My Mother Listened to Me

Stuart K. Hayashi 

My late mother pulled herself up from poverty and abuse. She sent herself to university — she was the only person in her family who did — to become a certified government school teacher and join the middle class. As far as she was concerned, this was the American dream and her own Horatio Alger success story. And I must admit that what she did was indeed impressive.

Still in grade school, I told my mother about how there was something abhorrent about my being forced by law to go to government school and follow orders. My mother initially took that as ignorant disrespect toward her life’s work, a repudiation of her Horatio Alger efforts. But I persisted in explaining myself. I said that my learning was self-directed, and having to follow the teachers’ orders about coloring within the lines and applying the correct amount of glue to a paper was contrary to that. To my father’s credit, he chimed in that government schools, as they are currently run, are a “dictatorship.”

And my mother thought it over. And she said to me, “I hadn’t thought of it that way before. But you’re right.” And her saying that was such a revelation to me: that expressing myself mattered, even if what I said was met with scoffs and ridicule and everyone rejected me as outlandish. This was the first time that someone truly let me know that she cared what I thought. And, all these years later, I know that this is rare and not to be taken for granted.

My mother would sometimes even say that talking with me about these matters had made her wiser, and that the increase in her wisdom was on account of my success in conveying to her the idea that I intended. That is, she would say that I was right to try to convince her. There is nothing common about a parent proclaiming that about her child.

It is not as though my mother agreed completely or wanted to see through my radical ideas. She would go on being a government schoolteacher for two more decades before retiring. But I did not cease in letting her know of my contemplations on where  reform was needed. 

I went on about how true learning of skills is autodidactic by nature. The learner learns exactly because he knows he is the party that is most responsible for his present body of knowledge. I talked about how important it is that the teacher does not misinterpret the student as some passive receptacle into whom instruction must be drilled. No, it works when the student’s constructive pursuit of skill-building is encouraged and rewarded. I repeated how freedom is inherent to learning, which means trying to force education onto children is a contradiction and doomed to fail.

I never worked out a whole plan on implementing such ideas. For that reason, Mom continued to have her doubts. But the point here is that, unlike many other people, Mom was willing to listen to something new and unorthodox. That really inspired me to come out and write my ideas. Indirectly, she thus helped make it likelier that I would create this blog and impart the words that I do.