Explaining to a Dim-Witted Pupil

"Teacher Tom, did you know that space is round?"

"I didn't know that."

"It's round and then it gets really long and really high."

I didn't know what to say to that so I nodded. It didn't make sense to me, but the honest truth is that children often tell me things about which I can make neither heads nor tails.

The three-year-old was gesturing with his hands as he explained. In fact, his whole body was gesturing as if what he was telling me could only be fully expressed through dance.

"There's the top part," he said while stretching his body upward, on his toes, his fingertips showing me the top part. "That's where the aliens live." His wide eyes demanded a response so I said, "The aliens live in the top part."

"On the top part," he corrected me.

"On the top part."

"And it's so huge." He stretched his arms out as if to show me it was too huge even for a hug, then sidled to the left, then to the right, indicating that it was even huger than that.

"That's pretty huge."

"And it goes inside my body and gets mixed inside of me."

Stupidly, I asked, "Are you still talking about space?"

He rolled his eyes and stamped a foot in frustration, "No!" He was momentarily at a loss for words. Or rather, he was searching for the right words. Finally, he said, slowly, feigning patience, "It's like there are little pieces." He waited for me to reply, so I said, "Right, little pieces." 

"No it's like there are little pieces." 

By now, my mind was racing through everything I knew about space. I was literally thinking about Einstein and dark matter and the bits I think I might understand about quantum mechanics. He was clearly trying to explain something to me, maybe a scene from a movie, something that was a bit over his head, and he was trying to understand it by explaining it to someone else. This is often the best way to get your mind around complex ideas. Most of the time when this happens, I can at least guess at what a preschooler is striving for, but today I was, in fact, the dim-witted pupil he seemed to think me and was attempting to break things down into more and more simple ideas, the way one does.

"It's like there are little pieces," I answered.

"And then they come out like this." He wiggled his fingers to show me what they come out like.

I wiggled my fingers as well.

"And then it goes . . ." He arced an arm over his head, then raised his eyebrows at me as if to say, Do you get it now?

I arced my arm in imitation.

He looked at me then with a tight-lipped smile of satisfaction. I wished I understood, but that wasn't the point. I could tell that he understood to his own satisfaction and that had to be enough. Some day, perhaps, he'll publish a novel or compose a symphony or write a dissertation so that I can come a little closer to understanding, but for today, this was as close as this dim-witted pupil was going to get.

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