Remembering Plate Tectonics

By Elizabeth Esse Kahrs

His voice boomed through the neighborhood, low and guttural, bouncing off the walls of the surrounding split-level ranches.

 

“GAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaary.”

 

We lived a good four houses away, but that voice could penetrate our walls. When Mr. Doyle let out a Gary, the entire neighborhood was on alert.

 

Similarly, when Mr. Burns let out a “Jesus Christ Frankie!” we all knew. His was a higher voice, but still quite intense. Frankie had a twin sister, Julie, but you never heard a “Jesus Christ, Julie.” No, that was reserved for Frankie.

 

These are the kinds of things I remember.

 

My husband says that I don’t have a memory. And this is true, very true, of some things. I cannot recall most of what I learned in school—boring, dry, pointless, information. Dates of wars, names of countries…but then I’ll pull some random thing out of my hat that will make my husband shake his head in amazement, “How can you remember that?”

Plate tectonics. The Bushman and Hottentots. Man vs. Man. Man vs. Nature. Man vs. Himself. Rosa Parks. Mitochondria. Wild Bill Hickok. Kitty Genovese.

 

Not that I didn’t do well on tests and get good grades. I did very well, cramming my mind full of useless details to be test ready; a purging onto paper, a thwarting, never to be remembered again.

 

Because of this I have sometimes doubted my intelligence. For a long time, I believed I had pulled a fast one over everyone, bluffing my way through school. I graduated in the top ten of my high school, but I believed it was only because I worked harder than the truly smart people. The truly smart people could launch into a discussion about ancient civilizations and the cold war. The truly smart people could rattle off the date of the Boston Tea Party and the fall of the Berlin Wall.

 

My mother has a theory—that we only remember things that we deem important; we only remember things that we want to. I think this is true—but I also think I have a weakness, or rather, I don’t have the strength I see present in my husband—a semi-photographic memory. He can read something once and the knowledge is his. This only happens to me on rare occasions, when I’m extremely interested, when the topic has completely captured my attention, when my mind is fully engaged.

I think back to the teachers I had and remember some fondly, others with dread. There seemed to be two primary types: the worksheet teacher, who passed out “dittos” for us to complete—leaving us alone with our textbooks to record dry, meaningless information. And the rarer type—the lecture teacher, who talked about the material, put it into context, and made it come alive.

 

I’d bet anything that it was a lecture teacher who talked about Plate Tectonics.

 

Who talked about the Bushman and Hottentots.

 

Who talked about Mitochondria and Kitty Genovese.

 

For the most part, my kid’s teachers are of good quality. But the worksheet teacher still exists and this makes me very sad. I know there are kids out there, like me, getting absolutely nothing out of the lesson. Even worse, today’s expectations are over-inflated. What my eighth grade son is learning now, I learned in tenth or eleventh grade. There is simply no down time, no time to catch up.

 

No child left behind or every child pushed forward?

 

My hope is that along with this emphasis on increasing the standards of what our kids need to know, there will also be an increase in the understanding of how our kids best learn. Because now, more than ever, we are aware that kids learn differently. If we really want our children to excel, teaching must be all about teaching, discovering ways to reach every child, to engage every child’s mind—and not just about the test scores.

 

I often wonder how I would have felt about myself back then if I’d known there were others out there like me; if there were teachers who really understood how to teach me. It turned out alright. I figured things out on my own. I excelled. But it would have been a great thing, I think, not to have felt so different because I had to work so hard.


 

Elizabeth Esse Kahrs is a freelance columnist, fiction writer, and mother living on the South Shore. She can be reached at ekahrs@comcast.net.