Patio Pondering: Inherited Lessons, Real Education
This morning, I am preparing to attend the Ohio Pork Congress and my day is starting earlier than usual. I do not have to be Drop Off Line Dad so I can enjoy my coffee while watching the sun start its daily trek across the Winter Sky.
While my wife was watching television last week, I was scrolling through social media and came across a series of videos featuring stylized Sesame Street characters break-dancing to Safety Dance. It was edgy. Definitely not the Bert and Ernie I grew up with in the 1970s. And yet, I found myself tapping my foot, smiling, oddly comfortable with it.
Not long after, I saw a separate video discussing the stigma that still exists around attending community and junior colleges.
Those two ideas stuck together longer than I expected.
The Sesame Street characters were clearly no longer confined to their original role as puppets on a children’s television network. They had evolved, been reinterpreted, repackaged for a different moment in time. And while it was different from what I remembered, it didn’t feel wrong. It just felt… different.
That reaction surprised me, because when it came to post-secondary education, I wasn’t always so flexible.
I was raised with very clear ideas about what constituted a “real” education. I remember chastising high school classmates who chose to attend the commuter college in Fort Wayne, quietly dismissing their choice as settling for something less. You can imagine what my internal monologue sounded like when I headed to West Lafayette to attend what I believed was a “real” college.
Those views didn’t appear out of nowhere. They were inherited.
My grandmother earned a four-year degree in the 1930s to become a teacher, then returned for her master’s degree in 1958. Education mattered deeply to her. That value was passed down without question. My mother picked up that banner and carried it forward with conviction, pushing my sister and me toward “real” colleges and supporting me as I went on to earn my Ph.D.
The system worked. The outcomes reinforced the belief. And with success came judgment—quietly at first, then comfortably.
Over time, though, my views on post-secondary education have matured. Not because I value education any less, but because I’ve come to see it with more nuance than the rigid framework I inherited. Experience has a way of doing that. So does parenthood.
Today, as I consider the paths available to my own children—including the possibility of trade school—I find myself far more focused on fit, purpose, and opportunity than on labels. The value of education hasn’t diminished for me; the hierarchy around it has.
So, as I sit watching Bert and Ernie dance to Safety Dance, I’m struck by how easily I’ve accepted their evolution, and how long it took me to fully examine my own. Familiar things change. Sometimes they grow beyond the boxes we built for them. And sometimes, with a little time and reflection, we do too.