Replies

I learned what public schools were all about in the First Grade. It’s not about education but it’s all about “conformity”.

We were learning to read using the “phonics” method and were give a hand out with words with the vowel “a” and told to indicate whether the vowel sound was “short” or “long; “Cat” being “short” and “Apple” being “long”. Then we were told to color the pictures above the words.

I got all the vowel sounds correct and colored all the pictures except for one. The word was “water” and the picture was of a glass half full.

I sort of knew that I was probably expected to color the liquid in the glass “blue”, but then I started to think it might be a trick question.

My dad was really into science and earth sciences and the space program and we spent much time together watching science programs on TV, the Moon landings and reading National Geographic together and such.

So I made the decision to follow my gut and my understanding of (even as a 6 year old) the nature of drinking water and to leave the picture of the glass uncolored and turned it in.

The teacher looked it over and immediately handed it back saying it was incomplete!

I very politely and very respectfully (as my parents had always taught me to be very polite and respectful to my elders) explained to my teacher that I had purposely left the picture of the water uncolored because water in its purest state is colorless. And I went on further to explain that while water might appear blue or blue-green that’s because of algae and light refraction and that the water in our commode was blue, but then we didn’t drink that.

So what happened? I was berated and belittled by this teacher in front of the entire class and told I was “stupid and insolent”. When the rest of the class got to go out for recess, I was kept in as a punishment. I took my punishment and bravely held back my tears.

But when I got home, I was crying and told my father what had happened. And he, a very wise man with less than an high school education, responded thusly; “You leaned a very important lesson today. You learned that just because a person is in a position of “authority”, that doesn’t necessarily mean they have any real knowledge or that they are always right. You also learned that just because you have the correct answer, that doesn’t mean you will be rewarded for it and in fact sometimes, you will actually be punished for being right”.

Then my father gently wiped away my tears and told me to never back down from what believe in and what I know is right regardless of the consequences.

So in the First Grade I learned pretty much everything I ever need to know about life and probably explains why I am so much an anti-authoritarian and conservative leaning libertarian.