Dreamers and the "Good Old Days"

Remember the 'good old days' in grade school where there was always some unfortunate pupil accused of daydreaming by the teacher. I am so old I remember when we got ink wells installed on our desks, considered the new technology at the time, to replace our slates and stylus with pen and paper! I bet most of the kids accused of daydreaming are millionaires today that is, if they are still alive. Why do we daydream? I suppose today the experts would be able to distinguish between bona fide daydreamers and those with ADD or ADHD. (Attention Deficit Disorder and Attention Deficit Hypertension Disorder.) I never heard of either in my day. That is not to say these disorders did not exist or that parents were not deeply concerned. I know some teachers who thought a good strapping would set the daydreamers straight! 

I must confess I still daydream now and again.  I also stretch my imagination and even find a few minutes each day for meditation, or at least that is what I call it. Usually I do this while attending a boring meeting, waiting in a doctor's office or just laying back at home. It helps heal my chakras, or so they say in Yoga! Something we octogenarians do get is a lot of is quiet time! I think the kids daydreamed because of boredom and to remove themselves from the here and now.

No doubt they are all different, but I find some relationship between daydreaming, imagination and even meditation. Perhaps daydreaming is the training ground for imagination. Imagine, if you will, a world without imagination. We would still be living in a cave. Imagination attempts to find new ways of doing things, it helps solve problems, it is very unique and independent. In fact, we can picture in our minds something that we have not yet experienced. What a wonderful gift imagination really is. Too bad they don't teach "daydreaming" in school.

It was mid-morning recess on my very first day of school. I knew no one in the school yard. Spotting a long pipe railing on a stairway fire-exit leading down from the school auditorium, my imagination went into overdrive. Would it not be fun to run up the stairs, throw my left leg over the rail, and glide merrily down to the playgrounds below. I seized the opportunity, flew up the stairs and started my exciting ride to the gravelled yard below.

The principal was on yard duty that first day and, as I came to the end of my thrilling ride, he was there to greet me. He caught me under my arms, and then dragged me by the scuff of the  neck up the stairs to the grade eight classroom. He told me to sit on a little red chair near his desk. He then went to the open window and shook the hand bell signalling the end of recess. I was quickly learning a little imagination, or daydreaming was a dangerous thing.

They were all boys in that grade eight classroom, big boys. There was dead silence when they went to their desks and spotted me, shaking and confused, on the  little red chair. They knew it was show time! I was told to stand and face the principal as he extracted a large leather strap from the top drawer of his desk.

I received multiple lashes on both hands. I was totally ashamed and embarrassed in front of so many big boys. The pain of the strap was nothing compared to appearing as a baby in front of them. I spent the rest of the morning of my very first day of school, sitting on a little red chair facing the corner,  until lunch time when I was sent back to the first grade classroom.

Did I do well in school for the next eight years? I probably would have been diagnosed as ADD and given a bottle of pills. I hated every moment and closed myself off from my teachers for whom I had no respect. I survived the experience, but obviously it lives on in my reservoir of bad memories.

P.S. I never told my parents! So don't always look at the child as the  problem. Find the source.

The dean of the English Department where I once worked often stressed the need to educate the imagination. Technical skills without imagination creates nothing new. In tandem, they can change the world. So if our young people can get their heads out of their technical devices once in a while they just might discover a whole new and better world.

And that's Dick's View of the World this Week