Square Pegs, Part 6

(Author’s note: This is the final part in the series, Square Pegs: Education’s Canaries in the Coal Mine. Next week begins a new series, Square Pegs: Searching for Solutions.)

Fierce anger turned inward is one of many characteristics our square pegs Charlie, David, Christopher and Jonathan share. The astonishing thing about these youngsters, whose stories I’ve told these last four weeks and who I’ve taken to represent a whole class of square pegs, is that they are really good kids. It is nearly impossible for them to physically hurt other people, yet they need to strike out, to vent their anger. So, they turn the anger on themselves. But the uniform school cares not a bit for their mental health as it continually forces them to comply with the same demands making them mad in the first place. These very bright children are highly capable of focusing their great intelligence when given the opportunity do so. But, they must abide by the needs of the uniform school which obliges them to dumb themselves down, to go along with content beneath their native insight and with the pace of instruction slowed to a crawl. I mean, in how many ways and how many times can a child be called stupid before he believes it and hates himself for being defective. And this self-hate leads, as always, to self-destruction.

Self-motivation is another common characteristic of these youngsters. They possess a powerful instinctive desire to know about every thing around them and to take responsibility for what they need and want to learn and for the means by which to learn. But the uniform school dictates outcomes and methods, denying these youngsters have any innate passion to know or any ability to make good learning decisions and to acquire the skills necessary to follow through to achieve learning goals without constant coercion from teachers, principals and family. Again, the denial of having value in who they are is taken personally as a positive judgment of their worthlessness.

Not all but most square pegs have “Learning Disabilities”, “disorders” labeled Dyslexia, Disgraphia, Discalculia, Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hyper-Activity Disorder. These are not learning disorders, I say, as these bright youngsters do in fact learn and learn well, but the way they learn is at odds with the uniform school’s way of needing youngsters to be. These afflictions should be refocused onto schooling placing the emphasis where it belongs and relabeled as “Uniform Schooling Disabilities”.

In the end, these square pegs are at biological odds with the school’s one way of demanding them to be. And if you think these angry, self-destructive children are only from Arverne or Far Rockaway, I urge you to think again. They are here; they are our sons and daughters, our kith and kin. Or if you think all these kids need is “discipline”, or the moxy to suck it up, I urge you to also think again. In fact these children are given all the discipline adults can put on them and yet they return to the classroom every day-if they are not courageous than no one is. The uniformity of schooling and the enormous force exerted by teachers, principals and family on children to comply are destroying young lives, not the lack of discipline or fortitude. There is a desperate need for change, for formal learning allowing these children to develop in their own way.

Next series of Square Pegs will explore how our bright, angry children can find healing and schooling success. Comments encouraged; e-mail at ljfayhee@gmail.com.