Mythical Creatures

There’s a poster up at the front of the room with a cartoon mouse painting at an easel, and the words “Express Yourself!” But every time the little boy in glasses starts to ask questions that stray too far from where the teacher is taking the class, his “aide” shushes him.

It’s a good class, and the teacher has a lot to offer the kids in terms of technique, discipline and approach to work. But it really makes me appreciate the Montessori paradigm so much more. You could have the same teacher, conveying the same information and skills but in a very different way — one that didn’t shush anyone. It wouldn’t have to be a big classroom of 20 kids, all doing the same thing at the same time and all keeping their real questions — their most interesting questions — to themselves.

There are two brothers, both slightly chubby and both in glasses. When I heard that the older one had an “aide” I thought he must be autistic or developmentally impaired in some way. When he showed up though, he seemed very capable, very intelligent and very involved in his work. Very much thinking for himself.

I say that a lot, “thinking for oneself,” and it can mean a lot of different things, cover a lot of different territory. With this boy in this class, what it means is that he’s got his own questions, his own things he’s curious about, his own directions he’d like to go off in. The difference I see between this little boy and the other kids in the class is that most of the others seem interested in doing it “right.” “Is this good” “Is this good?” “Is this good?” The cry fills the room.

Of course I don’t know what — or how — the other kids are thinking. I know my own son has all kinds of thoughts and questions of his own, but he’s not as (“inappropriately”) outspoken as the little boy in glasses. Perhaps not as oblivous to the opinions of those around him. He’ll ask me on the way home when we can do our creature sculptures “our own way,” but in the classroom he’ll try to follow directions and he won’t ask all the questions I know he’d be asking me if we were doing this on our own together. So I don’t know what’s going on in the minds of the other kids here, any more than an observer might know what’s going on in my son’s mind.

What is “different” about the boy with glasses — and perhaps the reason he has an “aide”? — is not just that he has his own mind, but that he speaks it. He doesn’t seem to be inhibited by concerns about the social norms of commenting in class. He’ll have a comment about something the teacher says, or he’ll help the kid next to him with his work. He is unselfconscious. And everything he does would be perfectly normal in a Montessori setting.

But not here. Here, the teacher discourages him from helping the kid next to him. And his “aide” helps to keep him “focused” when his attention wanders to something other than precisely what the teacher is talking about.

He reminds me of many of the eccentric intellectuals who inhabit New York — they’re more concerned about the questions that excite their passion than about what the lesser beings around them think of their quirks. And he reminds me of myself as a child, and it makes me wonder how I would have done outside of a Montessori setting. I wasn’t very confident, not outspoken (except about my love for animals). Would I have just let my head be filled up with what other people thought was important and never started “thinking for myself”? Never had my own curiosities, my own passions, my own way of seeing the world, my own questions?

And is this difference in teaching partly responsible for the difference in our adult culture between those who follow blindly and those who think and question? Getting back to the boy: I don’t know why he has an aide. He is probably somewhere “on the spectrum” — but what does that even mean anymore? Thirty years ago, he would have just been considered kind of geeky, socially awkward. Today, he has an “aide.” Maybe he does have some real problem and I just can’t see it. Maybe he goes to therapy. I don’t know. But I know that he is treated differently. He is singled out, told he is “different” and must work harder to fit in.

I wonder what it will do to him. This pressure to behave like everyone else. To be like the kids who don’t speak their own minds, to be like the ones who may not even have their own questions. Will he make so much room in his head for the thoughts of his teachers, his parents, his “aide”, his peers… that there will no longer be room for his own thoughts, his own questions? Will they just wither and die? Will he stop asking questions?

Sitting in the class, I find myself worrying that my own boy — one of the youngest in the class — is not always doing it “right”. That he didn’t make his scratch marks deep enough and the legs will fall off in firing. That he gets lost in thought and isn’t listening all the time (like I used to not listen. Like I still don’t…) and the teacher has to ask if he’s listening. I worry when he falls behind, isn’t doing what everyone else is yet. I want him to succeed, I want him to have a sculpture he is happy with, not one that breaks in the kiln. And I don’t want him to be embarrassed. (Or maybe I don’t want ME to be embarrassed.)

But then I see him really involved with his work, focusing deeply. I see him looking off into the distance and for a few moments, losing focus on whatever the teacher is talking about, thinking about something else. And I know he’s going to be OK. I know that the noise from everyone else’s heads has not filled up his own head and I don’t think it ever will. I know he has his own thoughts, his own drives, his own passions. His own imagination. And I don’t care so much about him getting it right, about his sculpture not falling apart, about being embarrassed. I see what he’s got and I know he’s going to be OK.

Originally published on On the Banks, August 1, 2013