O O Ø O O O O
Lesson
I was still living with my parents at the time, when they lived in an expanding suburb in north-eastern Calgary. It was a while ago, so some of the details are a little faded. My parents moved to Okotoks in 1976, and this experience predates that move, so I would have been three at the most. The lesson I learned that day, however, remains clear as skreech in my mind.
My mother had dropped me off at a preschool for the day. I remember it being a white, one-storey building with a concrete stoop and a large west-facing bay window. There was at least a dozen kids there, and two amenable caretakers. It was a servicable and pleasant environment.
On the day in question, the diurnal activities proceeded at their usual pace and without memorable incident, until we came to the craft project. We were shown a line drawing of a parachuter, drifting under the full-spectrum awning of rainbow. We were handed blueline photocopies—remember when copiers couldn’t do black?—of just the figure of the parachuter, and tasked with rendering the rainbow.
The problem was, I never received my photocopy. The woman handing out the line drawings missed the quiet, big-headed, freckled kid. The system had failed me.
In bewildered dismay, I slipped away and toyed with some blocks next to some delinquent toddler who hadn’t even hung around to hear the assignment explained.
I couldn’t enjoy the blocks, because I knew I should have been colouring a rainbow. I was a truant, likely for the first time in my life, and it wasn’t sitting well with me at all.
What’s worse, the apparatus seemed content to let me slip through the cracks. I suffered silently with my guilt.
Silently, that is, until Mom came to collect me. I explained to her what had transpired, and the shame of it overcame me. I ws inconsolable, and predictably, a squall ensued.
And then the most stupefying thing occurred.
The overseers produced a drawing—a very lopsided, amateurish drawing with a flattened rainbow and clearly misaligned colours—and they tried to pawn it off as mine.
I didn’t understand their motiviation, and I suppose if I haven’t figured it out by now, I never will. They were perfectly willing to dissemble and misrepresent to save themselves a moment’s inconvenience. Fraud was apparently preferable to trifling embarassment. I was unconvinced and unplacated.
Mom took me away from that single-storey sanctuary of sophism, and I retain no further memories of the place, or its facilitators.
I haven’t trusted authority since.
Evan Spence
September 6, 2005
OOØOOOODCCXX
September 7th, 2005 at 4:40 pm
I ate paste.
September 9th, 2005 at 12:56 pm
I remember grade 2. It was storytime and my classmates and I were all sitting in a group on the classroom floor listening to Mr. Muggs stories. Brenda and I were sitting at the back near the craft boxes and found the missing class pet Hamster (Teddy was his name) in the wool box… dead… from eating too much wool. Storytime came to an end when we screamed and jumped up.
What did the teacher do instead of console the two 6 1/2 year olds that just found a dead rodent??? She got mad at us for interrupting and sent us to sit in the hall for the rest of storytime.
I don’t like hamsters, wool or storytime to this day.
September 13th, 2005 at 12:59 pm
My spin on this is slightly different. It was grade 4, Ms. (Mrs.??) Swanson in the last week of school before summer. The class would get to go outside for afternoon playtime since there wasn’t any more stuff to cover. Being a talker…I always talked and always got told to be quiet. Of course it takes 2 people to talk. Ms Swanson thought it was time to teach me a lesson because no matter what she did I wouldn’t stop talking. I didn’t get to go for playtime. Just me, none of the other kids who talked with me or to me, just me. I was kept inside for 3 daily 45 min periods and forced to do whatever while everyone else went out to play. Of course it was completely unfair that I was the only one punished. I was the best student in the class, possibly in my grade and was being punished. Did I let that bother me; no. I started working on some art and got real excited about it and come the 4th day when I could go out I refused and stayed in to finish my picture. I talked to the teacher the whole time. Her plan backfired. This was when I realized that authority exerts itself because it can, not because it makes sense, not because it’s fair, not because it will teach you a lesson. The experience taught me to adapt. I know how to make great lemonade if you hand me lemons and I’m richer at the end of it. Don’t tell me to shut up and isolate me from everyone because I see that as a challenge not a punishment.
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September 13th, 2005 at 8:15 pm
Ooh, semicolon.
That’s the next lesson.
September 16th, 2005 at 8:26 am
My grade 2 teacher liked to jokingly slam the stapler down if kids spent too long at the stapling station. Great fun…until one of the girls didn’t move her hand fast enough.
September 16th, 2005 at 8:37 am
I think I managed to last until Grade 3. One of the most ridiculous class assignments I have ever been given was to count from 1 to 1,000. We were given notebooks and we had to write the numbers out, seperated by commas. Every day some one would read off fifty numbers from their book. This was how we started math class. In grade 3.
At some point it became my turn to read. When called upon, I sat silent, and was asked if I had done my homework. I had, and showed the teacher the completed work (not just where we were supposed to be, but everything from 1 to 1,000). He asked me again to read the numbers, and I sat silent.
He didn’t ask me why I was silent. He didn’t say anything more. He walked over to my desk, grabbed me by the shoulders, and proceded to fling me around. The desk was one that had the chair attached to it, so it came along for the flinging. I remember one shoe coming off, and my t-shirt being ripped.
I was standing and crying, and he demanded I read the numbers. Naturally, at this point, I read the damn numbers. A week later I was transferred to grade 4. Go figure.
I learned a tonne that day. If you don’t want to do something stupid, authority figures will use their power and/or intimidation to try to make you. If you’re part of a herd, the edges can be dangerous places to be. People don’t care what you think, especially when they’re bigger than you. Most teachers have no fucking business being in their profession. etc.
To this day I hate classrooms of any kind. I much prefer to learn on my own, at my own pace, by my own rules.
Books only hit you in the brain.
September 19th, 2005 at 8:23 am
But you missed all the grade three fun! That was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, if memory serves.
And not much else.