Teaching Something I Didn't Learn During My Childhood

So today in my American Literature course, we were reading part of the autobiography of Frederick Douglas. For those of you who aren't too familiar with Frederick Douglas, he writes that, as humans are born equal, they have to learn how to be slaves and slaveholders. He says that his master's wife taught him to read and write; however, the better he became at writing, the more she didn't want him to have this precious knowledge. She was learning more how to be a slaveholder while he was unlearning how to be a slave. Frederick Douglas said he would take his bread and give it to a white boy in exchange for some knowledge.

So while explaining this to my class, I saw one of my students throw a piece of paper at another student, which would have concerned me on any other day as well, but today it was expressely bothersome. Here is a piece of our dialogue:

"Richard, did you just throw a piece of paper at Simona?" I said.

"No, it was Mirka," he responded.

"No, Richard, I saw it was you," I countered then brought in the big guns. "If Frederick Douglas was sitting in this class, it wouldn't be me telling to stop throwing paper, it would be Frederick Douglas. He would be appalled by this situation. He would have said, 'Richard, don't throw paper. I am trying to learn.'"

Then he made a smart comment saying that Frederick Douglas would have been upset at me for wasting twenty seconds of classtime. I quickly shot down that argument showing him why that was a bad argument.

Now here comes the good part.

"When I was a child," I began. "I used to complain to my dad that I didn't want to do my homework and that homework was stupid and was worthless. Then my dad would say, 'Son, it's a privilege to do homework.'"

Then I told them that they should be thankful that I am giving them homework and that they are learning because millions of people would give away their daily bread for just one 45 minute lesson.

Anyway, so I didn't learn that lesson when I was nine years old spelling out large numbers at the kitchen table at our old house on Ginger Snap. It didn't make sense to me. I just wanted to play my Nintendo. Spelling out numbers made no sense. I didn't care that 156,723 was one hundred thousand fifty-six thousand seven hundred twenty-three.

So though I didn't learn that lesson then, but I have learned it now (well I learned it a little while ago, but this is my vocalization of the learning of that lesson). So perhaps one or two of my students will now become very diligent in their work because of that quick lesson. Perhaps it will take a few of them a couple years. Perhaps it may take some, like Richard, many years to figure out what I meant and to see it from my point of view. Nevertheless, as we always said at camp, "We don't always get to watch the seed blossom into a plant. Our job is merely to plant the seed."

Since I referenced my childhood, I decided to include a picture of the ever-beautiful, adorable, favorite youngest son of my parents. Look at that smile. That's one happy baby.