Watching the tadpole turn into a frog was supposed to be a lesson in organism development. I was supposed to learn that, with enough nutrition, space to roam, and responsible caretaking, this tiny water worm would eventually turn into a fleshy amphibian, little by little. I was supposed to subconsciously absorb a life lesson about how maturity happens, and that it's not scary.
What I instead learned was a lesson on enormous and rapid growth, without any concept of how it occurs. My elementary school tadpole, Toni, slowly grew legs and all that, kind of. I let her loose in my backyard, near a temporary and dirty pond I had going on at the time. Several weeks later, I was surprised by the putrid corpse of a massive frog in a hole under my pond. To my eight year-old mind, this corpse was Toni, and she had grown to unnaturally huge proportions without my assistance, and in what I thought was an astoundingly short period of time. I was at once disgusted and frightened. I ran back into my house.
And thus, my concept of adulthood was born. I didn't know when it would happen to me, or how, but I was terrified of someday waking up grown: larger, stronger, scarier, possibly dead. Had I for a moment thought that perhaps this monstrosity of a creature was not my beloved Toni (which I'm sure it wasn't), I might not have been so apprehensive of my elders. But, in the same way that I was frightened and confused by the poor amphibious corpse under my pond, I didn't understand adults -- how they got so big, so smart; how they knew how to make decisions and take care of other people; how they knew their way around the neighborhood; how they managed not to be scared of movies and creaky stairs and the dark.
Obviously, I've learned a thing or two since Mrs. Link's fourth-grade class. I suppose I am one of "them" now -- a big, scary adult, and not dead. There is a chance that I'm in the middling-Toni stage, and that once I get released into the dirty backyard pond of America I'll suddenly find myself much larger, slimier, and hiding in a hole somewhere, though I doubt it. I am, instead, rather calm and capable. I love maps and can navigate fairly well; I'm able to manage a classroom full of energetic French children; I can live independently; I am generally confident in my intellectual and physical abilities. In other words, I grew legs.
So it is with these new, springy legs that I want to crush the skulls of all irresponsible, wasteful, ignorant adults! After having made it to the not-so-scary stage of human maturity myself, I now realize how much deliberate laziness plagues our society: laziness of mind and body, as well as moral laziness and just general selfishness, which I consider to be an extremity of laziness. My argument: you know better. That's it.
All it takes is the knowledge that I know more than my students, in general, to keep me going. I have absolutely no right to give them half-baked information, slack off on my lessons, or blow them off when they misbehave, simply because I know better. I can't. It's so incredibly unfair, knowing what I do now and remembering how little I knew -- or, rather, what I thought I knew -- when I was their age. I am responsible to their naivete.
I'm not calling for anything as severe as a culling of unworthy adults (however, I wouldn't feel so bad about thinning out the Tea Party herd, ahem), though a moral revolution wouldn't be such a bad idea. I'm just… perplexed. And enraged. My anger is directed mostly at people in power, since I find that everyday Joes like myself are close enough to the roots of society to see and anticipate decision-based damage (i.e., building a Bank of America over the town park will probably cause an uprage). It's those who've chosen to lose sight of humanity who are making our world's decisions, who are able to serve lunchtime poison to preteens and who can (or who could!), without a glimmer of guilt, deny a diabetic child insulin. I say "chosen" because financial and political corruption are choices, not direct results of money and power; I won't hesitate to acknowledge that there are good people out there, doing positive things with their wealth. It's depressing that such corruption is a choice -- it would almost be comforting to learn that being in such a dehumanized state was a direct result of money or power, as a sickness is from exposure to germs. The fact that it's a choice is sickening.
What I am calling for is an enhancement of general awareness -- of what's going on in the world, what you're putting into your body, how people react to you, what you're DOING, for god's sake. Just know what you're doing, please. You know better.
