“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole live believing that it is stupid.”

This quote is frequently attributed to Einstein, though there is no evidence he ever said it.  It appears to have emerged from an old allegorical tale.    Nonetheless, for me, it is slightly reminiscent (not in a physics way!) of Einstein’s ‘thought experiments’ and I think pondering the metaphor can be just as thought-provoking and enlightening. The quote effectively highlights one of the many areas that makes public education so incredibly complex.

Our schools interact with millions of children every year.  We meet them as adorable youngsters in a Kindergarten equivalent, and over a decade later, we graduate them from high school as young adults moving into the next phases of their lives.  At issue then, is this: What happens to them, and for them, during those formative years while they are in our classrooms?

For educators – for all of us, really – this translates into at least two other questions.  How do we most effectively educate all students when every student is different, when many students learn in different ways and styles, and when some of those students have special gifts and/or special needs?  Even trickier, how do we provide every student the opportunity to discover what they do best, where their interests (and therefore gifts?) lie, and what unique guidance they will need?

These are formidable goals to uniformly achieve for all our students.  The tasks are made more difficult by the nature and limitations of ‘the system’.  Over the decades, out of unfortunate near-necessity, we have typically used a one-size-fits-all approach.  This has worked relatively well for many, maybe most, of our students, and it has allowed the system to do many things more efficiently for the majority.   But it has also worked to the detriment of individual students who don’t navigate well within the system.

In the spirit and context of the opening quote, then, we can re-ask those questions:  How do we keep from evaluating the metaphorical fish on its ability to climb trees?  And, how do we locate the fish and help them discover they were never meant to climb trees, but have another destiny instead?

Consider one of many examples:  Currently sitting in our elementary classes (or learning online!) we have a perhaps-sizeable contingent of budding artists, poets, musicians, mystics, and the like.  In two or three decades, they could be reminding society of the value of making a life while we also make a living.  How do we help these students find their voice, awaken their gifts?  And how do we keep from labeling them as inattentive (or ‘slow’ or ‘stupid’) when they are squirming in, say, a math or social studies class?   (As a practical matter, this gets tougher still when many schools are trimming, even eliminating art, music, and more from their curricula!)

And in passing, we note that history is full of geniuses who did not do well in school.  Folks like Michelangelo, Beethoven, Edison – even Einstein – were essentially ‘fish out of water’ in their school years.  Some of them were labeled dull, or even incorrigible. Would they have achieved their genius today?
                                         

We know there are no good ‘right answers’ to these questions, but educators continue to ask them, as we all must.  Perhaps a deeper dive into these issues will follow.  In the meantime, the perspective for today is the ongoing reminder (sound familiar?) that that education is an incredibly complex endeavor and the simple act of constantly remembering that can help work miracles.