Week 13, small to large, large to small

I think you know him, he might live in your own house, or you saw him next door, or in the school yard. He is only six years old and every morning he puts his heavy back pack on his back, almost as big as he is and starts his personal via-dolorosa.

Only six years old, he looks so small and fragile when he walks with the big, back breaking, back pack a little hunched with his eyes cast on the ground.

They picked the back pack together, with his mother, during summer vacation; he was happy then. He was looking forward to the start of the school year, all excited and full of anticipation. The back pack was the last of a whole long list of wonderful purchases. Colored pencils, regular pencils, fresh smelling brightly designed notebooks, a pencil holder and animal shaped erasers. They dedicated a full shopping day for the back pack. His mother was very particular about it. It had to be the right size, good quality material and a back support. They must have looked in at least five different stores before the right one was found. He got to choose the pattern from a pile of about fifteen. He took the mission very seriously and checked each one of them trying to imagine how they will look on his back, where everyone of his friends can examine it. Not an easy choice. It had to have just the right colors and designs to carry the message that he wanted to portray. “I am cool.”

He never imagined that the real battle will not be to impress his friends and the other kids in school but holding his own in the classroom.

From the beginning things did not go well.  Most of the time he couldn’t concentrate and spent the hours dreaming about all the things he will do once being outside and free again. He hated the endless time spent on trying to copy what seemed to him like shapeless forms from the blackboard. Reading made even less sense. The endless repetition of letters and sounds was tedious and boring. He did not get it. Of course he did what all the kids in his class did. He copied, he pretended to read what he copied but really just memorized the sounds that never seemed to stick together and create anything with meaning. By the end of the first month his beautiful notebooks were smeared with black lines pretending to be letters and his back pack got heavier and heavier for no apparent reason.

Education is important; he heard these words so many times. His mother kept repeating it and his father every time he came home late at night would say, “See, that’s because I never got a good education, you should look at it as a present.”

But what kind of a present it is when it is shoved down your throat. What kind of present it is when you are forced to take it and can’t politely decline and instead of it being wrapped in nice shiny paper and ribbons, it is laced with threats.

Public education, brilliant and humanistic, created so that every child, no matter how rich or poor will be exposed to the richness of human knowledge. At the basis of it the belief that if all people are created equal and have the right to pursue their happiness they should at least be equipped with the ability to read, write and think.

Indisputable, moving, awe-inspiring notion,

But also;

Public education, compulsory, highly structured, compartmentalized and punishable by law, this in itself is already alarming but the worst of all is one small devious word – equal.

Misleading because it sounds almost positive,

And yet so doubled edged,

Equal education for all, in reality robs every child of his right to be taught according to his unique needs, and qualities. Whoever thought that putting kids together according to age groups and teaching them the same stuff, at the same time, expecting the same results, was out of his mind not to say completely ignorant of how young minds work.

Ironically when equal does not work then, and only then, you ‘gain’ the right to become special, you earn the privileges of ‘special education’.  

• This kid lives in Israel where school children still carry their books to school on their backs. But I believe that he can be found anywhere with or without the backpack.