COLUMN: Learning from life

From Amanda Bergson-Shilcock's, "A Few Good Words," Fall '99 From Amanda Bergson-Shilcock's, "A Few Good Words," Fall '99I still remember the surprised expression on Naomi's gently lined face. We were chatting before the start of class and when she said that she and her husband had worked for the SNCC, I'd asked politely, "Oh, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee?" Below her beautifully dressed white hair, her mouth fell open. It might have seemed that we had little in common but she was responsible for the most important thing I learned that semester. For all the talk about Penn's valuable resources -- computers, Internet connections and Resnet movie channels -- the richest resources I've found were my fellow night students. From Naomi, I heard about late-night car trips in the South and the human frailties of civil-rights leaders. Class started late that day; our instructor had trouble pulling us from 1965 back to 1996. And from Pat, another classmate and a passionate history buff who actually worked as a tour guide for Historic Philadelphia, I learned what it meant to have a passion for history. To Pat, the 18th century personalities we talked about were as immediate and relevant as any modern figures. In Microeconomics, I met a woman who worked for SEPTA. Nearly nine years of riding public transit hadn't taught me as much about union issues and on-the-job training as she did in a few casual conversations. Sometimes my classmates' expertise was directly related to the subject matter. Elementary school teacher Terri brought in art materials for a hands-on project in our Native Peoples of North America class. I can still see the masks we made, three-dimensional manifestations of the traditions we were studying. In another course, Nicole brought in selections from her rap CD collection to enrich her class presentation on minorities and media. And Bea shared her experiences as a woman in the construction industry when my Race and Ethnicity course discussed affirmative action programs. Often, these experiences spilled over into after-class conversations, some of which resulted in mad sprints for my 10 p.m. train. I'm single with no kids, but thanks to my CGS classmates, I know about juggling school, work and childrearing. You can talk about being a single parent in the abstract but when the mother is my friend Nancy and the challenge is getting a dual degree while working and raising a teenage daughter, it's a whole lot more personal. It's one thing to talk about class issues in a homogeneous group of privileged peers and another to debate them with self-identified working-class students. There's something very immediate about knowing that the intelligent viewpoint of the person next to you is available only because of a scholarship program and a lot of hard work. And contemporary urban issues become much more compelling when the people considering them are from sections of our own city. There is no substitute for the unique input of students who've spent two or three decades in the Northeast, Mount Airy, South Philly, Center City or North Philadelphia. On a campus as big as ours, it's easy to overlook a few thousand night students. While no one can draw on all of Penn's vast resources, it would be a tremendous loss if the rich vein of CGS wisdom went unmined. Day students are gearing up for entry into the so-called real world but we're already there, and we have valuable maps.