Beyond Co-Operative Principles

I was wondering the other day, about what I’m going to do when I no longer have a school to go to… And I think that if school was completely voluntary, and I lived close and had nothing better to do – I would go just for the hell of it. For the fun of it; because I couldn’t stand what I would be missing out on the opportunity to learn.
I appreciate what a nerdy thing that is to say; but I felt like I could confess it to my teachers. But in what should have been an endearing point of intellectual agreement; it only seemed to provide a lonely segue into the ugly sub-text of student teacher inequality, and made me feel that unbridgeable five year distance.
I feel like I’m holding onto them more than they would like. Some times it’s just great to be with them, intellectually stimulating and inclusively elevating. But other times you feel like when you establish a common interest outside school life they are at pains to discuss it with you, and you are bringing yourself closer than they would like. You can cross the line light-heartedly, and I see people aware of this all the time. The students love to play on the teacher’s privacy in work and private life, making comments about springing them out drinking, just to make the teacher cringe. The student just wants to find any way to put the teacher off side, and the teacher wants to avoid sharing that side of themselves with the student.
That’s what makes it weird when you want to consciously cross that line. It’s human and lovely when you to want to get to know your teacher as a person, until you realise you can’t. Once you get to a point where you can realise this, you have already investigated too far.
There can never be equality between these groups; the teacher will always hold the floor. Even after years every now and then I still feel a little twinge of guilt each time I talk over them. The whole institutional hierarchy is built on this. You are their subordinate and when they are speaking you should not. It is freeing to violate that without offence, on the surface. But you can tell, even when that goes away, that you will always be slightly lesser. You will always be the one who feels more inclined to apologise, you will always be the one more embarrassed, you will always wear the pretence. And it’s the smallest of furrows like that, which become the worst cracks in a relationship.
We’re all pleasant and good people, and we try to be; but somewhere in there we all have our place. While I go home and relish the exchange, they whisper tongue-in-cheek about my chattiness. And I know.
And I won’t deny that it hurts.
There is a painfully major gap in age and perspective difference. Not in temporal terms, as it won’t be like that in 10 years, but one could not pick a worse context for an age gap. Beyond the teaching; which is hard to ignore; it gets back to something on a societal level, re-enforced by the unfortunate co-incidental breaks in schooling. An underage teenager, out of the loop on many of the defining privileges of adulthood, driving, voting and drinking; who is still in school, under the prescriptive instruction of teachers – who are post-graduate and independent, with university and worldly experience. These age groups do not associate with one another regardless of professional relationships. Maybe being a teacher makes it better, and you can understand the maturity in the younger perspective better; maybe it makes it worse because in getting to know generation you see why you are glad to be rid of it.
I think somehow in being a teacher you are forever cool. (I know a lot would beg to differ, but bear with me). You will always have what your subjects don’t; they come and go but stay the same transitional age where nothing and anything are simultaneously possible; and you will always stand with one foot solidly out of that mess. You will always have better things to do.
And I get that notion. Louder than they must think though my persistent and overt friendliness.
I got so much from them, but they don’t feel the same way about me. I know that they haven’t put half the amount of thought into it that I have. They are used to the change, and seeing the changes; and I doubt they would mind if I faded off into my own life like the rest of them. They would not reach for the phone and wonder what I was doing and what I would think. Maybe, and I hope, they might care a little bit more, and that I will not be quite as forgettable.



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