"The One Rare Thing You Possess"

If there's one thing each of them claims not to resemble it's . . . himself. Instead he sets up a model, then imitates it; he doesn't even choose the model -- he accepts it ready-made. Yet I'm sure there's something more to be read in a man. People dare not . . . The laws of mimicry -- I call them the laws of fear. People are afraid to find themselves alone, and don't find themselves at all. I hate all this moral agoraphobia -- it's the worst kind of cowardice . . . What seems different in yourself: that's the one rare thing you possess, the one thing which gives each of us his worth; and that's just what we try to suppress.                                ~André Gide

It's our eccentricities, the things that make us unlike every other human to ever walk the planet, that make us special in the world. It's there that we find our passion and purpose and it seems that this is what should most concern us as educators. 

Our schools have become increasingly standardized over the course of the last many decades, running like assembly lines on manufactured curricula and standardized testings. Children learn the moral agoraphobia young, adopting mimicry when they can. Being labelled challenging or behind or unmotivated if they can't. In school, the things that make us different become deficiencies that are used to define us as efforts are made to level us up to arbitrary standards.

Autism is generally viewed as a deficit in our standardized schools. I recently learned that in the Māori language autism is often referred to as takiwātanga, which translates as "in their own time and space." I've known hundreds of two-year-olds in my life. They've not yet learned the laws of mimicry and it seems that this defines every one of them. The normal schools try to tell us preschool teachers that our job is to get these unique humans "school ready," which translates as teaching them to subdue that rare thing they possess, the one thing that gives each of them their worth, in deference to a school-ish time and space. Indeed, in many ways, standardization is the primary lesson of normal schools.

The older I get, the more I've come to recognize that we all spend our lives dealing with the shame we are taught to feel about our eccentricities. Most of us simply get very good at mimicry, only sharing our differences, if we ever do, with our most trusted intimates. Many of my friends are now retired and it's striking to me how many of them, after decades of mimicry, are now attempting to re-surface those long buried eccentricities: making music, throwing pots, writing novels. I'm happy for them, but it's tempered by sadness over all those years of mimicry.

Some of us find it impossible to hide our uniqueness, which sets us up as targets for bullies of all kinds. 

A precious few learn to cultivate, embrace, and find power in their eccentricities. These are the people who do great things, even if it's only as an example of living authentically. 

The world doesn't need more mimicry, but rather people who have come alive because they have dared to embrace what makes them unique. What a change it would make if we, from the very beginning, instead of suppressing differences, celebrated them, and gave children the scope to express and pursue the rarity they possess, the thing or things that makes them come alive.

What if the primary lesson of schooling, instead of standardization, was that we are, each of us, here to find our purpose and pursue it with passion?

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