I rubbed away at the gauges, wondering what had brought on this outburst, and was somewhat relieved that he seemed to hold nothing against me personally.
"Where you go to school?" he said.
I told him.
"Is that so? What you learning down there?"
"Just general subjects, a regular college course," I said.
"Mechanics?"
"Oh no, nothing like that, just a liberal arts course. No trades."
"Is that so?" he said doubtfully. Then suddenly, "How much pressure I got on that gauge right there?"
"Which?"
"You see it," he pointed. "That one right there!"
I looked, calling off, "Forty-three and two-tenths pounds."
"Uh huh, uh huh, that's right." He squinted at the gauge and back at me. "Where you learn to read a gauge so good?"
"In my high-school physics class. It's like reading a clock."
"They teach you that in high school?"
"That's right."
"Well, that's going to be one of your jobs. These here gauges have to be checked every fifteen minutes. You ought to be able to do that."
"I think I can," I said.
On pages 209 and 210 of Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, the narrator works at a paint factory as an assistant to a man named Lucius Brockway. At first, Brockway just has the narrator cleaning because he does not realize how educated the narrator is, but as they start talking, Brockway finds out the narrator went to school and part of college and is able to give him more meaningful jobs. When Brockway learns that the narrator is able to read pressure gauges on the paint vats, he asks “‘Where you learn to read a gauge so good?’” (Ellison 210). The narrator responds that he learned how in his high school physics class. Brockway then gives the narrator the job of checking the gauges every fifteen minutes. In high school even though the narrator had no idea that he would get a job working at a paint factory someday, he was a good student. Knowledge that probably did not seem helpful to learn at the time ended up turning out to be useful for his paint factory job. School often teaches students about topics that they feel are unnecessary to learn, such as advanced math and science for most people, but some of this knowledge can turn out to be useful in the long run. This could be in a case like the narrator’s where a future job turns out to require knowledge from high school. Another case could be that a student changes their future plans and goes further with a different subject in college for which they need high school knowledge. In both of these cases, seemingly unnecessary knowledge from high school can turn out to be helpful in the future.
A part of the excerpt that I found especially interesting was that Brockman thinks for sure that the narrator must have studied mechanics in college. This is because, as Brockman and the narrator talk, Brockman discovers the narrator is already knowledgable about how to use the paint equipment. However, this turns out to be because he used similar equipment in his high school physics class. This was interesting because when Brockman was in school, schools did not teach as much as they do during the narrator’s time. Brockman would have needed to learn how to use the equipment after high school, whereas at this point in time schools had improved enough that they were teaching how to use this fancy equipment in their physics classes. This shows how much schools improved during the early 1900s. I have a similar experience to the narrator when I tell my parents about what I am learning in school, especially in my science classes where I am using lab equipment. In AP Chemistry I often do labs that require the use of digital pH meters or colorimeters that I connect to my computer. I then use a program called LoggerPro to see the data from the pH meter or colorimeter and analyze it. When I tell my dad about these labs, he is continually amazed at the equipment we have available at our high school as he was a chemistry major, and at the college level the equipment available to him was not as good as what I have access to now in high school. At the moment I am not planning on being a chemistry major like my dad, the same way the narrator was not planning on needing his physics knowledge in the future; however, I do not know for sure how the future will play out for me, so learning how to use this chemistry equipment could prove useful if my plans change.