The Question

A few days ago, 6 y.o. No. Two reminded me that to assume I knowhow someone listens, much less how they learn is rather superemrly arrogoant of me.  Two, of course, didn’t remind me by telling mei. He’d never do anything so crass—he’s far too decent of a person for that. He reminded me by showing me. 

Two and I attended an AlienCon panel featuring Joel and Paul Hynek. If you’re not a huge AlienCon fan, the Hyneks’ dad, Dr. Allen Hynek, was the a scientific consultant for three the Air Force's UFO investigations, Project Sign, Project Grudge, and Project Blue Book.  A new TV series dramatizes their family’s life along with some of the UFO cases their dad investigated. Paul Hynek serves as a technical advisor for the show while his brother Joel, is actually portrayed on the show. Joel has other props in show business as well: he won an Academy Award for Visual Effects.

The brothers held my rapt atention with their stories, accompanied by family photos displayed on a huge screen in the front of the room. From our front row seats, the pictures were all larger than life.  I watched the speaker, and studoed each new picture as it appeared, my head swivelling between the stage and the screen.  That’s how I learned to listen in public schools and during countless lectures in college.  I look at the person I’m listening to.  The whole time.  It in fact interferes a great deal with me taking notes, but that’s how I do it.

I occasionally glanced over at Two.  He was staying quietly in his chair, but unlie me, he was looking at his backpack, his feet, the ground below his chair and into the crowd around us.  Every so often he’d stretch a little bit.  To me, he wasn’t listening at all.  Even when the slides on screen switched over to things images of Joel Hynek building a jet engine as a kid in their back yard followed by several younger Hyneks excavating deep holes in the same place, Two still didn’t seem to register.  Just more looking everywhere with an occasional stretch thrown in for good measure.

At the end of the talk there was time for Q&A from the audience.  Much to my surprise, Two got up and headed for the microphone.  When he got there, someone swiveled the microphone down so he could reach it, and he asked, “Why’d you dig so many holes in your yard?”

The answer was interesting: the Hynek’s house was built near an old firehouse.  Things, lots of things, had been buried behind the firehouse over the previous decades.  Paul and Joel talked at length about the things they’d found including cows’ teeth and a bottle with a label admonishing its 1859 owner to return it promptly.

What really blew my mind though was that the kid had absorbed the entire talk.

So, if I—the kid’s dad, the person who’s around him several hours a day, every day—can’t tell what listening looks like for him, how on earth could a teacher or anyone else ever make that judgement?  How can we have a public school system that decides who can and can’t learn, who needs medication as a result, and who will succeed or be ridden into working in ways that don’t fit their natural behavior?  Maybe we should all take a lesson from Two, learning to enjoy life in our own unique style, as it comes.