Once, I got caught reading on my phone. I don’t even remember what I was reading at the time, but it didn’t seem particularly relevant or life-changing in the moment either. It was probably some timewaster, something to make the day end so I could go home and actually experience a life worth living. At some point, I think every high school student has had a thought like that. We constantly wonder why we go to school when we know full well the answer to the question. It’s a futile exercise because systems generally just aren’t tailored to individuals; the end-result, ironically, is that the education system isn’t tailored to anyone at all.
I’m sorry if you think that you were “made for school”, but you were really just tricked by good grades. Arbitrary numbers derived from tests made by teachers that may or may not have taught you the subjects in the most efficient way or in a way that only a majority or minority understood. Regardless, somebody, somewhere, is going to fall through the cracks. And it’s probably not their fault.
You’re probably expecting me to say that I fell through the cracks, and that was the moment I broke. In reality, I was coasting. The most coasting that a man has ever coasted. The most average grades ever. Simply passing. Existing in the most exist way possible. I could study for a test and pass. I could not study for a test and still pass. So at that moment, I wasn’t paying attention. I didn’t need to pay attention, but mostly I just didn’t want to.
That teacher never sat right with me, ever since our class met him at the start of our second year. The girls always loved him, he had charisma. I don’t say that to imply that I pegged him as a creep, because he wasn’t and still isn’t. I just didn’t like the way he taught a classroom. Every time he’d say something it always stunk in a certain way, like if I dug deep enough I’d find out it was bullshit.
And I say that because it was true. I did. On some day I don’t care to remember on something that really doesn’t matter anymore. In fact, the next day when he mentioned that thing again, still in my second year, I challenged him. We had a little spat. Long story short, way to confirm my pre-conceived notions on the type of person he was.
This may sound a little weird, but I only paid attention to teachers who I liked. It was a pure and honest show of respect, a recognition of their authority. They were doing a good job. They deserved my attention. If that sounds haughty to you, it’s because it is. But for the teachers, the real teachers, having students that genuinely paid attention to their work and recognized their work as meaningful meant a lot to them. So I showed that, and so did a lot of the other students. We shot the shit with our teachers plenty of times, talking about things that we probably shouldn’t given our relationships. It was a good time.
So as he pointed me out in the middle of his lecture, I’m not going to lie to you, it felt a bit personal.
And it wasn’t just because he knew who I was, and he probably didn’t like me either.
I wasn’t paying attention to his lecture, but I was still paying attention to the classroom. I knew what my fellow colleagues were doing, especially the ones in my direct vicinity. Always be aware of your surroundings. It’s important.
God forbid I get a little mad when I know there’s two guys in deep sleep right behind me and two people on their phones right next to me.
Actually, I was a lot mad. You ever get so angry that it feels like the devil himself is squeezing your heart, telling you he won’t let go until you do something about this? But it wasn’t the devil, it was the justiciar in your blood, the moral paladin in your faith. You’ve been wronged, you must fight, or else you’ll carry this for the rest of your life.
So I fought.
One sentence and any whispering chatter from the other students immediately halted. I didn’t say anything bad, I just responded. The room gave a collective, silent “oh, shit”. And then he also responded.
The rest happened very fast.
Not to toot my own horn, but God damn it I gave him the most lexical beating he had ever seen in his life. Metaphorically gave him the nastiest left uppercut to right-hook combo, Apollo-style. I’m telling you; the only reason he has any dignity left is because the bell saved him.
Immediately after he left the classroom, I got pushback from half the class. That was fine, I expected it, and held my ground. Mentally, I was preparing for the inevitable; they all knew I’d get called to the director’s office, it was just a matter of when.
I got that call minutes after.
I won’t drag this on for much longer, but the point is that the director actually took my side. Thank God for her. So this blows over, it only comes up from time to time when I’m talking to my high school friends. And come to find out, the rest of the teachers were told this story in the teachers’ lounge, by him, but none of them really believed him once they heard I was on the other end.
So what was the point of this?
Many times when media, especially fictional, wants to tackle subjects like the micro relations between students and students or students and teachers, it tends to underestimate both sides.
By blowing up the student, they underestimate the humanity, the rational thinking, the logic of the student. It portrays the relations between them as a “pouring forth” of their psychological problems, a constant reflection of their deep-rooted issues, and/or as pure vehicles of emotion, taken by whims without the slightest impulse control or thought. The student is a point the author is making, and that is the role they serve. In the same way children are seen as malleable, to an amateur author a student is seen as a puppet.
And in the same manner, teachers are the ones who attempt to control the student puppet. The result is an oversimplification of authority; they are once puppets, now mouthpieces for the society they speak for; puppets that have been taken from the author and were molded to fight against that which he believes.
The author believes that he is there to free the puppet from the strings that hold them; he gives them the freedom that they internally desire in a system that does not seem to want them to have it. In reality, he too is holding them by his own strings, fighting against other puppets that he wrote to be under someone else’s control, but are still under his as well. It is, and has always been, a one-man puppet show.
I tell this story because one such author may be inclined to believe that it was a case of a student fighting back against the authorities that hold him, those same authorities that may have burned him in the past. He holds deep-seated contempt against these figures and this is pervasive in his life, through a backstory that we don’t know, and he let free of his emotions because he has no impulse control.
The truth is much harsher; the student and the teacher have always been the same. The plight of the cynic in his view of education is to think that the teacher is an authority at all; the reality is that even the true authority in this scenario is held by a standard above them. But the true authority in this scenario does exist, and they do act. The cynic does not see authority past the teacher, does not believe in the authority past the teacher, nor does he oftentimes recognize there is authority past the teacher.
But the author will never see himself or recognize himself as the cynic; he will constantly peddle himself as the believer in the child, in his delusion a saviour for those too young to understand the truths of the world. In our reality, his message will resonate only with those like himself; children as old as he is, bitter, who once felt themselves wronged by the world, but refused to seize their own, and now wander the real world, using that burden as a shield from maturity; and children who are being wronged by the world, and do not recognize that he speaks to them the same way their teachers speak to them.
