Unit 8
Chapter 5
I. Reading
Why Don't You Understand?
I read something some time ago by a man who had spent World War II in a German concentration camp. This man and his fellow prisoners tried both to save their lives and their human dignity, and to resist the demands of their jailors. To do this, they adopted an air of amiable dull wittedness, of smiling foolishness, of cooperative and willing incompetence. Told to do something, they listened attentively and nodded their heads eagerly. Then they asked questions that showed they had not understood a word of what had been said. As far as possible they did the opposite of what they had been told to do.If they did do something, they would do it as badly as possible. They realized that this would not stop the war or even the administration of the camp. However, it gave them a way of preserving a small part of their integrity in a hopeless situation.
Does this not happen often in school? Children are prisoners. School for them is a kind of jail. Do they not, to some extent, escape and frustrate the relentless pressure of their elders by withdrawing the most intelligent and creative parts of their minds from the scene? Is this not at least a partial explanation of the extraordinary stupidity that otherwise bright children so often show in school? The stubborn and dogged "I don't get it" with which they meet the instruction and explanations of their teachers—may it not be a statement of resistence as well as one of panic and flight?
- John Holt, How Children Fail
II. Quotation
I have been studying how I may compare
This prison where I live unto the world.
- Shakespeare, Richard II
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