When I was five years old I attended Kindergarten at Pine Bush Elementary. My memories from those days are, obviously, more than a decade and a half old. Still, I’ve managed to hang on to a few of them. I remember how I met my best friend (he was picking his nose under the teacher’s desk and I promised not to tell anyone), I remember the games we used to play (a quite sophisticated version of cops and robbers), and I remember how I learned the first of life’s lessons (for example, that the proper response to an apology is to offer forgiveness, not absolution).
One memory in particular stands out in my mind, for it was one of the defining moments of my life. We were learning about object properties. Each student was given a bag of objects: a plastic spoon, a little bag of goo, a feather, a metal ball, etc. With these examples in front of us, we learned that some objects are soft and others are hard, that some objects are weak and others are strong, that some objects are smooth and others are rough. Things were going smoothly until we got to the metal ball. We had just learned that the plastic spoon was breakable, and the teacher intended to contrast the spoon with the metal ball, which was “unbreakable.”
Except, of course, that the metal ball was breakable.
I raised my hand and said as much. The teacher just looked at me for a moment, and then repeated that the ball couldn’t be broken. Again, I protested that it could. “Oh, really?” she said. “Show us.” And I, the foolish five-year-old that I was, stood up from the circle we were sitting in, placed the ball on the ground, and stomped on it. It did not break. I tried again. The ball ignored my efforts. The other students started to laugh. “See?” the teacher asked. “It doesn’t break.” At this point I was embarrassed, so, instead of continuing to argue, I mumbled something about dropping a truck on the ball and sat back down, my face red.
I was right, it turns out. You can break metal balls. I’ve done it, multiple times, in multiple ways. And a moment of reflection would bring one to the realization that the teacher must have known that the ball was, in fact, breakable. By her words, she meant that we, five-year-old children without proper tools, could not break the metal balls like we could break the plastic spoons. But those aren’t the words she used. And, when confronted, instead of correcting herself, and perhaps explaining how this seemingly unbreakable object could be broken, she shamed the student who dared to question her teaching and repeated her erroneous statement.
That was the moment when I realized that school was not the glorious institution of learning that it was made out to be. I was five years old. By fifth grade I had lost all faith in the system, and had stopped caring about how I fared in it. Yes, my report card was still the envy of the try-hards, but I certainly wouldn’t’ve been considered a “good student.” If I handed in my homework, it was copied. If I studied, it was during passing time. If I spoke up in class, it was to argue with the teacher. I graduated early from high school, but I saw it as merely a means of escape. I was widely regarded as one of the “smartest” kids in town, but I hated school with a passion that was startling.
When Mr. Bott approached me, then, about an independent-research program that would attempt to save students from the school system and allow them to actually learn about things that interested them, I knew that it was something that I wanted to be involved in. School, as it exists today, fosters more self-hatred then intellectual growth, and I want to help change that. If I can help some students rekindle their curiosity, creativity, and individuality, if I can help some students reignite their love of learning and sharpen their questioning into an actual skill, if I can help some students further develop their critical thinking abilities, then I consider it a duty to do so.
By contributing to the success of this program and of the students it was created for, it’s clear to me that I’m not just saving some students from the misery of sterile classrooms and propaganda-parroting; I’m saving the world from a future of unthinking conformity and widespread ignorance.
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