Many years ago when my son was about three I was chatting about plans for his schooling. I planned to send my son to public school. The man I was speaking with said, “You sound so positive. You must have had a good school experience.”
Those simple words rocked my world. I hadn’t had a good school experience. I had loathed school from almost the day I entered it till I finally slunk out of high school demoralized, nearly defeated and despondent. The funny part of this is that I was a wise child in a way. While I was in school and hating it, it occurred to me that I might not have enough experience to know if I really did hate it. Maybe I was wrong. Maybe school was OK. It was only after I grew up and had more experience, I realized my feelings were accurate. I had hated school.
What on earth was I thinking when I said I would send my son to public school?Truth be told, I wasn’t thinking at all. I was unconscious. I was methodically proceeding step by step down a path without thinking at all. I doubt the man I spoke with remembers me or his casual remark, but I am forever grateful to him. He woke me from my slumber and (I believe) saved my son from years of boredom, depression, Ritalin and a 12-year sentence to an institution that is designed by bureaucrats.
I was reminded of this story today when I spoke with a friend whose daughter is expected to not express her lively, sparkling intelligence because her classroom is a place of equality and her expression of her unique qualities, her special smarts, and her incisive insights are not contributing to everyone feeling equal. All of which caused me to tell my friend, “Damn straight. Tell her to go get ’em. She’s not crazy. They are.”
I look back now at how I barely held on through on those years of schooling–so unsure of myself that I couldn’t even say for sure if I did hate school. Why wouldn’t I hate it? It was beyond tedious. By the time I went to school, my dad had spent untold evenings reading stories to us while we clustered around him in the red rocking chair. I remember the story about Pete of the Steel Mills that ended with Pete dying in blast furnace accident. That story always made my dad choke up. I remember another one about a man traveling in the desert who met a bushman in the Kalahari who saved his life. I knew a good story when I heard one.
Then I went to school and we were supposed to read Spot and Jane “stories.” Stories so stupid, so pointless, so insipid they would make a nun swear. This was school. Hate it? Hate was a weak word. I loathed it. I lived for recess and the really good yeast rolls at lunch. Those things were small compensation, but I took comfort where I found it.
Forty years ago, it was boring. It was boring to be in school with students who could barely read a sentence in 8th grade. It was boring to read things that had nothing at all to do with my life or the life of anyone I knew or had any prospect of knowing. I don’t disbelieve the things I heard in history class, I just can’t remember them. They seemed irrelevant then. Now I think they were. My father told us the story of his own grandfather running from the Southern conscriptors during the Civil War and losing an axe while he made his escape. I still remember that story. I remember practicing my multiplication tables with my mother while we tied tobacco hands in the barn, but I can’t remember a single thing I learned in school between 1st and 12th grade. I am racking my brain and nothing comes up.
I can’t even conceive of how horrible it must be to be in school today. Think about it. There’s a whole system devoted to telling you that you do not have unique talents and capabilities. It tells you that you are just the same as everyone else. It doesn’t tell you that your task is to discover how you can contribute your gifts to the world. Instead, it recites false platitudes, that anyone can become anything they want. Everyone is equal. Others that you may perceive as not trying very hard, others who are not kind, others who cannot read the things that fascinate and enthrall you–all of these people are your equal.
That is a lie. The last thing on earth that is true of people is that they are equal. They are not equal in gifts. They are not equal in spirit. They are not equal in intelligence. In short, they are not equal.