These are my students on our field trip to Cedar Point for Physics Day in 2011. They are all weird in their own way. I picked the year at random, because it doesn’t matter.
Bill Gates makes a good point about students being over diagnosed, labeled and medicated.
Speaking to the Times, he said he would today be considered “on the autism spectrum”, adding: “My parents had no guideposts or textbooks to help them grasp why their son became so obsessed with certain projects, missed social cues and could be rude or inappropriate without seeming to notice his effect on others.”
Extraordinary people are not ordinary, and they were probably weird kids too.
School can be a repressive place. Sit still, take no risks, eat properly, support the right social causes and don’t get too immersed in unusual hobbies or interests. That all applies unless the parent can get an IEP or 504 plan for the student. An IEP or 504 plan is a get-out-of-jail-free card. IEP’s and 504’s were not intended to be used that way, but it happens. The child can’t be asked to write, do math, keep his hands to himself, keep his temper in check or turn in any work.
Teachers have become counselors and child advocates. Advocating for the child, against whom? Well, the parents, who could be Christians or MAGA.
Parents have become over-protective enablers of their precious snowflakes who must be accommodated by society in order to live a charmed life.
That doesn’t apply to all teachers or parents, or even many of them. Like much of our society, the least capable people have the most influence because they aren’t cautious or prudent.
When I was in high school, I don’t recall ever having a substantive, one-on-one conversation with a teacher. When I was a high school teacher, I had maybe a dozen such conversations with students each day. I tried to spread it around, so I knew something about each student.
There used to be an adult world and a kid’s world, that didn’t overlap much. I would have benefited from a few adults telling me something helpful, but I would not have appreciated adults steering every aspect of my life to spare me any danger of pain or hardship.
Bill Gates say,
“Maybe I am forgetting how painful it was, but I needed my neuro diversity to write that software; I could do all that stuff in my head. That takes a lot of concentration.”
Children need an appropriate amount of pain, danger and hardship to figure out how to navigate those aspects of life.
I had an interaction with a teacher that still makes me smile. Class hadn’t started yet, and I was in my room, chatting with a Social Studies teacher who had stopped by. A student came up to my desk.
“Mr. Nestoff, have you got a knife?”
“Yeah, here.” I gave him a utility knife. The kind with the razor blade.
The other teacher asked, “Did you just give that kid a knife? What’s he going to use it for?”
“I don’t know. Sharpen a pencil or something.”
The Social Studies teacher was astounded or appalled, I don’t know, the interaction was mundane for our Science Department. Of course the kid could have used the knife to stab or slash another student, but that hardly ever happens and I always assumed that the student’s demeanor would tip me off.
Somehow, my approach worked for 25 years without incident. For the student, it’s important that he knows that I trust him with a knife. They are 17 or 18 years old and can drive. I am not the critical link enabling a wacko to cause havoc.
Here’s a photo from my class at an academic summer camp run by Johns Hopkins University. This is a 12 year-old who looks crazy, and has a razor knife. They used hot glue guns and soldering pencils too. Is it dangerous? Of course. If a kid cuts himself, we would put a bandaid on it. If a kid burns himself, we would apply some ineffective cream. I’d tell him it’s going to hurt for a day or so, but don’t whine about it all the time because everyone’s got problems.
Johns Hopkins started the Center for Talented Youth so young geniuses had a place where it wasn’t unusual to know the flight characteristics of a Russian SU-75, or have memorized Shakespeare’s plays. The students really were certified geniuses.
Bill Gates makes an observation that seems old fashioned.
He said: “If they ever invent a pill where they could say, ‘OK, your social skills will be normal, but your ability to concentrate would also be normal,’ I wouldn’t take the pill.
Social skills don’t come naturally to Bill Gates, but with time and attention, he figured out what behavior is expected.
Children don’t need a medical diagnosis to make them feel special, drugs to mitigate their behavior, academic accommodations to exempt them from challenges or safe spaces to insulate their egos. They need adults to establish challenges and guidelines, and give them space to succeed or fail. That’s how people learn their strengths and weaknesses, and how to navigate difficult situations. Providing excuses to children, rather than training and guidance, does them no favors.
When I started at NoRo, there were 5 Physics classes. Word on the street was that my class was hard, but worth the work. I grew the program to 12 sections of Physics. Part of the attraction were the twin virtues. The best labs or demonstrations were fun and dangerous.
My favorite was the rocket lab. Students were informed that the rocket launches unexpectedly, the air pump hose was short, and getting hit by a rocket could break a bone or put out an eye.
It was stressful for the student, but I left it to them to manage their own risk. The tricky part was that the rockets launched when a little internal cap popped off due to pressure. It was always unexpected.
Here’s a close-up. This is what fun and dangerous looks like on a student.
She’s happy. She made it launch, and it is dramatic. Also because she doesn’t have to pump anymore and she didn’t get hit in the face.
The rockets go pretty high, up to about 100 feet. Then they come screaming down. The white nose cone is flexible, so some bounce and some get embedded in the dirt. A few guys tried catching them on the bounce. That was an unnecessary risk, but that’s none of my business.
With the flexible nose cone, a falling rocket probably wouldn’t injure a person. I don’t think, who knows? It’s kind of amazing that I made it 25 years.
Another student in the lab group would use an astrolabe to measure the maximum height. Error was probably 30 or 40%, but it was the experience that was important.
The value of the lab was doing dangerous work to get plausible results in a real-life application of physics concepts. And, it was a sunny day in the Fall, we were outside, and 10th period, the marching band would march out to the adjacent field playing the Ohio State fight song.
Those were the times when I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to do this.
Side Note: When I started at NoRo, I was the only physics teacher, and there was nobody to explain what all the lab equipment did. I was smart enough to try the rocket launcher outside, but didn’t appreciate how high it would go. I missed hitting a school bus by about 10 feet.
My colleague, Canadian Dave, had used the rocket launcher when my predecessor asked for help. Unwisely, he launched it in the classroom, and the rocket became embedded in the ceiling, protruding through the roof. My predecessor was a dingbat who was asked to resign, so it reflects well on Dave that, in retelling the story, he takes the blame, rather than putting it on the prior physics teacher.