eye queue

a rather short story

The child was bright. Before entering elementary school it could only be seen in a vacuum, there were no other children around his age in the family, and it would be meaningless to compare the intelligence of a child to that of an adult, or even of an adolescent, not to mention an injustice, and thus, the child’s true potential was not fully grasped. But in the classroom the contrast between him and the other children became stark. He mastered in an hour what for others would take a week, and the effect kept growing exponentially, knowledge building on knowledge, and his voracity for it kept growing, while the distance between him and his peers did as well and at the same rate. Two thirds into the school year, the teacher called the parents and told them, Your son is quite likely a genius.

The teacher did not start there, however, but began with the bad news, The child is having a hard time adapting to the school, Is he having trouble learning, No, not at all, Does he have problems with the other children, No, it’s not that either, Then what. For a while now the child was always distracted in class, and the reason was, according to the teacher, that the boy learned much faster than the others, and so after the first day of a new subject, or sometimes after the first hour, he’d already be lost in his own thoughts, or worse, distracting the other children, And not every child can afford it, in fact, he seems to distract more precisely those who need it less, when I call on him he never hears it at first, and then always has me repeat the question, But does he get the answer right, Yes, but that’s not the problem, he is demotivated, but I can’t go faster through the curriculum for one child, the truth is, your son is quite likely a genius. There was an ominous silence that allowed the word to resound in the room and in their ears and then their minds, and after the pause, added deliberately for the effect, the teacher delivered the verdict, Your child would be better served in a school for gifted children. Somehow it sounded like an insult, but the parents did not notice and said they would think about it.

The father was against it, I don’t think he should go to such a school, even if he is very bright, it’s good for him to be exposed to other kinds of people, and so what if he’s distracted, if he gets his work done, then what’s the problem, the teacher should be able to control her classroom, this school is good, it’s expensive, and it’s even a little bit progressive, we chose it carefully. But his wife was not so sure, she wanted her son to thrive, to have the best possible environment to grow into his full potential. She had read somewhere or heard someone say, and never had bothered to check the quote, to read the primary sources, to at least peruse the studies, that iq is passed through the mother, and there was a bit of pride in accepting that the child was of above average intelligence, and so she postponed their decision by proposing that the child’s intelligence be measured, yes, that’s the word, measured, officially, it would prove necessary anyway if he ended up going to a special school, and if he didn’t, it was still interesting to know. They never considered the teacher could simply be mistaken, and that the test would reveal an average intelligence, or something lower.

But the teacher was correct, the child did very well indeed. The psychologist who administered the test tried to put the result into context by saying that there were approximately one in one thousand five hundred people with such a high iq, and while that seems impressive, the mother was more impressed by what it could mean. Riches, perhaps, some kind of fame, maybe political power, who knows, the sky is the limit. The father on the other hand considered that it may not mean anything at all, but even if it did, it was no guarantee of happiness, how many famous, rich and powerful people are secretly miserable, not to mention the ones who are so quite obviously. But in the end, the exceptional nature of the result did not fail to impress upon the father how special the child was, and the mother was sure that, with time, and one way or another, he would yield and they could send their precious child to the place with all the other precious children. After landing on a wait and see approach, at least until the end of the schoolyear, they did finally ask the child what he wanted. He did not think twice and said he’d rather stay in the same school, he liked it there.

So he stayed, but the problems brought up by the teacher at the meeting with the parents grew worse, if changed in shape. To the teacher’s credit she did try to give him more advanced reading material and assignments, and when she did she always reminded him that he was special, that everyone expects much of him, and that it would be a waste to not develop his potential, that he had a very high iq indeed, and she always used the word every chance she got, iq, iq, iq, so often that the child started to think of it whenever he heard it as eye queue, eye queue, eye queue, something meaningless, and it made more sense than whatever the teacher said. She also told him that he couldn’t distract the other children, that it was unfair to them, who are not as intelligent, who did have as high an eye queue, to distract them. Because he was an intelligent child, he stopped disturbing his colleagues with little jokes or little songs. Now his classes were spent in silence, drawing.

For third period they had implemented a system of rewards, and it was around this time that his approach to his studies changed. Whereas before he would finish everything rather quickly and then drift off into his own world apart from schoolwork and school rules, now he would wait until the last possible moment. He would daydream first, mostly through his drawings, and only attended to his duties when he could delay them no more. The effect of this change in strategy was stark especially in one case.

The largest reward in the new reward system at school was that if the kids completed all their assignments by friday lunch time, in the afternoon they would be taken on a school trip, to this or that botanic garden, or this or that museum, or this or that beach, depending on the weather and the time of year. The ones who didn’t, would stay behind with another teacher, and forced to do the work. At first only the slackers and the lost causes failed to do so in time and thus missed the reward, but quickly the bright boy became a regular, every week there he was, him and his eye queue, having spent the week drawing and failing to even start a single assignment, even the other less gifted children had learned to find their rhythms and complete the assignments in time, escaping the humiliation of being left behind at school while the others are having fun somewhere outside. And after a few weeks, except for the boy, the only other child at the friday afternoon school jail was the gypsy girl, the most lost of all lost causes, who had been given a charity scholarship by the school, and from whom no one expected much at all.

In fact, that was the problem. If the only kid left behind was the gypsy girl, they would just ignore the rule, and take her along, even her colleagues would understand, her real place simply was not in school. But the boy had to be disciplined, otherwise he would lose his way, and squander his potential, even, the teacher actually said it at least once to the child, It is a sin against your high eye queue for you to be here, whenever he was sent to friday afternoon school jail, along with the gypsy girl, which was every week. The teacher waited until the end of the school year to talk to the parents again, but she had decided to insist more strongly on the idea that the smart child be sent to a super special smart school, it would make everyone’s life easier, give the boy a better chance. He was too smart, he needed larger challenges to keep him occupied, and smarter peers to keep him stimulated.

After the meeting the father finally accepted it, maybe it really was best that he be sent to a special school. The child was still consulted, and he said the same as before, he wished to stay. But he could also see they had made up their minds, and nothing he could say would make any difference, so when they asked him why, he lied. They would never understand, he was in love with the gypsy girl. If only they had looked at his drawings, she was in every single one.