Describe something you learned in high school.

I learned that history was neat and packaged.  No suggestion of Marxist interpretations nor Japanese interpretations.  Hitler acted completely alone. His propaganda duped a nation.  We were to feel sorry for them but rest assured that could never happen in Scotland.  Nor were harsh economic sanctions driving those who fell for Hitler. It was black and white. It was good and evil.  Americans had not supplied the Germans money for weapons and eugenics was unheard of in Britain. Supposedly.

I learned that geography was pretty and enjoyed day trips to see interesting stone.  It was not geopolitical and we never discussed climate change throughout the centuries back to the ice age.

English literature was my great love. I soaked up a plethora of Bruce Springsteen lyrics and studied them as poems. I never doubted my handsome English teacher who was a big fan of the American singer. Other celebrity work like Spike Milligan’s “Unto Us” poem never left me.  The only classic I remember was Robert Browning’s “Two in the Campagna“. It spoke to me of loss. Of being miles away from someone’s thoughts or existence or opinion.  It was haunting.

Perhaps the uncomfortable truth behind the platitudes I learned at high school was that I hadn’t learned very much. And what I had learned was not going to serve me well.

I had attended primary school in the north of Scotland where sectarianism was at large and Catholics were isolated and hated. Yet I cherished that school. It was full of challenges to my faith, my family, my youthful debating skills but I loved it.

At high school (secondary we call it in Scotland) I had the safety net of being at a catholic school.  No longer was I the odd one out as I had been in primary. We were taught to look out for others and there was a caring atmosphere in my secondary school. Yet ultimately it was a club, a clique, we didn’t espouse a religion so much as we espoused a side.  An excuse to fight the next school.  A badge. An identity but not a Faith.

The beautiful tall Cedars of Lebanon we hear about in the Bible are viewed as righteous and strong. Individual and non comparable. Yet they grew in wilderness, in aridity at high altitudes. Faith often thrives the same way. Not in clubs and cliques.

It took me years to unlearn what I learned in high school. The teachers I remember fondly now are not the popular, good-looking cogs in the machine. It is the ones that were broken, bored of a comfortable curriculum. The teacher that stands out to me now was a teacher we openly mocked. She was plump with a large uneven nose and greying black hair. She wasn’t gifted in the looks department that mattered so much then. But she used to talk about conscience, about stamping out the evil in front of her and the potential for it within her. Of not making compromises that would lead her down the wrong path. She didn’t blame it all on them and exonerated herself. We were all so mean to her. I hope somehow she knows how treasured her teachings became.