The end of the school year always
comes with those assemblies where students get all kinds of awards. I remember
when my kids were in elementary school, there were awards for perfect
attendance. I always wondered how in the world that student was never sick,
never had a dentist appointment, never had to take a day off to travel to see
family for a holiday or special event. Was it really such an accomplishment?
I am not writing about our weird
society that rewards kids for showing up and trying. Although that is a worthy
topic of discussion, it’s not what I’m about today.
I’m here to talk about all the kids
who don’t earn an award. Does that mean they are somehow less worthy of our
acknowledgements? I don’t think so. And
I’m not here to laud the wonderful strength of students who, say, graduate
despite all the odds against them, whatever they might be. I’m here to write
about the ordinary kids who are usually not on anyone’s radar.
So, okay, I’m going to use my own
son, Peter, as an example. Of course, I think Peter is extraordinary, but you
don’t know him, so you probably don’t share my bias. There are a lot of qualities
Peter has that make him awesome, but the ones I want to talk about today involve
his attitudes toward school, learning, and matters of the mind.
As just a general example, Peter’s
attitude about grades is approximately the opposite of most students I know.
His belief is this: if he knows the subject matter, feels he has a reasonably
good grasp and mastery of it, then he has no need to prove that to his teachers
or his peers by jumping through what he sees as unnecessary hoops in order to
get a good grade. To some, this might look like laziness. He doesn’t see any
point in studying until 3:00 a.m. in order to get an A. He figures if he goes
to class, pays attention, does his homework, and understands what he has
learned, studying isn’t going to get him that much further. He knows what he knows.
The end result of this attitude is that he doesn’t feel the need to do mindless
extra credit work, doesn’t feel the need to do test corrections, doesn’t feel
excessively compelled to turn in every last scrap of paper called homework.
Some parents would probably freak
out over this. I mean, he doesn’t get straight A’s. Even though I’m pretty
certain he could if he ramped up his effort the tiniest bit. He is wholly
unmotivated by gold stars and letters on a transcript. But this doesn’t mean he
is unmotivated. His motivation is internal, not external. I personally think
this is a good thing. You know those job announcements that constantly want
applicants who are self-motivated? Creative? Able to work without supervision?
That’s Peter.
Sometimes Peter’s attitudes are at
odds with his peers, which can tend to make him seem antisocial. For example,
often in school, other students seem to be primarily interested in spending
class time chatting, laughing, and generally not doing their work. (These are
often, ironically, the same students who freak out if they don’t get a good
grade and who stay up until 3:00 a.m. studying for a test.) Peter gets annoyed
by these kids. He has said repeatedly that he wants to learn. He is there to
learn. His motivation is not for the grade, but for the knowledge. One girl in
his English class, for example, spent her class time applying fingernail
polish. When Peter commented about this on a facebook post, she got upset
because she felt he was calling her stupid. I think he just meant that he
wanted to focus on class and the fumes from her nail polish made that
difficult.
Then there’s English class. Peter
is definitely a science geek, but he also has pretty good language and
literature knowledge. When his class read Taming of the Shrew, he was the only
one who had ever seen it produced. He was the only one who knew what the basic
plot was. He was, from what I have heard, one of the few who was not completely
freaked out by Elizabethan English. One of his English papers this year had to
do with symbolism found in the piece of literature they were reading at the
time. Assignments like this frustrate the
hell out of this kid. He doesn’t like to look at literature as “what is the
author trying to say?” He would rather ask “what impact does this literature
have on me?” (As an author and an English major, I wholeheartedly support this
approach.) So in this particular paper, Peter quoted John Green, one of his
favorite authors, who says when the author says the curtains are blue, he just
means they are blue. He’s not trying to symbolize sadness or something. In
short, Peter’s paper pretty much ignored the assigned task, but engaged in the
literary work in a very real way, and for that he received 100%. Because he
showed the teacher that he was actually thinking, and not just regurgitating what
he thought she wanted to hear, he made a statement. The teacher could have
easily given him a different grade because he didn’t really complete the
assignment, but I give her credit for acknowledging that he had actually been
more engaged in the assignment than anyone else in class.
Because of experiences like that,
Peter has enjoyed his English class more than he expected to, despite the nail
polish girl and the kids who wanted to watch videos rather than do work. While there
are a lot of things I did not appreciate about this particular teacher, I think
she did see that he was actually thinking about what they covered in class in a
way that other kids weren’t.
Peter understands that if he wanted
to, he could get straight A’s. And he knows that colleges will be looking at
his GPA. And I’ve talked to him about how useful scholarships are for college.
He may decide in the next school year that those rewards are worth jumping
through a few more hoops than he might like. If not, he understands that
certain doors may not open for him. Which is kind of sad for those on the other
sides of the doors. I mean, if I were a college admissions officer of an elite
science oriented school, I think I might be interested in a student who outfits
his own personal chemistry lab at home for the summer, because he loves
chemistry that much. I might want to encourage a student who thinks curiosity
is the most important quality, because it leads to trying things in different
ways until one gets the desired results. I might find it interesting that this kid is
learning a fictional language from a computer game, even creating clay tablets on
which to write this language, not because he has to, but because he is
fascinated by it. I might even want to invest scholarship money in someone who
is so curious about life that he’d rather just learn than get a certain grade.
It reminds me of the joke my
husband’s law school buddies used to tell, which bears a shocking truth. The A
students became law professors—which doesn’t pay all that well. The B students
became judges—again, not extremely high paying. And the C students became the
litigators earning the big bucks. Now this is not to say that money is the end
all. That is the last thing I’m about. However, it does pose an interesting
idea. Being a C student doesn’t mean you won’t succeed. Book learning is not
everything. (And yes, it feels somewhat blasphemous for me to say that, as the
intellectual book geek that I am.) The practical ability to solve real-world
issues is perhaps the greater good. And often, those people aren’t the ones
earning all the top awards at end-of-year assemblies. They’re the ones quietly
doing chemistry in their bedrooms over the summer.
