to make it through the years which are humorously referred to as being a “poor college student.”

Courses required range from math to English, biology to physical science, and art to physical education. While there is a wide range of courses to fulfill these required credits, the fact of the matter remains that they must be completed, or else every course that is taken is simply graded in vain. Once this path is commenced, it must be taken to absolute completion, despite the fact that these years of blood, sweat and tears don’t guarantee any actual compensation at the end of the journey.
We are chained to the foundation of the university, handed a lead-filled chisel and a white, lined stone to write upon. There we lift our hammers and begin to chip away at the block our feet are chained to, struggling to remove this weight from ourselves so that we might make our way through the first gate.

Hammers and chisels continue to strike stone as each student struggles to release himself from bondage. And bondage it is, one of our own making. One that we daily pay to have shackled to us. One that we continue to pay for, long after the shackles are finally broken.

And if we elect to transfer? Well, then we simply must pull our stone with us, however heavy it is, and then, we are often given back some of the weight that we thought we had removed from the stone. With such a daunting intimidation, most elect simply to stay in one place, at least until the first stone is removed from them.
When you finally release yourself from your self-condemning state, you are brought to the gate, which bars the way for you to finally begin your chosen course. Like Jacob, you’ve finally completed your seven years of indentured servitude, are offered the prize that you didn’t ask for at the first, and can now begin your second set of years required to achieve the goal that you had originally set out for at your commencement.

It’s no wonder that many students are annoyed and disturbed by the process. Our lives are left to us, but our path is narrow when we wish to gain the achievements that we desire. We must “jump through the hoops”, and memorize an inane and ultimately useless curriculum that we will forget the moment that are finished, just to begin our desired area of study. Students aren’t exactly given a choice whether to complete these courses – they are required of any who wishes to gain that ornate, gold-leafed certificate that states that they withstood the test of time and survived those years of education that they’re likely never to worry about again. They are required of those who wish to be named one of the elite, one of the chosen who has graduated, who wish to be acknowledged by the gatekeepers as one who has provided the correct keys and passwords to be granted access to a final, ultimate goal.

Now, I’ve spoken much on the gatekeepers, but perhaps I should define precisely who they are. They are those who hold the keys allowing access to the higher levels of any organization. They are those who are there to “filter out”, as it were, those who are unfit for the higher parts of society. They are found in business, sports, in most any social atmosphere, and in any workplace, but most especially in education.

They care little for the skills that you might possess on your own if it is not accredited by another whom they recognize. They care not for your own abilities, unless you carry a certificate from one who they esteem to be of high rank and credibility. Only after the sacred relic of a university diploma is bestowed upon you are you able to show the world that yes, you have truly achieved something in life.

When the end is in sight, and more often than not we carry more debt on our backs than we could possibly imagine, then comes the time that we are allowed to begin the study of our choice. The things that could have benefited us most are instead withheld from us because of our “impurity”. Because we have not been baptized by the fire of “General Education”, we are not worthy to drink from the Holy Grail. Instead we are only given to gaze upon it, waiting and working so that we might be elected to taste of its sweet nectar.

We watch with a mix of relish and envy as others before us achieve the goals that we have set for ourselves, simply because they had the luck to be born before us. They were able to climb the mountain of mediocrity so that they might be able to finally achieve the challenges that they, and you, both desired to grapple with. But as the gatekeepers allow them through the gate, they turn, and with a face as stony as that which is chained to your feet, they deny you entrance.

Now, there are those few exceptions to this process, and they are those who we most admire in life. They are the artists, the writers, the creators, and inventors. They are those who disregard “reality” and inspire us to achieve new heights. They are those who work against or outside of the prescribed system, giving us reason to believe that one day, we might truly be respected for those things that we do, and not what others say we are able to do.

Was it required of Picasso to prove himself before he lifted the brush? Was Shakespeare told to complete his education before he hefted a quill? Was Edison told to provide some gold-leafed sheepskin before he began his work? These men performed for society works that have lasted through the ages, and their deeds have been a testament to the determined and unflinching will of humanity. Their work was not reflected in the glimmering glass of a framed diploma, nor did they simply fulfill the mundane and “required” courses of their respective ages to achieve their goals. Their achievements have withstood the test of time, not their man-made honors. Their works have been for the betterment of society, not for the simple and empty acknowledgement that the problems exist.

Now, these examples are far before my time, and it’s obvious that there are many differences when speaking of those masters of the trade as opposed to “just a student”. In their respective societies, they were shaping the norms themselves. These men fought against their own types of opposition, and struggled to achieve the goals that others would say are impossible. In our modern society, it is given to us to please the gatekeepers. We must keep them happy. Anything outside of the norm is disdained, and the world frowns on those who try to achieve their goals outside of the pre-determined boundaries.

But even so, I wonder if there are similarities between history and now, more so than I realize. Christopher Columbus, too, faced opposition when it came to his goals. For belief that there was, in fact, an unthinkable and swifter route to the Indies, he defied the “boundaries” of his day. He ignored the skeptics, and paid no heed to those who would tell him that his ideas were foolish, were ridiculous, or were irresponsible. He knew that there was only one soul who he needed to convince. It wasn’t any of the professors who claimed to “know.” It wasn’t the common man who knew little. Instead, it was the queen, Isabella.

Columbus, too, was required to leap through the hoops put in front of him. Not only was he left to contend with the Spanish wise men, he was ridiculed by society. He was scorned and laughed at by the scholars of his day, who told him that their way was best. However, he knew that there was only that one opinion that fully and truly mattered. If he could convince the queen, the rest of the puzzle pieces would fall into place.

What if he hadn’t the courage to fight back? What if he hadn’t the intelligence to stand up for what he believed to be true? How different would the world be then? Perhaps some other soul would have found the ability within himself to brave the unreachable horizon. But then again, perhaps not.

We live, today, in a world of gatekeepers. Hugh Nibley, in a commencement address of 1983, called them “managers.”

“Managers,” he states. “Do not promote individuals whose competence might threaten their own position; and so as the power of management spreads ever wider, the quality deteriorates, if that is possible. In short, while management shuns equality, it feeds on mediocrity.”

Throughout our lives, we have been taught to deal kindly with gatekeepers, because they are the ones who guard the doorways through the narrow hallways of our society’s system. They are the men and women responsible for allowing us access into the courses, the education, the experience, and after years of blood, sweat and tears, into the beginning of the careers that we wished to pursue in the first place. But why is it that we place so much emphasis on these people? In their hands is the power to change, for good or bad at their own whim, the course of life for their students, for their employees, or for their citizens.

A quote on my wall that I can’t find the source for says, “We have learned by sad experience that it is the nature and disposition of almost all men, as soon as they get a little authority, as they suppose, they will immediately begin to exercise unrighteous dominion.”

What, you say, does that have to do with the gatekeepers? Everything. Instead of compassion, these managers see only the letter of the law, see only the requirements unfulfilled. Their pessimistic views poison society to the point that they are numb to the pleas or attempts at success by those beneath them. They do not care for the time and effort of their underlings. They view unsuccessful attempts as nothing but failures, and leave it to them to realize, guess, and make another feeble attempt to achieve their goal, a goal that they themselves do not have, but that they will guard as precious from the grimy hands of those trying to achieve it.

This hierarchy is guarded with barriers, with dams, fences, gates and walls, all in an attempt to fool us into believing that it really means something. What is an education? Is it simply the recognition of having completed all the required courses? Is it really worth our time and money to achieve such recognition from our faceless rulers?

So, what are we, as a society going to do? Do we continue to send students into the rock quarry, forcing them to satisfy the whims of “general education” before they are allowed to work on their actual learning? Do we continue to provide for them busy work and useless tasks?

Or, instead, do we open the gates? Do we allow the students through to study those things that they need to know for their respective careers? Why not allow the student to decide what his or her degree will consist of?

We live in a flawed system. That is the way life is. Do I wonder about it? Sure, all the time. Am I right? I doubt I’ll ever have the opportunity to find out. Instead, I’m forced to write papers that will never be reread after a grade is placed upon them. I am forced to memorize mathematical formulas that I will never use again. I am forced to recite the names of Saturn’s rings, the moons of Jupiter, and the many different bones of an Apatosaurus. I am forced to explain my theory about world hunger, or perhaps the validity of the human genome, or even to propose a viable solution to the war in Iraq.

I am forced to waste my time in the pursuit of something I do not wish to pursue, simply so that I may one day complete the courses that will make me a “well-rounded” and “intelligent” individual. I will likely hang the sheepskin on my wall, but I will remember the years of chiseling. I will remember the managers who stood in my path. And I will remember the gatekeepers who blocked my way.

And when they finally turn the key to let me in? I plan to break the hinges.