Not back to school

Not back to school

Students should outdo teachers, instead of humbly walking in their footsteps.

Those are the best years of your life, they say about school. Prove them wrong. Your schooling should be the springboard to grander adventures. Polynomials, rote learning, uniforms, strum this not that, stay in your seat, don’t run in the corridors, life should be bigger than all this. Instead of only reading Romeo and Juliet maybe you will live it – and rewrite the ending. In place of bowing low to it perhaps you will grow to command authority. Outgrow even your teachers. Stride longer than their shadow.

Your music guru needs a ladder to climb the high notes, you could be the next Adele. The economics teacher is excellent but he’s all talk, you could breed a spectacular startup. The language and literature instructor is full of advice on how to write well without having done it herself, you could land a Booker. And of course every astronaut up there has bested his high school physics mentor by many miles. It does seem as though all those who can, do while those who can’t, teach. Teachers, principals, PT coaches, on campus they appear almighty. But if they do their job somewhat right their students will be more than them, more ambitious, successful, imaginative, innovative. Likely they won’t become teachers themselves. Back to school they won’t come.

Little nine-year-old Harper Nielsen has created a ruckus not only in her school in Australia but across the country by refusing to stand up for the national anthem, drawing attention to how it favours white folk over indigenous Australians. This is how all society grows, by young people challenging received wisdom, causing creative disruptions. Being not teacher’s pet but competitor.