It’s an emotional week for me. Dex and Neve launched into their respective school years, Neve a bundle of excited energy. and Dex hunched under the weight of his backpack already. We had this sort of emotional collison in the car yesterday. I had them both in the car after school, which hardly ever happens, and yesterday was evidence that it isn’t a great idea. Neve bubbled on and on about how great her day was, every detail crucial to her tale, while I watched Dex sink lower and lower into his seat. I could almost hear him thinking, “Enjoy it while it lasts, kid, because pretty soon you’ll be working as hard as I am.” When I asked him how his day was, he said, “Fine.”
It’s a delicate game, Dex and school. He is so much more than I ever was — more together, wiser, more intelligent — he takes my breath away sometimes. But he is a happy guy, believes we are here to learn to be more humane, and is determined to stay that way. It’s his modus operandi, not something he decided in rebellion, it’s just who he is. If I was hurdle jumper at his age (like Neve is), he is meandering down a gentle stream. Whether you are a parent, coach, teacher, friend or relative, he loves and respects you, but he isn’t about to base his self-esteem on pleasing you. He reminds me of my nephew, who is in his 20’s and just finished grad school. Like Dex, he was totally on the ball and bright and energetic, but you could not convince him there was any value to basically the entire school curriculum. He saw it as busywork: useless, one huge obedience test. But he did okay, and went to college, where he saw the same busywork reappearing –until he found a subject he was passionate about and felt relevant to him. And he easily did well in his pursuit of what he loved and had fun learning as much as he could.
What confuses Dex about school– and just proves to me that this boy is completely more evolved than I wll ever be — is the fact that it thinks it is building community when in fact all it does is separate kids into groups and teach them to compete against each other. To him, it is destroying that which it attempts to build.