Everett High School - Crimson Tide / Memories Yearbook (Everett, MA)

Page 7 text:

Take sex. (That sure is one thing school hasn ' t taught me anything about!) Suppose a guy and a girl want to make out and fool around. Whom are they hurting? Are they making a mistake? Some people think they are. I ' m not really sure. But anyway, in¬ stead of just telling them that they ' ve made a mistake, we go and tell them they ' re bad and evil and sinful and all of that. They get bawled out and everyone gets all flustered. Why? Why can ' t we just sit down calmly and try to talk to them and see whether or not they ' re doing the right thing? Instead of that, they get blasted for being bad, and worse than that, they believe it and start to think that they are really bad. I brought this up because it happens so much in school. When a kid gets a problem right, he ' s a good boy. If he does not, he ' s a bad boy. Why is he bad? What ' s wrong with a mistake? Why does one kid have to suffer so that another kid can get a high mark? People talk to me about love and understanding, and then I see kids worried sick because their marks aren ' t good, or they couldn ' t get a right ans¬ wer. It seems as though the teacher can not take enough time to understand a kid. He only has to give the kid a mark on a piece of paper. I wish I could be friends with more of the teachers, but school work always get in the way.

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Sometimes, too, I feel like I just can ' t penetrate into an idea enough. I was reading a book the other day and the words the human condition came up. I wanted to figure out what it was, but I couldn ' t think. I really wanted to know. But I couldn ' t grasp it. I just didn ' t know how. It ' s like picking up a musical in¬ strument right after you ' ve heard a really good song, and you want to play it, but you can ' t because you just don ' t know how. It ' s frustrating. I wonder if all the stuff I ' ve learned is any good at all. I just wish they ' d taught me how to think. When I say learning to think , I guess it sounds kind of ambigous. It ' s hard to describe what thinking is, or what I mean by learning to think. I tried to describe it before, but I ' m still not sure I got it all across. A lot of people assume that anyone can think. I wonder. Thinking is like seeing both sides of an issue. That ' s hard to do. You see, when you ' re a kid, things can get pretty confusing. Right and wrong. Good and bad. All get confused, and you ' re never sure which is which. When you ' re unsure, both sides seem just as good or just as bad. That way, not knowing anything is good--you never have to hurt anybody ' s feelings by tell¬ ing him he ' s bad. But when I say that, people say that I ' m supposed to be strong and hurt him because he ' s bad But who says he ' s bad? Maybe he ' s wrong, maybe he ' s made a mistake, but why tell him he ' s bad? There ' s nothing bad about a mistake. It ' s human! If you call some¬ body bad, he starts to believe you and thinks he can ' t be a good friend for any¬ body. Then he ' s in trouble. But we still call people bad anyway. 2

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I ' ve heard that school is supposed to prepare me for life. Are the quadratic equations and the proper tenses of a French verb teaching me how to love? After all, the most important thing in life is learning to love, isn ' t it? If it isn ' t I ' m sure I ' ll be leaving soon. My schoolwork doesn ' t prepare me to love and understand my friends. I ' ve learned more about helping people from the science fiction I ' ve read than the things I ' ve learned in school. I just read over the stuff I ' ve written and I guess I ' m being a little one-sided. I hate it when I do that, because it ' s really not giving everyone a real chance. I just can ' t be all negative, for nothing is all negative. I feel guilty because I ' ve been screaming about how bad school is. I said before that I ' ve learned a lot about how to love and love in high school, and that ' s really important to me. All my friends have helped me a lot- and they ' ve made a lot of school a good time. I just get mad when I see so much time wasted and so many people hurt. I think a lot of my teachers feel trapped by the situation because they do make mistakes and hurt people. I wish more of them wouldn ' t be so afraid to be friends with me. A tr -g J Mr W ' ; M V. ' % k im Hi Jr -{ A ' ? | |i if.. ' .r lV ' ' .‘•j 4