Free yourself from school’s shackles

Editor:

I just read Frank McCourt’s book Teacher Man in which he recalls his high school teaching experience in New York.

In these memoirs, he said that the best question he was ever asked in a parent-teacher interview was simply: is my daughter happy in your class?

In all my schooling, nobody ever asked me that question.

High school provides the setting for the unfolding of young lives. Alongside the massive effort made by teachers and support staff, there is the drama of young people coming of age; the loss of innocence, the life of the mind versus poverty (both physical and intellectual) and the pain that comes when one first encounters love in reality instead of its elevated form.

Young people are in a time of awakening, of conflicting emotions, of human longing.

It is a time of encountering harsh reality which nobody escapes, but can be harnessed as the real stuff on which we build in human life.

I can recall that nobody took me seriously in my search and waiting for a moment of grace, of enlightenment that would release me from high school institutional imprisonment and oppression.

How do you come to honour yourself in an environment that is constantly devouring itself in lying, cheating and grief? There is no depravity worse than the denial on one’s true self.

I recall a young man speaking of his father’s obsession with building the family unity on truth.

This was the break through that set the compass for his fulfilment. This determined him to ask question about his existence all his life.

John Waters, the Irish writer of Lapsed Agnostic said that when he looked among the prestigious schools of Dublin for a place for his daughter, he was told by all the principals in their first breath, we develop compassion here.

On his last outing, he asked what will my daughter have that others will be compassionate about?

On the way home he decided to enrol his daughter in the local parochial school, in which he himself was given a fair deal.

How can we assist high school students to place reflection along side study? I empathize with students whose youth is spent in a defensive way, when all spontaneity is lost and this is accepted as less important than survival — that most dangerous word.

What saved my life was the Holy Spirit. At a certain time it became a pleasure for me to learn, and my mind released from the shackles of school programs took flight in regions of thought that connected me with myself, others and with Jesus; who described Himself as the way, the truth and the life. What kind of school are you looking for this year? Fr. Harry Clarke, Kelowna