How a man in a cell redefined learning for me

With this mindset, school becomes a chore, like a cycle of exhaustion in which we all count down the days until every weekend and break, dreading the Mondays and returns to school that always seem to come too soon.

But I  was reminded of another interpretation of education when I recently interviewed a man named Keith LaMar, an inmate who has spent more than three decades on death row in Ohio. Even in solitary confinement, where he’s lost almost every kind of freedom, he’s come to appreciate something most of us have lost touch with: a genuine passion for knowledge.

Out of necessity, he taught himself to read and write, as it was the only way to make sense of his life and to fight for his freedom in appealing his sentence. Through reading works of philosophy and writing personal memoirs, LaMar is able to harness the power of education to actively create a better life for himself.

Meanwhile, we high schoolers sit in class scrolling through notes, trying to memorize the difference between meiosis and mitosis for a test we’ll forget by next week. We chase grades and compare them with our peers as if they are proof of our intelligence. But, in reality, they rarely measure curiosity, empathy or moral courage — the very qualities education was meant to develop.

Plato argued education was meant to shape citizens capable of understanding truth and living wisely. Take the Pythagorean theorem, for instance. Memorizing a² + b² = c² won’t make anyone wiser on its own, contrary to what your ninth grade geometry teacher may tell you. But understanding why it works and what it reveals about logic and patterns does matter, and has trained people to reason, to notice order in a frequently chaotic world.

Many students will say they just don’t have enough time in their day to slow down and really grasp the ideas behind what they’re taught. But honestly, I feel that it’s as much about time as it is about difficulty. Thinking deeply takes work, and most of us would rather rush to the answer than challenge our brains to grapple with the idea.

This temptation to bypass a holistic take on learning has never been stronger. Artificial intelligence makes it possible to write essays, solve equations and analyze texts without ever engaging with the ideas beneath them, meaning there are transcripts full of A’s but minds untouched by genuine learning.

How easily we disconnect from learning may be a sign of our privilege. Every day, we walk into classrooms that people like LaMar and millions of other people around the world who are denied access to education would give anything to experience, and still put minimal effort into our assignments just to be done with them.

What feels most ironic to me is that, surrounded by limitless access to knowledge, I had to speak with someone who lives in confinement to be reminded of how privileged I am to have access to learning itself. Keith LaMar, with nothing but books and his own persistence, has built more mental freedom within confinement than many of us ever find outside of it.

It shouldn’t take a story like his to remind us that knowledge is liberation. To be educated isn’t to ace the test, but to engage deeply with the world by thinking critically, empathizing genuinely and questioning constantly.

Maddie Shoop-Gardner is a junior at Carlmont High School in Belmont. Student News appears in the weekend edition. You can email Student News at news@smdailyjournal.com.