Here was my dilemma in First Grade: I couldn't understand why my parents, who up to this point had shown me quite a bit of interest and affection, would summarily send me out of the house each weekday in stiff and pinchy clothing to attend school. Public education, it seemed to me, was a troubling, ill-advised social experiment based on the correctional facilities model. What could I have possibly done in my little, brief life that would warrant this punishing treatment? All day, with little reprieve, I had to walk in lines silently, I had to sit in awkward wooden desk/chairs for hours, motionless, and I had to produce products with chubby pencils and flimsy dulled paper that were low quality and worthless to teacher and student alike. ( License plates would have been a better choice for manufacture, as they required a better skill set and had a longer term purpose.)
Well, if there was to be no pardon, I had to find a way to survive the school year. Instead of feeling like a victim in this clinical trial, I would become an insider, an observer, an agent. I watched, took notes and made judgments. The first thing I noticed was the bulletin boards. All wrong! Overcrowded, asymmetrical and too generic. And the scripted alphabet strips on army green tag board across the front of the class HAD to go. The smells in the class should be attended to, as well as the temperature. And frankly, the attire of most of the students and the majority of the staff was unappealing and ill-fitting. So much could be done to improve the classroom climate! Why was I the only one who seemed aware of these shortcomings?! My fellow interred prisoners seemed better equipped to integrate into the system. I balked at the outset, and remained skeptical, if not downright aggrieved, throughout my education sentence.
No comments:
Post a Comment