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March 29, 2010
I sat down with Shogofa this week, and beside her Madina, and I asked them to take turns reading from a small book on astronomy. Their English came back to them in stops and starts, until I could sense they were starting once again to think in another language. The first word that tripped them was constellation. “Ahhh,” I said, sweeping my hand across the sky. “Sitara!” And we learned the first thing every one of us learns the first time we examine the night sky. “Big Dipper…” The two girls smiled and nodded. There is nothing I’ve seen in the world that compares to a child suddenly comprehending some heretofore unimagined reality. What is so threatening about education? Why this backlash against it, not only among the worldwide (and pan-religious) fundamentalist movement, but also within secular political parties in Italy, Japan, and the United States? This wholesale shopping for votes by stirring up divisiveness between those who attended college and those who did not smacks a familiar refrain of “cultural” revolutions during the 20th Century. In my view there is only one revolution of any lasting purpose, and that is defending the right of children to be given the tools to solve the problems they inherit.
Madina took her turn reading and turned the page. The next thing all three of us learned is the Greek word planet literally means “wanderer”. Explaining to the girls the meaning of the word was more difficult than you may think. I could wander around the room, but then I just look drunk or daydreamy. Planets do wander but they are also fixed. What are the implications of wandering? Is wandering aimless? Random? I wager now I could design an entire semester’s worth of classes around that singular word: wandering. In a sense, I myself have wandered my entire life. Even at the age of two when I wandered to the brink of a neighbor’s swimming poo, or the age of three when I wandered off at the New York World’s Fair, giving my mother nightmares to wrestle with the rest of her days. I remember the world book encyclopedia, 1960 edition. I’d open up the letter “P” looking for planets and invariably wander from Pompeii to Prometheus to Paleolithic before ever getting to Pluto. Certainly this did not bode will for my school report. Then again, what exactly is the definition of success? Madina continued reading, then stopped at the word, Galileo. She and Shogofa looked at one another and smiled. “From Italia!” they said almost in unison. Both had been among the orphans who traveled to Milano over winter break. Shogofa wanted another turn with the book. She pointed at a diagram showing light reflected off the earth, and of that light reflecting off the moon. “Yes, Galileo saw we are also a wandering star.” “Planet!” Madina corrected me. This is dangerous stuff, this learning about maps in the sky and wandering and reflection. All preparations have been made, just in time. Tomorrow I begin teaching full time. I arrived here very much excited about all the power of technology and virtual learning and connecting people around the world. I have outfitted the top floor with two computers, desks, supplies. Half of my week will be leading intensive classes to groups of four, the other half will be inside the orphanages teaching larger groups. There is an Afghan saying, that salt in food can make food tasty, but alone it is worthless. Nothing will ever replace the teacher, sitting beside the student, turning the pages in the book together, and when the wind blows and floats into the classroom, carrying with it the scent of diesel, and cardamom, and dust, and the student’s nose wrinkles, and the page in the book flutters to the next, the ability in that moment of the teacher to connect them all, to make them one in the same.
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