Recently
I found some of my old report cards, along with a few happy notes
from my third grade teacher, festooned with cartoons: “Charles has
done great work today!” and so on. Looking at them you might
conclude that I did well in third grade. On the report card that
year my teacher wrote “Charles has been very special to me.”
Maybe I was: after all, it was my cackling laughter she recorded for
use as a Hallowe'en sound effect. But what I remember is trouble.
Those cute congratulations for doing my work were few and far
between, because third grade was when the battles really began about
my stubborn refusal to do assigned work.
It
had started in first grade, as my joy in learning had been invaded
more and more by worksheets and other demands from teachers that I
saw as pointless and disruptive, and so I skipped out on them as much
as I could get away with. (For the purposes of this piece I'll pass
lightly over the problems I had with other children, which were
formidable in their own right.)
The
lesson that stuck the deepest and longest from third grade came after
I had crafted a paper mouse in loving detail. When I showed it to my
teacher she told her special student – quite gently, I emphasize –
that I should have taken care of my backlog of unfinished assignments
first. You see, this art project was only for those who had done
their serious work: a positive reinforcement, like those
cartoon notes. The logic that meted out such favors on such
conditions could not tolerate my transgression, so my teacher was
obliged to turn my pride of accomplishment to shame. I repeat: she
broke it to me as gently as she could, but shame me she did. I have
often wondered what went through her mind in carrying out this subtle
behaviorist violence. Where did she learn it, who told her that it
was effective, or good for children? Did she follow in full faith
that it would shape me to be a good worker, a good learner? How long
had she been carrying out this technique? Had she seen it break the
resistance of children before me?
Whatever
fairness she may have told herself she was enforcing, that lesson
destroyed my trust in her – and in teachers generally. For this
made clear how insignificant my “special” gifts or even my
conscience really were in her eyes. Yes, at its root my refusal to
do homework was a matter of conscience, but who takes seriously the
conscience of an eight-year-old? She could override my sense of
right and wrong with diagnoses of laziness or failure to cooperate,
but what she was really enforcing was her power over me. Something
in me, something in every child, sees right through that, which is
why adults try so hard to crush it.
My
first grade teacher had been gracious enough to concede when I began
a sentence correctly with “because,” but this was different. I
was two years older, and instead of disagreeing in a matter that
could be empirically demonstrated, I was guilty of a violation of
class ethics, and the teacher had the power to enforce them, while I
had none to defend or even assert mine. That was what I really
learned in third grade.
How
many teachers are so occupied with trying to acquire and follow the
most respected theories about how to teach that they have no time to
develop their natural human empathy? It is this empathy, more than
theory or method, which could have given a well-meaning older woman
the insight she needed into how a boy served his own gifts, and made
her theatrical flourishes in the classroom (which could fill another
six pages) more than simply shocking or comic effects. But really,
being an avid learner not only counted for nothing if it got in the
way of worksheets, but of course it attracted the ire and scorn of
peers as well.
My
constant daydreams were an added frustration to the program, but the
scorn they bred in teachers (“Earth to Charles!”) only made them
more precious as an escape. I daydreamed with a complexity,
concreteness and focus that I no longer seem capable of. So when, in
fifth grade, we were given several story prompts to write about, it
was a revelation of joy beyond my ability to describe.
I had
found a new dream: to be a writer! And I could have pursued it for
hours. But when a bell rang or a clock hand moved, then it was my
job to set those frivolities aside for the more important things.
Teachers' efforts to entreat, cajole and finally threaten me into
doing “my” work failed to convince me fully of the necessity of
busywork, but over time they would succeed in convincing me that I
was a lazy boy who was bad at finishing what I started – all the
more reason not to trust me to choose my own tasks. A neat way of
absolving authority from the troublesome burden of cultivating
empathy.
My
parents saw that I was struggling and, searching for alternatives,
arranged (without my knowing) for me to be tested by ISD #77's Gifted
and Talented program. I had seen their director interact with my
family. I didn't know what his job was but he seemed nice, until he
aimed his psychological wiles at me to coerce me into making
contracts to do my homework. They meant nothing to me and I broke
them one after another, wishing that he would just go away. After
several fruitless weeks he finally did leave me alone. I had no idea
at the time that Mr. Contract's intervention came from my parents'
wish to improve my school experience, but I did know that his game
was absurd and manipulative: oh dear, now not only was I lazy, but
had sullied my honor too. He never showed interest in what I was
learning, though who knows, maybe he really meant to help me pursue
my dreams, if only I would keep my word and do my homework?
He
failed, and I don't regret my actions. They could keep their GT
program, along with their definition of honor.
Fifth
grade still gave some opportunities to write freely though, and I
seized on those meager chances, inspired by long hours of looking
through books and National Geographic
articles instead of doing my homework. A student teacher honored one
of my stories by reading it out loud in front of the class. (Did
that impress the bullies? soften their hearts to leave me alone?
Let's not be ridiculous.)
Writing
became more urgent to me in sixth grade, spurred on by my voracious
reading (which soon developed a fertile symbiosis with the video
games I played). I still have the records of three summer reading
programs from my fourth, fifth and seventh grade years.
I
failed to complete any of them.
So
I won no prizes for what I read, even if I was slogging through The
Red Badge of Courage or learning how recording studios worked, or
taking six months to patiently digest 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea
in its unabridged entirety (but that wasn't in the summer so it
didn't count).
My
eyes, opened in third grade, could not be closed, and in fact I was
constantly reminded: reading, aye, learning, like unauthorized art
work, was rebellion if it went against the programmed activities or
assignments. If I hadn't slacked off from so much class work I never
would have tasted the richness of story that some of our textbooks
concealed, of which the teachers doled out such a paltry portion.
Nor would I have had time for Verne, Wells, Malory, and others that
weren't on my teachers' radar.
In
junior high I hung on every word my Social Studies and Life Science
teachers said, reveling in the glories of new knowledge, but still
resisted homework. I stole a lot of time to educate myself beyond
the curriculum and in defiance of the expected workload, sneaking
paperbacks in classrooms like contraband. The library became my
refuge not only from students, but also some of the teachers and
especially the principal. It was shared with the high school and
therefore had plenty of books written for grown-up readers.
So
with all the reading I did on my own, and with Rebecca Wall sitting
next to me, I could well afford to flourish in Mrs. Boyce's English
class, and I remain grateful for it. Acting in a school play (a
privilege previously denied in consequence of not doing homework) was
another lifeline, as was Math League. How Mrs. Heinitz managed to
cure me of my raging hatred for math I do not know. But she did –
temporarily. I think it might have had to do with her unflappable
calm, a trait that the principal did not possess.
It
is sad that I remember that principal – a human being who was
probably loved and respected by many – as a face contorted in rage,
screaming at me in the cafeteria. And an iron hand on my arm,
pulling me through the hallway while her shrill voice berated me for
having the nerve to sign up for Students Against Doing Drugs
in my free hour when I had so many overdue assignments! I look at
her smile in my yearbook and can't believe she ever wished to be such
a terror to the young. But what and who she was in her personal life
had no bearing on mine when she put her faith in the same behaviorist
doctrine that had compelled my third grade teacher to trash my
triumph. Once again, my behavior constituted a transgressive threat
against an ideology that had the practical force of religion, and its
priesthood felt duty-bound to punish. I would have done better under
the secular humanists whom I hear spoken of with such great fear, but
have yet to see wielding the real power in a school.
I
pity my junior high principal, but never have I wasted a shred of
gratitude on her attempts to correct me. I owe none of my life's
successes to her, nor to the faith that claimed her allegiance.
In
those bad years I had to keep writing: escapist fantasies to purge
the horrors of junior high, and more serious attempts to assimilate
tropes and techniques that impressed me from my extra-curricular
reading. Poetry too, inspired by Neil Peart, one of my most
important teachers who I never met and never expect to in this life.
But official allowance for this was fast drying up in the sharpening
scrutiny from the guards. My grades worsened, culminating in the
shame of a D+ in English my freshman year.
At
home I got the riot act, of course. Ds in junior high were one thing
(and I had gotten several), but this was serious now. I had college
to think of. By that time there was little to prevent my bad grades
from taking a devastating toll on my confidence and self-image: after
all, isn't that what they're for? Maybe if I had been one of the bad
boys, I could have better articulated defiance towards the constant
attempts to manipulate my behavior. But my socioeconomic class would
not forgive that, and I wasn't tough enough to defy it along with
school. The bad boys terrified me with their worldly ways and adult
confidence, and several of them were clearly marked for prison.
My
socioeconomic class saved me from being marked for prison, but that
only sharpened the shame of bad grades. Although I was smart, they
said, I was wasting my potential by my naughtiness: reading, writing
and drawing according to my own curiosity (and conscience? That was
getting harder to hold onto) instead of doing the work they gave.
Any protestations by teachers that they really cared could not change
that, nor could they mask the foundation of our relationship on an
enforced inequality of power.
For
the most part, the personal concern for my success and even the
compassion my teachers expressed as they gave me those low grades
only reinforced the message that I had serious character defects in
their view – or that they didn't see me, they saw a subject,
who was headed for trouble if he didn't adjust his behavior. If I
ever thought that a teacher really cared about me as a person, it
only made me wish more fervently that I didn't have to spend my days
in a setting where self-worth was predicated on submission to
authority.
Things
changed for the better the next tri, when Mrs. Seelicke let me count
a scene from my novel for class credit. She liked it so much that
she surprised me by reading it out loud in front of the class without
telling anyone it was mine. I still remember the gasp of admiration
at the end from Anna Sandberg, whom I admired desperately from afar.
I never remember exchanging a single word with her, but to hear that
my writing impressed her . . . how do you think I felt?
Panicked.
I was in ninth grade, remember, and dealing with not only the
fallout from bad report cards, but a host of problems I needn't
belabor. The souls entrusted to your care are beset by similar and
different, by stresses and turmoils that your efforts to create a
safe place might never fully assuage.
So
when Mrs. Seelicke approached me to talk about some kind of mentor
program to encourage my writing talent, I really freaked out. By all
rights I should have thrown my arms around her, wept for joy and
begun a rewarding relationship with someone – finally – who
believed in my dreams (reminder: I'm talking about the teacher, not
the pretty girl). But I didn't. I shut down. In trying to coax a
pile of tinder into flame you may snuff it out with too forceful a
breath. Maybe if she had persisted in talking about it, if she had,
say, asked me to write more of my novel for class credit, or offered
repeatedly to talk to me about where it was going and give advice
(since I was suffering from writer's block at that point), it is
likely that I would have finally opened up to the strange and
unnerving experience of fully trusting a teacher.
Could
we have been successful in setting aside that enforced power
inequality? After nine years of it, such a prospect was really quite
frightening – too human! So I did not take her up on her offer.
And of course, there was nobody to blame but me. Should you be held
responsible if an immature kid ungratefully runs away from your
attempt to reach out to him?
I
got an A in her class though, for all the good it did me. And the
next tri in Mr. Mandli's class, when we read Romeo and Juliet
I felt haughtily superior to my classmates. Having heard Early
Modern English read out loud regularly for years (without any graded
tests to ruin it), I understood it. My ego was stoked by dominating
a competition of Shakespearean vocabulary mastery – payback time
for all those taunts about reading the dictionary! A regrettable and
damaging distraction, but Mr. Mandli was a wonderful English teacher.
Genuinely empathic, he was willing to question the justice of our
power relationship. He strongly reminded me of Mr. Keating in Dead
Poets Society. The next year I was mesmerized by Mr. McCreedy,
who commanded respect without demanding deference (do you teach your
students to know the difference?). But there was no room for writing
my stories. The study hall supervisor loved Truman Capote's writing
but would have sent him to detention had he been his student.
My
geek friends wrote copiously in their spare time (and probably when
they should have been doing homework): epics of magical adventures
and daring battles. I joined in the game with gusto, but I never
showed them my stories, the ones that I really believed in.
Looking back now, I see that even these were derivative and shallow,
but there was no safe place for someone to show me this, and to guide
me beyond. Anyway, they afforded me the chance to work on the
mechanics that are vital to good writing. I was able to sharpen them
against the models I found in what I read, but rarely did I get the
chance to enlist a reader for honest critique (for which effusive
praise is no substitute).
In
eleventh grade it almost happened: I took a Science Fiction class
that let me write whatever I wanted. My teacher liked what I wrote
but also gave useful criticism. He was a new teacher who wasn't
determined to assert his power over us. He did once threaten to
leave the room in high dudgeon after a clash of wills, and a student
called him out for it. Mr. Voss stayed to argue with the student and
between them they quickly resolved the matter. I'll never forget it.
I had witnessed a rare thing: a disagreement resolved between two
equals who were finally willing to lay down their pride.
I
repeat: between equals. I saw precious few models of this, so it was
one of the most important lessons I ever learned in high school –
in a class devoted to something that people dismiss as fluff. This
was not on the lesson plan. There were no quizzes. There was just
this example of two equals, and I loved Mr. Voss all the more for it.
I loved Mr. Helgeson too, who took us through ancient literature
with the unquenchable curiosity and joy in learning that are an
integral part of the human spirit. Nor did he shrink from poking
holes in my arguments when I was guilty of absurdity or lazy logic.
His example validated and amplified my own innate curiosity. Like a
Gnostic Christ, he didn't so much teach me as tend the bubbling
spring whence I drank and got gloriously drunk to this day. The B+ I
got from his class was laughably irrelevant.
But
the trimester following that, when I finally got to take a class
dedicated to creative writing, it was a disaster. My teacher had a
whimsical streak not unlike my beloved Mr. Mandli, but his class gave
no place for stories trapped in individual minds clamoring to be let
out. He led us through exercises that were useful, but disjointed.
Reading Isaac Asimov's Foundation novels in class brought
reprimands for not doing makeup work (maybe he thought science
fiction was fluff?). And then, after all this, he blithely bid us
write poems that were “philosophical and totally cool.” Budding
poet, I? was so turned off that I cheated by enlisting classmates to
ghost-write them for me. They were despicable doggerel, but I didn't
care, I was so glad to escape that stupid class with no worse than a
C. I'm sure my teacher saw right through the deception, but was too
tired of me to contest it. He probably saw me as either a waster of
talent, as so many others did, or as a poser who didn't have much
talent to begin with. If I wasn't going to discipline myself, how
could I ever presume to be a writer? I had wasted my chance – my
second chance! And so creative writing continued to be a hobby –
pat on the head – only tolerable if it didn't detract from my work,
and because it wasn't as childish as drawing.
In
my senior year I improved my grades so that I could go to college, so
that I could go to graduate school, so that I could get a job that
would pay (barely) enough to pay off my student loan debt. Then I
realized that all along I was also supposed to get good grades so
that I could go to college and graduate school and then get a job of
prestige and privilege, above those who had gotten bad grades. That
was why my bad performance scared my parents, saddened the teachers
who formed attachments to me, and gave the guards license to mistreat
me. That my own curiosity and creative drives might serve as the
most reliable guide to my own life, or that they might at least
enrich it and valorize a variety of work – such a notion wasn't on
the program beyond the occasional ritual lip service, which only
emphasized their practical contempt for the dreams of real children.
My
experience in excellent and amply-funded schools left my gifts in a
state of atrophy, but it didn't take them completely away. I won't
tell you here how I revived some of them, but I take some
satisfaction in noting that much of my living over the past ten years
has come through what I write, even though I have not risen to
positions of power (and I walked away from one of questionable
privilege to come here). I have other gifts besides writing, for
which grades and test scores were even more irrelevant, and to which
curriculum was always coldly indifferent. You have them too, and so
do your students. Are you using them? Are they? They need to serve
their own gifts as the gifts know best, a dizzying diversity that
confounds tests. Are you helping them to believe in those gifts, or
are you too busy learning the latest technique for keeping them in
their places?
The
mechanisms you administer cannot measure their real talents or
abilities, let alone give you true insight into their dreams and
desires, or any part of their truest selves. In fact your most
earnest efforts may inflict psychic wounds that take years to heal,
if you allow procedure, protocol and doctrine to overpower your human
empathy.
I
hope your intent is to encourage them not to accept their allotted
place in the world, but to make one, indeed to help re-shape the
world to better fit their idealism (which they may well keep hidden
from authority figures such as yourself: what reason have you given
them to trust you?). At the very least, I hope you do your best to
guard these young people from the lie that test scores or grades can
reliably measure their intelligence, virtue or worth.
