Photo Courtesy New Mexico in Depth

BY TRIP JENNINGS
Executive Director
New Mexico in Depth
nmindepth.com

After earning my college diploma in my early 20s, I felt as if I’d reached the apex of learning. It’s comical to remember this all these years later. It’s as if I had imbued a college diploma with magical power, more a talisman conveying special status than a piece of paper noting an accomplishment worthy of celebration.

I never remember saying this out loud but my mom must have picked up on the vibe.

Earning a college diploma is just the start, she told me, you will spend the rest of your life learning.

At the time, my mom was a working artist and small business owner. She taught art to students, most of whom were children whose parents wanted them to learn to draw and paint, but also a small population of adults. I suspect for the more perceptive parents and adult students, they were there for the benefits that come with engaging with art. For example, learning who and what shaped western art through the centuries as painters responded to what was happening around them. Or, if one possessed a philosophical bent, how the dominant ideas of particular places (say Florence, Italy in the 1400s and 1500s known for the artistic titans Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo Buonarroti and Sandro Botticelli or Paris in the late 19th century and the rise of Impressionism) showed in the work of artists who were reflecting those ideas through small adjustments, like how they changed their brushstrokes as they painted.

A couple of years later, my mom would step away from her art business to go to seminary to become a pastor. Three years later, with many books read, thesis papers written and believers comforted through pastoral care, the Presbyterian Church USA denomination would ordain her as a minister at the age of 50 or so. In the Deep South of the 1980s, in her own small way my mom was a trail blazer. But more importantly she loved learning (she would go on to earn a doctorate of ministry). It was this life-long passion she drew upon to gently disabuse me of the notion that I possessed special insight into how the world worked at the age of 23.  .

I’m not sure I truly understood the profundity of her wisdom then. Forty years later, I do. 

People have wondered why I made a career of journalism. There are many reasons, but one I come back to again and again is that I love learning. In effect, having to report on myriad subjects in multiple places around the country since the 1980s, I have made a living out of learning. About people of disparate political and ideological outlooks, faith traditions, cultures and origins. About city and state budgets. About laws and regulations and how they’re made. About public education. About different countries around the globe. About business and global markets. About immigration, the death penalty, prisons, gang culture, and on and on.

Name a subject and I might know a little something about it.

My experience is not uncommon among journalists. Journalism as a field probably has an overrepresentation of lifelong learners. By and large, we are a curious bunch. 

I think about this inquisitiveness as our nation celebrates its 250th anniversary this week. 

Whatever one thinks of the founding generation — they were a flawed group, some founders raged over the infringement of their own liberty while enslaving people themselves — many historical figures we celebrate each Fourth of July were deeply learned in history, philosophy, theology and various forms of governments. From what I know, they had a thirst for knowledge.

This has normally not been a controversial take. But it seems likely to provoke a debate these days as we live through a rise in populism. Populism, according to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, is “a political philosophy or movement that represents or is claimed to represent the interests of ordinary people especially against the Establishment.”

One hallmark of populism is a general distrust of experts. I wonder too if that suspicion extends to life-long learners.

I am not sure it does and I pose this as a person who is not by nature an uncritical observer of the establishment, however one defines it at any given moment. In fact, in my experience, journalists are often skeptical of the establishment. And I am not signaling blind allegiance to “experts” or saying journalism is out of bounds for criticism. It’s not.

But I wonder if curiosity about the world and a lifetime spent trying to scratch that itch are collateral damage in an age like ours.

Somedays, it seems like it.

That brings me back to this weekend’s celebration of our founding 250 years ago. I would argue that curiosity about the world and a life of constant learning and all that comes with it — changed perspectives, altered opinions, a strengthened sense of compassion and empathy — are a great way to honor the founding of this country and the spirit of the many who fought and died to make the ideas in the Declaration of Independence, and later the Constitution, a reality. 

Trip Jennings, New Mexico In Depth’s executive director, is an award-winning veteran journalist who has worked at newspapers across the nation, including in California, Connecticut and Georgia. Besides working at the Albuquerque Journal and Santa Fe New Mexican, Jennings was part of a team that started the New Mexico Independent, an influential online newspaper.