Playing The Game?

Free Will (Joseph Thompson; Oil on Canvas)

There are few decisions a parent can make that are either just bad or just good. It is this insight that has had some come up with the very useful notion of the "good enough" parent. In it we recognize and validate the good/bad ambiguity inherent in most parenting decisions. This recognition usually comes quite easy for me. However there has been one decision that, until recently, I had a significantly harder time reconciling in this way. For years I have felt mostly regret about our decision to send our older two sons to catholic elementary and middle school. I have, actually, been ashamed of it because I felt strongly that I had agreed to this move out of a fear I myself didn't understand or see at the time. I leave it up to my readers to give me feedback on this question. Clearly Catholic schools don't evoke the most unambiguous feelings and memories and most people's minds. But when my spouse and I made the decision we were in need of the promise of something solid, something that would help our two boys, Noah and Jacob make it through elementary and middle school without necesarily having to be exposed to violence, drugs, and familial disruption.

It was the summer of 2005. We were expecting our third son, Gabriel, in November. The school year had just started and Noah, our oldest, came home telling us that his friend had not returned to their public elementary school but was now attending a local Catholic school. Although both our sons had marvelous teachers at their public school we had grown increasingly uneasy about their general school environment. Many of the classrooms reflected a thinking that made individual discpline seem like an academic accomplishment, rather than a basis for learning. Even in first grade the level of aggression and coercion among some students was disturbingly high. Many parents did not seem as supportive of their children's schooling and academic progress as one would wish. It wasn't uncommon to see parents yelling at their children as they were dropping them off in the morning. One parent came to school with a shirt that read "Would you like to know about my day? Call 1-800-FUC-KYOU." We did not see how much time each teacher spent understanding and working with the unique abilities and strengths of each individual student.

The promise (and premise) of the local Catholic school was that discipline, structure and solid academic routines would lead to steadiness and a rich learning environment for our boys. They would be wearing "uniforms" (Khakis and Polo shirts), they would go to Mass every Friday, their class-rooms appeared to be more structured and less cluttered with "learning materials." Their teachers seemed to have a kind of authority and confidence about the effectiveness of their brand of teaching (the Catholic brand (to the point of one teacher not seeming particularly engaged with the students at all)) that felt reassuring to us. With a third boy on the way, we were happy to have placed our first two in an environment that promised shelter and protection from many of the developments that plague public schools.

What we didn't consider enough, in my opinion, was the fact that we ourselves would not have wanted to go to a school like this one. Here are the changes I would have to undergo in order to go to this school right now:

Cut my hair;

Take out my ear-ring;

Go to church;

Be willing to engage in dogmatic religious routines on a daily basis;

Never challenge a teacher;

Accept a uniform dress-code;

Accept that teachers don't have to comply with a dress-code;

Accept that students are fed messages like "God doesn't like long hair" or it is "sinful to go a religious service other than a catholic one;"

Accept that learning is an undemocratic process, i.e., one in which students should not feel empowered to challenge teachers and test their ability to voice and defend opinions;

Accept that students are expected to "play the game;"

Frankly, I'm not sure anymore what made me think that it was okay and even functional to immerse my children in a thoroughly authoritarian structure while creating an authoritative home-life structured around discussion, dialogue and insight as well as choices. I can't but diagnose a deep-seated parenting insecurity that had befallen us (or at least me) at the time we made the decision. Even more frankly, I think these might very well be the same feelings that persuade one to choose dictatorship over democracy. Utter insecurity combined with worry about the future. Did the new baby make us feel weak, in need of protection? Did the fact that both our families of origin live so very far awayfrom us play a role in this?

Well, things are now coming to a head. Especially our older son who is in eigth grade and, thankfully, soon transferring to our local public high-school has not been doing so well since about 6th grade (by his own counting). He has always been an outspoken guy who much rather deals with the consequences of having gone over-board in stating his opinion than preemptively editing such opinion. However, Noah has had to learn that his teachers, most of them frighteningly unprepared to deal with strong teenage opinions and position-taking, did not like him better for this. In fact, they formed opinions about him and began to dismiss him as the trouble-maker, the one who always rolls his eyes or shows his disrespect otherwise. "School is not a democracy," Noah was recently told by one of his teachers, revealing, in other words, that school is about power and status rather than reflection and thoughtfulness. Only one teacher has maintained an attitude of respect for him, not because he would be more respectful with her, but simply because she can look through his disrespect and she can see his intelligence, sweetness and courage. She, too, though would love it if Noah learned to play the game. Does she know that this is not a matter of learning but of submission?

What she means by "playing the game" became clearer as she was talking about Noah during a parent-teacher-child conference she had called last week. She presented us with a letter Noah and his class mates had been asked to write to a retired diocesan priest. I am quoting from Noah's letter:

"What is it like to be a priest?" It must be tough to live a solitary life. How many massess do you serve a day? Don't you ever get bored? I get bored before I even walk into church. But that's probably my fault; I don't really make an effort to even try to like it."

Further down Noah asked him about his decision not be confirmed:

"The important thing I'd like to ask you about is Confirmation (sic.). I chose not to be confirmed because my school teaches very conservative Catnolicism which I don't like at all. I'm a rebelious (sic.) free-thinker, and I would like your opinion on this. Should I be confirmed later in a more liberal faith, or not be confirmed at all?"

Noah's teacher showed us the letter because she, like us, finds much evidence in it that Noah is a critical and reflective young man, with lots of potential. However, she also told us that--worried Noah's letter would be seen as "offensive"-- she didn't send it along with his class-mates letters.

My heart was bleeding. I wanted to say to Noah "come love, there is nothing here for you and us." Noah was right when he wrote in his letter that this school teaches very conservative Catholicism. Instead, I said to his teacher that I, too, didn't see anything offensive in this letter. "You don't?" she asked. No, I said. My wife and I both know "offensive." And we have certainly seen and heard Noah be offensive. This letter, however, demonstrated to us that we had indeed reached an important goal of parenting our children: their ability to think on their own feet and voice their opinion without being swayed by a majority (or an authority) that seems to think differently.

There is a subtext to this story; one that I'm not so proud of. It's about wanting my children to think like I do. I recognized this when, later on, Noah and I chatted a bit more about the meeting. I still felt quite agitated about the whole thing and Noah said, with some impatience in his voice: "You're always so critical of others!" I had to swallow hard. Just a minute earlier I had thought we had formed an alliance over the drudgery of this school. But he reminded me that he is, indeed, a rebellious free-thinker: Unlike his father, Noah knows himself loved enough not to shy away from stating his disagreement, even though it could "threaten" an alliance. In fact, it seems that our love for him may have been an important ingredient of his fearless outspokenness.

So, as it turns out, this experience, too, is a dialectic one: Wrapped into my feelings of regret are feelings of pride and accomplishment when I look at how my eldest has been developing. I recognize, too, that "regret" contains within it, the seeds of an unhealthy kind of revisionism, an urge to make things undone, to erase them. This one, and all others, cannot be erased; and it shouldn't be. It is what it is and it carries within it a pleasure and intensity that could never be felt by perfection.