The child, no more than eight or nine years old, stood at the white board in an empty classroom waiting for Sunday School to begin. He stood filling the lower quarter of the board with black lines and curves magically flowing from the dry-erase marker in his hand. None dare interfere with his excursion of inky discovery. I watched him with quiet joy for several minutes before the room began to fill with others, and he stopped.
The scene reminded me of the conflict I once felt with a despotic and dictatorial teacher who chastised students when they leisurely wrote upon the white board in his classroom. Sarcastically, he asked guilty students, “Are you going to pay me to replace those markers you’re wasting?”
Incidentally, the school paid for the markers, and only a fool or a misguided instructor would interfere with the magic of exploration.
The title of “teacher” must be a humbling, gentle appellation and not become a license for enslaving minds and quashing imaginations.
When will they ever learn? And I speak not of the students.
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