Leaving School At The End Of A Day

There is a moment
That rectifies,
When the sun lingers
Just above the rooftops
Draping its rays
Upon the rosy clouds
And lining them with gold,
Like a halo round the city.
And the sparse palms stand pointedly
At the edge of the tired, grimy field
Like sentences spoken long ago and
Forgotten, yet tall, upwards-reaching;
Channels to heaven.

Oh, the Places They'll Go!

              Waterfall by Dr. Seuss

"Hey, wait a minute, this picture is about sex!" commented one of my students, whom I will refer to (rather appropriately) as O, not because of said appropriateness but rather, lamely, because his name begins with this so aesthetically round, but perfectly empty, hole of a letter.

To say that O is "not the sharpest crayon" would be to put it mildly. On every occasion I have had to look into his eyes, which are roughly the color of said sexually-charged waterfall, I have met with the unresponsiveness one would expect to receive from a goldfish. Yesterday, he asked if I could teach him the ABC's, as no one had ever taught them to him before. Obviously he is a failure of the system, and if my school allowed me to give grades there is no doubt I would give this system an O for O. 

But that is neither here nor there.

What was interesting about O's comment, though, was that it could have been the central claim of a term paper written by any bachelor of the arts, and, properly supported, the paper would have received an A. The orgiastic burst of color in the background confirms this analysis of sexual subtext within the art of a writer known, worldwide, for his almost magical adeptness for connecting with children. It appears Dr. Seuss has drawn an orgasm even a child can understand.

Granted, O has sex on the brain. His comment sparked a class-wide free-for-all scream-fest, accompanied by hoots, foot-stamping, and plenty of shrieks and giggles, as well as an atmosphere of embarrassment so hormonally-charged I practically had to mop up afterwards. He went on to regale his classmates with stories of two Asian women in the shower, which were immediately picked up by other hyper-sexed males with plenty to say about what was, apparently, the infamous Two Girls One Cup, as well as an obviously photo-shopped picture of a man swing his member over shoulder like a purse.

Discussing the hullaballoo later with the art teacher, I learned that his main concern was with the possible raising of excitement thresholds implicit in watching such jolting footage at a young and impressionable age. Time will tell whether he is justified in his reading of the Internet generation. 

What is certain, however, is that the kids of the millenium (did I mention all of our student were born in the year 2000?) are growing up very differently than we. I didn't need my fiance's childhood stories of stealing into his father's bedroom to glimpse a Victoria's Secret magazine, hiding under the bed, to tell me that.

A child like O, however, with, shall we call it limited brainpower, may be less susceptible to manifestations of the darker twists of the mind available in online streaming. These serve as inspiration to a select few, including a certain child we will call A, who circled a video this week that chilled me to the bone. His feat of cinematography, a burst of evil genius, as some may say, features himself swinging a board at the head of an alley cat, who limps off, assumably to die in some dark corner of the world. A second scene centers on scissors cutting the cat's tail - actually a caterpillar of the type I, at their age, affectionately called a "Fuzzy Wuzzy" --- and Fin.

What so disturbs about the video - which, by the way, none of the teachers have seen, but rather learned about from students' chilling recitation of events - is its glimmer of ice-cold, cruel intelligence. It was performed as an act of cinematic triumph, and I can imagine A plotting the scene, perhaps baiting the cat with a piece of his lunchbox salami, searching among the smooth, green blades of grass for the perfect specimen of caterpillar, running his finger along the board for splinters. Is it just child's play, or are we witnessing the birth of psychopathy? And if the latter is true, can it be a consequence of over-exposure to the violent and sexual content so implicit in the Net (A has already been caught with porn on his phone), or merely the reaping of seeds sown long ago, generations ago, perhaps? After all, psychopathy has most likely existed since man drew waterfalls on cave walls. It is certainly not the Internet's offspring.

There is no answer to these questions, and even if there were, the thundering train of progress halts for no man. Certainly less so in a school modeling itself after Hi-Tech High, with a mission to prepare its students for the "real world" (now so intermixed with the virtual world the two are inextricable). I believe the term "mission impossible" has already entered my notes. But oh, the places we'll go!

Tabula Rasa

Every person is born a blank slate.
This I learned in a class on Behaviorism when I was engulfed (albeit, willingly) by that behemoth of the academia, The Department of Psychology, which churns out an annual product of fifty-some dull, dogged, and overeager "psychologists" ready to reap hard-earned cash from depressed hi-tech employees and parents to sugar-addicts with "attention disorders".
I excused myself, rather unceremoniously, from that department a long time ago, exclaiming that it was very singularly the least likely place in which ever one could learn about psychology (unless one were inclined to examine the minds of lab rats and first year psych majors, which are indeed the basis for all important psychological study today). I foreswore the entire discipline, and vowed never to look back.
Imagine my surprise, then, when, seated before one of my seventh-grade charges (a member of my homeroom), I suddenly spewed up a huge, steaming heap of psychobabble I had imbibed in that dreaded dungheap of academia!
The child, a rather inscrutable young man whose mohawk is only exceeded in shock value by the various pieces of metal that protrude from eyebrow, ear, and tongue alike, arrived at our school, like so many others, "to turn over a new leaf". He came, however, to find this leaf rather weighty upon discovering that it included schoolwork. The boy had spent the greater part of his six official years of schooling romping round the hallways, setting up small, indoor campfires, and generally raising hell. The only skill he had developed, aside from the ability to utterly ignore the implorations of every living human above the age of 13, is to set up a rather mean domino rally, which he proudly displays on YouTube.
Now, I won't lie. Some of the kids I teach are recognizably dull-witted (they would do well to apply to the Psychology Department, if, that is, I ever succeed in teaching them to read English). This child, however, is bright - exceedingly lazy, granted - but bright. It is a trait not yet quantified in him, perhaps, but this is precisely what attracts me - intelligence intertwined with laziness... maybe he reminds me of someone.
As I sat down before him, my only thought was to get him to want to learn - something, anything, that we are teaching. "What are your favorite subjects?" I asked. But he had none, never had he so much as picked up a book! "You must try to find a subject you like," I added, simultaneously berating myself for telling him the same thing every other teacher had, throughout his formal education (or lack thereof).
'But why?' I asked myself? 'Why should he want to learn?'
And perhaps I hit upon some unconscious memory of my time in that despised department, a memory of those silly psych students absorbing, like stinking sponges, every bit of mundane knowledge leaked to them by halfwitted professors, later to squeeze it out, with one pungent splash, upon an examination paper, retaining less, perhaps, than they had been endowed with before the process even began.
"You haven't learned anything, you say, in six years of school?"
The child nods.
"Well, then, I know what you are."
The child furrows his brow.
"You're a clean slate."
The child raises his eyebrows questioningly.
"There is no knowledge written on you yet. That's what makes you a clean slate."
The child nods apprehensively.
"Now, who would you like to decide what gets written on you? Will it be you, or will it be any guy that comes along, and decides he'd like you to know certain things, and have certain opinions? Would you like to be the master of your own knowledge, and therefore your own destiny, or will you let just anyone have that privilege?"
The child watches me, stirs, appears interested.
"I've seen what can happen to people when they don't know enough, and have to buy whatever anyone sells them cheap. I've seen what happens to people when they don't know enough to have an opinion, and they have to go along with whatever the loudest person says. They are not masters of their knowledge, and therefore not masters of their destiny. You don't want to end up like that, right?"
The child shakes his head, frowns.
"Find one thing you like to learn about. One thing, for now. Get interested in your own knowledge, get interested in your own destiny. You decide what you write on your slate, no one else."
The child nods, promises.
He leaves, vowing to learn one new thing each day.
I will not say that this child is currently my best student. On the other hand, he attends class, and pays the sporadic attention comparable to a newbie marathon runner, who must take long pauses for breath. The thing is, he's there, and he's listening (sometimes, on a very good day, he even writes a few words).
And one day, maybe, with enough psychobabble lobbed at him, he may even write something of great value on that slate.