By all measures, Felicia Childress’s classroom at Garrett Elementary in Gary, Indiana, was unremarkable. Worn desks, half-clean windows letting in midwestern light, and the typical sound of kids discovering their identities. Michael Jackson, a quiet and perceptive boy, was one of those kids. Years later, Childress recalled him with fondness as a child who showed up, paid attention, and possessed something more difficult to describe than talent. Looking back, it seems odd that one of the most well-known people of the 20th century once sat in a kindergarten classroom with everyone else.
On August 29, 1958, Michael Joseph Jackson was born in Gary, Indiana, into a working-class African-American family with ten kids living in a two-bedroom home. Before fame consumed everything, he went to public grammar schools in Gary, first Garrett Elementary and then Gardner Street Elementary. He was a respectable student by most accounts. According to reports, he had a special aptitude for math, which makes sense for someone who would go on to create some of the most technically exact performances in entertainment history. Rhythm, structure, and numbers don’t really differ from one another.
The issue, if you will, is that the Jackson 5’s touring schedule and formal education were never going to work well together. Michael was already opening for Gladys Knight and Etta James on the Chitlin’ Circuit by the time he was ten years old. There isn’t much time for homework during that childhood. His father, Joe Jackson, a determined and frequently violent character in the family’s narrative, had made the early decision that his sons’ futures would take place on a stage rather than in a classroom. Rehearsals, performances, and the monotonous pace of life on the road gradually supplanted whatever Michael might have learned in a traditional classroom.
Of course, there was tutoring. Michael received on-set training, a patchwork education pieced together between sound checks and wardrobe fittings, just like many young actors of that era. It wasn’t nothing, but it also wasn’t a conventional education. He never went to college. Later in life, he received a high school diploma from a private school in California, which was the highest formal credential he ever obtained. This is a minor detail that is often overlooked in favor of everything else he accomplished.
What’s really intriguing, though, is that Michael’s voracious curiosity was frequently described by those who knew him well. He reportedly spent a significant amount of time at Neverland surrounded by literature that most people would never associate with the King of Pop. He read widely and was drawn to books on science, art, and history. It’s possible that his self-directed education was more comprehensive than anything a conventional curriculum could have provided, but it’s also possible that this is just the kind of idealistic story people create about brilliance in order to ignore what was lost.
The path Michael took has a true cost. He said that his early years were lonely and solitary, devoid of the typical social interactions that come with attending school. He just didn’t have the friendships, boredom, and awkward teenage rhythms of those classroom years. In some ways, it’s difficult to avoid feeling that absence in everything that followed because fame came before he had a chance to complete growing up.
Therefore, degrees or diplomas were not used to gauge Michael Jackson’s level of education. Thousands of hours of performance, an intense focus on craft, and a self-taught knowledge of dance, music, film, and human emotion were used to gauge it. Whether that was sufficient or if something crucial was lacking will likely depend on your perception of the true purpose of education.
