Had the most wonderful conversation with a child this week. In a very bizarre way.
He had been disciplined by his History teacher, losing some of his playtime. I asked him what he had done.
"Well," he said thoughtfully, "I did two bad things."
"Can you tell me what you did?" I enquired.
"Well, I can only remember one."
I smiled encouragingly.
"I told Tom how to spell Guy Fawkes," he said, his huge eyes looking up at me with the innocence of a bushbaby.
Incomprehensible. It is not even as if our expectations of behaviour are exceptionally high. Further conversation elicited that he had not been given a task to do.
"So Mrs Robinson was teaching the whole class, was she?" I inquired.
"No," was the reply, "she was talking to Andrew."
It turns out that Andrew had asked a question.
"So what were you supposed to be doing?"
"Listening."
He wasn't, obviously, if he was talking to his neighbour. Hence the discipline.
Quite an insight into how a boy's mind can work. Evidently, if someone in the class asks a question during a whole class discussion, no one else is required to listen. Hmm.
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