An Old Irritant

As I’ve said a couple of times, I have intentionally stayed away from negative things, especially when it comes to people. And even though this is not aimed at anyone in particular, it can definitely be construed as somewhat negative.

Something stayed with me after I left Loudon that took some time to sort out in my mind. In the end, I had to make a couple of conclusions. First and foremost, I had to accept my responsibilities in the issue, since it was useless to try and shift the blame anywhere. Nobody did anything -- at least not intentionally, and it certainly isn’t aimed at any student or group of students.

I fully understand, and accept, that I’m not the sharpest pencil in the box. Anything I learn I have to put the effort into learning it. Therein lies my responsible to everything I am about to say. No matter who tries to teach me anything, if I am not interested in it or care enough about it to learn it, then it makes no difference how hard they try, I’m probably not going to learn it. I think that holds true for everybody. But maybe, just maybe, part of the key is in finding a way to help me light that fire, and that’s the rub here.

In grade school, all grades were broken up into the A, B and C groups. The A group was the kids who made high grades all the time. The B group was the kids who made good, but not exactly sparkling grades. The C group was everybody else. What started bothering me was when realized these groups also aligned kids socially as well, or at least in most cases it did. I don’t recall any of the more affluent kids being in the C group and few, if any, kids from a struggling family being the A group.

Somewhere, someone made a determination. This kid is going to college so gear everything to getting him or her ready to do this job or take over that position. This next kid is bright, but probably not going any further than a high school diploma. He or she might take a vocational type course somewhere to get a specialized career or maybe take over the family farm, but not much more than that. This last kid, just move him along, use a social promotion if you have to. With any luck, he might get his high school diploma, but chances are we won’t see him anymore once he turns 16.

So that’s it in a nutshell. By the time you reached high school you were already channeled and didn’t even know it. Preordination might be a debatable theological subject, but it’s alive and well in the situation I just described. You are what they want you to be. Are there exceptions? Absolutely! But I would wager that in the majority of cases, the kid and/or their parents made the difference. They had to break this mold.

Could I have made things better for myself by trying harder? You bet. Could someone else have tried a nudge or a push? Yes. With the exception of Miss Stallings, nobody in any grade ever asked me what I wanted to be. Nobody ever took the time to find out if there was anything I was actually interested in. I reached a point where I was marked as this or that type student, and I didn’t know enough to rock the boat.

Contrary to how it may sound, I made my peace with all this long ago, and accepted it. It is also the driving force behind my wanting better for my kids and trying to encourage them to be whatever they want to be. I would like to think I was helpful, but only they can tell you for sure.