The Educational Experience by Donald Barthelme

God help us, we're in the hands of engineers.

The first person narrator is a teacher and he has taken his students on a museum school trip. Surrounded by history, knowledge and relics of the past, this should be a great learning opportunity to spark their imaginations. Not quite. 

Donald Barthelme's "The Educational Experience" by Donald Barthelme makes for a great companion piece to both "Me and Miss Mandible" and "The School". All three short-stories are satires of the education system as not only a meaningless waste of time for teaching children important life skills, but also systemically trains them to become another drone in an oppressive capitalist society. At one point, the narrator even describes their learning akin to army drills. The author's disjointed narrative is overflowing with nonsense and pure absurdity--a mirror image of the world these young children will have to face once they finish their schooling. The irony, of course, is that they will be ill-equipped or oblivious to the machinations of a world gone topsy-turvy. 

The narrative structure is built upon erudite digressions and incongruities. For example, in outlining various lesson plans, he states: "We made the students add odd figures, things like 453498 x 23: J and 8977?22MARY." More gibberish taught in schools that has no practical application to the so-called real world. As the class visits the different museum exhibitions, he interjects with sardonic commentary along the way: "Here is a diode, learn what to do with it. Here is Du Guesclin, constable of France 1370-80--learn what to do with him. A divan is either a long cushioned seat or a council of state--figure out at which times it is what." Once again, students are compelled to study a myriad of irrelevant subjects and clutter their minds with futile information. However, the teacher emphasizes the importance of this higher learning:

"But what a wonderful time you'll have, we told them, when the experience is over, done, completed. You will all, we told them, be more beautiful than you are now, and more employable too. You will have a grasp of the total situation; the total situation will have a grasp of you."

This paragraph is indicative of the author's harsh critique and caustic satire of the corrupt education system. The surreal aspects of the story also add to the confusion and distorted reality; a warped perception of the world enmeshed in chaotic misunderstanding,