The Day I Lost Santa Claus

I remember vividly the day I finally realized there was no Santa Claus. I don't remember the circumstances leading up to the discovery but I'm sure it was probably a series of little things. I do remember coming downstairs early one Christmas morning and asking my mother if I was right that there really isn't a Santa Claus. She must have decided that I was old enough to learn the truth and told me that yes, I was right. I was happy at the time because I felt grown up and would be able to join my older sister and brother in keeping the secret safe from my younger siblings. It wasn't until we were looking forward to Christmas the next year that I realized what I had lost.

As I watched my sisters and brother anticipating the arrival of Santa, I felt estranged from them and from all of the joy and excitement of Christmas. It wasn't the thought of receiving presents under the tree that kept Christmas so joyous and magical; it was the thought of Santa Claus coming to our house in the middle of the night and leaving us gifts that only he knew we wanted. Without that magic and mystery Christmas seemed kind of flat and uneventful. Thinking about the birth of baby Jesus as the real reason for being joyful didn't impress me either. I guess even as a child I wasn't really a religious person; Santa was more exciting and wonderful than Jesus could ever be.

It wasn't until my husband and I had a child of our own that I was able to recover some of that feeling. Telling her the story of Santa Claus and seeing her excitement at Christmas made even the fact that she would someday feel the loss that I had felt worth the price. And she has now repeated the whole process with her son, and I know she is dreading the day when he too will suffer the loss of Santa Claus.

The School Dilemma

Recent incidents have reminded me of my days spent at school. Even though when I was young teachers were educated to teach their students certain things, the organized school system, whether public or private, failed most of the time. Granted I did learn to read and write, but I would have learned that anyway from my mother. I learned algebra and geometry and enjoyed learning them, but the only time I have ever used them was in helping my daughter with her school work. I studied biology and chemistry and loved those subjects but I've never really needed them in my adult life. And because I love to read and I love to learn, I have taught myself more about those various subjects than I ever learned in school.

However, unlike today my teachers believed they were teaching my schoolmates and me important stuff that we would never learn otherwise. Those were the good old days when the choice of curriculum wasn't led by the various standardized tests administered by the State. Teachers and administrators had more freedom to design their own classwork and decide what they believed was important for their students to learn in each subject. I received a fairly well-rounded education and graduated satisfied that my teachers and I had done well.

It was only years later that I realized I would have been better educated if I had been homeschooled or at least given more freedom to pursue in more detail subjects I was really interested in. I know now that it is impossible to educate students by giving them a little of this and a little of that and consider it done. Most students give up from boredom or a lack of understanding, and either fail or go on to graduate not knowing they have been given little opportunity to really learn. Who knows what our country would be like now if teachers had been educated in learning and then had been allowed to teach their students how to learn.