I was sitting at the lunch counter of a local institution last week when a guy named Don struck up a conversation with me. From Don I learned that I graduated from the same high school as Don and his buddy, singer / songwriter Tom Waits.
Tom Waits is a musician's musician, a fascinating fellow who I've listened to since my high school days - blissfully unaware that he had wandered the same hallways and skipped the same classes as me, perhaps even had some of the same teachers a decade earlier.
I came home and googled Tom to confirm that he had, indeed, attended Hilltop. He had. But this is the most fascinating bit: the graduate from my high school to go on to the most fame and fortune didn't actually graduate from my high school He dropped out.
As I thought about it, I wondered what any teacher at Hilltop could have taught Tom about his future. He has created a fairly unique sound and although he has some obvious influences he has put them together into rather unobvious songs. As much as any "popular" musician, Tom has defined his own path and his own genre.
We know how to crank out people who fill roles, sure. But what do we know about helping people to find a path in life, to create a life and a life's work that somehow expresses what is unique about them? And of the little we do know, how much of that ever finds its way into school curriculum? Are our institutions destined to waste the time of our creative geniuses?
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