Pretending to pretend

My youngest son was eleven when he found himself in a private school in York, England. It was a Quaker school, and had a deserved reputation for being more gentle and sensitive to the needs of individuals than most other schools in the area.

Having spent six years in a Japanese elementary school, Tim was now reluctantly accompanying me on my sabbatical and struggling to fit into a completely new environment.

One evening, soon after he started in his new school, he recounted the following experience that had happened, I guess, in a music or PE class.

The teacher had asked the students to buzz around the gym, rapidly flapping their arms as if they were bumblebees busily buzzing to the music being played.

Ever the critical thinker, but with his hands flapping, Tim asked his new English friend in a furtive whisper,

“Why are we doing this?”

“I don’t know,” was the answer, as he too dutifully flapped and buzzed.

Of course the teacher was trying to get the students to be creative, but the effect on Tim was not what had been intended. The incident captures how even in a school with a reputation for gentleness, a bigger story is silently being told:

You are not in control. Do what we tell you to do, and you will be alright.

One aspect of this control dynamic is to do with honesty or authenticity. Tim and his friend were, effectively, pretending to be pretending that they were bumble bees as they responded to the expectations of their well-intentioned teacher.

School is one expression of the conditioning power of what we call “media,” and one of the accomplishments of this medium is that we learn to pretend. In other words, we learn in school to hide what we are really feeling and thinking.

If the boys had not already unconsciously internalized this lesson, wouldn’t they simply have asked the teacher, “Why are we doing this?”

What was there to be afraid of?