first day of school

Christian went to his first class in college Monday night!

It's a milestone. He came in last night pumped.

He says the class is dominated by one know-it-all young woman, so he's decided to be the "quiet overachiever." He said he always felt that when he went to college he wanted to be an overachiever.

I told him we applaud overachievement; overachievement is our family philosophy. (That and no common sense-y.) Of course, he already knew that.

Shooing Christian into college is a strange proposition for us, and not just because he's not our son. He's also not our race, and we can't tell how much he is or is not "our culture." (See: how to be multicultural)

His mom has a Bachelor's degree; his aunt has a Masters; his dad, whom he hasn't seen in a number of years, had two years of college. His folks have more education between them than Ed's do; probably more than mine do, too.

So it's not exactly right to think of Christian as hailing from "black culture" in Laurence Steinberg's sense of the term.

On the other hand, he went to Yonkers schools, and when he was in the Mamaroneck school system he was in special ed along with all the other black kids. So if he's not exactly a product of "black culture," he's certainly a product of lousy black school culture.

All of which means Ed and I have been feeling our way. Last spring we decided, all of a sudden, to tell Christian he needed to go to college, and to say that we would pay to get him started. We decided this on the fly, which is how we often decide things (it works for us), and then we told Christian what we'd decided the next week, at dinner.

It was a case of synchronicity, because it turned out his grandmother had sat him down just the week before to tell him he had to get to college.




That was all well and good, but we can't "predict" from such scenes.

Does Christian have the stick-to-it-iveness to get through college?

Does he have the confidence?

The confidence part is huge. I don't think it violates Christian's privacy to say that he is somewhat shy. Somewhat. Maybe "sensitive" is a better word.....actually, come to think of it, he has a personality like Christopher's. Sensitive.

What I've come to see over the past two years is that "sensitive" is a tough row to hoe if you're young, male, 6'4", and black. White people are scared to death of Christian. I can see it when I'm out in public with him. White people take one look at him and blanch.

Here in Irvington teenage clerks simply stare. It's amazing. The other day a whole gang of boy teenyboppers hanging out on the street corner downtown were staring at Christian as we walked by. I'm starting to stare back, but pretty soon I'm going to find myself popping off with lines like, "Didn't your mother teach you not to stare?" I can hear myself now.

Christian says Connecticut is much worse, btw. Connecticut, he says, is the staringest state in the country. For me, this piece of intel sparks two opposing impulses. Number one, stay out of Connecticut. Number two, get in the car with Christian and all 3 kids today and drive to Connecticut! fyi, I like CT, have friends in CT, etc. Just so you know. I mean no offense to Connecticut!

Staring isn't the end of it. I've mentioned the day Christian, Christopher & I went to the city and a woman at one of the food stands in Grand Central refused to serve Christian. She wouldn't look at him or acknowledge his presence in any way, and she kept asking for the orders of people who'd come later or were standing behind him. I was so flummoxed by the whole thing I didn't manage to take her to task; instead I glared, corralled Christian, and stalked away to the Chinese food stand where the cooks had apparently dealt with tall black people before.

The scene was obnoxious & upsetting, but I didn't get the sense that the problem was racism in the old-fashioned Rosa Parks sense of racism. I suspect the problem was that Christian had intimidated the young woman behind the counter simply by being there, standing in one place and towering over everyone else as a person who is 6'4" inevitably does.

Christian's problem is that he can't be invisible. Sensitive people need to warm up to situations, and they need to be invisible or at least out of the spotlight while they're warming up. At least, that's the way I see Christopher, and I think it's true of Christian, too. [update 9-20-2006: Christopher told me last night that, at school, "I'm a quiet kid."]

I know something about this because I've been the focus of public starefests ever since giving birth to autistic children. You want to talk about public spectacles; we are the spotlight family. One time we all went to my friend Debbie's loft in Bloggers.SoHo (she'll shoot me if she finds out I posted this link) and Jimmy was so crazed on the subway that the entire car was staring.

I told Debbie when we got there, "You have to be way beyond the pale to be the center of attention on a New York subway."

Most people loathe being a public spectacle. Even Ed, who is possibly the most self-confident human being on the planet, doesn't like it.

Not me. I don't mind. The reason I don't mind it is that I'm wildly gregarious. I'm so gregarious I'm perfectly comfortable providing viewing pleasure for people traveling from midtown to Tribeca. This is why God selected me to be the mother of two autistic children, not just one like a normal family.

Back on topic: my point is that Christian is a sensitive guy who draws stares everywhere he goes and it's a problem for him.^* The challenge for Ed and me is that we don't know how much of a problem it is, or how to factor it into deciding whether we ought to "push" Christian or not.

We just have no idea what it's like to be him.




fear & loathing at D-Ed Reckoning

A teacher at Ken's website left a comment about student motivation:

The biggest problem in American education is that not enough students make their own education a high enough priority. Every year I see students of various social classes with various ability levels do well because they are willing to try. And every year I see other kids of various ability levels do poorly because they just don't care.

When kids really care, it's amazing how just about any teaching method seems to be successful. But when kids don't give a rip, nothing works.