Wednesday 10 January 2001

Pic of the day: Rivedal primary school, not particularly for gifted youngsters. This is where I had the worst years of my life, so far. (Archive photo from my west coast trip last fall.)

School of life

Begging your pardon if I repeat myself, but I don't expect you all to have read my archive and commited it to memory. I'm following up the yesterdiary, in a vague sort of way, I guess. Here's the story as seen through my eyes. Other eyes may be of a different color.

As I've said, I was a geek, a nerd, and I suffered both scorn and spit and kicks and blows at the hands of normals. But things were not quite as simple as they looked to me at the time. Yet, I remembered that I sort of looked forward to starting school when I was 6 years old. After all, school was where you could learn things. It was also where my brothers got all those books from. I was less excited about the fact that there were other children there. I had already met other children, and knew that girls were good.

And then I crashed into reality. In as much as school can ever be called reality.

***

When I was just a toddler, my genes and the environment conspired to inflict on me childhood asthma. It lasted for about ten years, and quite formative years too. It changed my life beyond recognition, and for that I am grateful. Without it, I would probably still have been a nice and curious person; but I might not have been nearly the person I am today. But enough of that for now. I hope it is a bit early to make up status for my entire life. Let us take childhood first.

The most important thing the asthma did was to rob me of the strength and stamina that would have been my birthright, as seen in my brothers. They are quite glorious specimens of the human race, their keen intellect complemented with physical fitness and a robust health. I not only lost out on that, but for the same reason my social development was stunted ... or more rightly, cut off. Sealed from most of my peers by a double wall of mutual scorn and dislike, I gradually transformed from a human to a porcupine ... though the change never went all the way.

This will be obvious to my male readers (if any), but I will explain it for the sake of the females. For a boy around first grade, the only two criteria of ranking are strength and fighting ability. As the years wear on, ability in various sports are added. But intellectual prowess only becomes an item around the time when the ugly reality of work dawns on the student ... usually at college right before finals, but sometimes later. (OK, there are local exceptions to that rule, but it's a good primer.)

Weak and clumsy from a lack of rough and tumble, I was the lowest of the low, an outcast from the start. Much to my surprise, since this was not how I had been raised so far. My disrespect for these illiterate baboon cretins was only overshadowed by their disdain for the snotty little sissy that was me. We did not get along too well.

***

During my first three years at school, I lost three kg (ca 6 pounds), from (if I remember correctly) 28 to 25 kg. Somewhere around there. I started to stay away from school whenever I could possibly feel something like a kind of pain or sniffle of any kind. My parents chased me off unless I managed to convince them, and even then I had to do my homework. I once in my childhood went to Sunday School, but meeting the same crowd, I never tried that again.

Eventually I got a friend, a boy from the neighboring farm (less than a kilometer away) who was ca 4 years younger than me. That means he was about the same strength (and the same emotional maturity, I'm afraid). Due to the scarcity of boys his own age, he accepted to play with me, and we had lots of fun. I built things, and he destroyed them. We killed insects in spectacular ways. So it wasn't all dust and gravel.

Around the age of twelve the asthma was finally gone, I think, though I remained small and weak until after puberty (which came later to me than to my peers). I was still small and weak and childish when I left school and moved to the south coast to attend high school, but that's another story. That, and the transformation.

***

"Not for school do we learn, but for life" says an ancient proverb. I doubt it. In school, we learned about long dead kings, and more cities in Belgium. No disrespect for the dead, nor for Belgium. But there are other things one desperately needs to learn before it is too late:
How to solve conflicts between people, and conflicts within ourselves. How to control our temper, how to watch ourselves objectively. Basic maintenance of body and brain. The importance of sleep and meditation, right food and physical and mental training. Non-verbal thinking and the emotional impact of art. Verbal thinking and critical analysis of statements. How to know when people deceive you even while telling the truth, by noticing lack of counter-information or choice of emotionally loaded words. The emotional effects of sexuality, and how to handle the sad fact that the genitals grow up several years before the brain. How not to use a credit card. Various combinations of the above.

When I went to school, we did not learn these things. We did learn some arithmetic that I did not know when I began school, but my reading and writing as I entered primary school was about the same level as my classmates when they left. It was not all a waste of time, though. I learned many important things at school. Mainly this: Girls are OK, boys are not OK. (That's not the whole truth, though. It's more like "girls are always OK, boys are only OK when you are alone with them". But that's too long, more than seven words. Profound truths should not exceed seven words.)

Perhaps we should close schools, send the children home and let them read online diaries?

Or perhaps not all children are like me.