GHS Alumni News: What’s Right with This Picture?

(Excerpt from the May 2013 GHS '70 Newsletter)

There is something that has bothered me for years about our JE Ober Group Class pictures, and there is a good chance it bothered you as well, and maybe it stilldoes. So I am a little scared to bring it up … Maybe it is something you would just as soon not think about? Something we should just leave in the past? It is a hard question, but ultimately when it comes to relationships I believe in open honesty.

You don’t see it in this first grade photo [thank you Doris Sleek Jarnagin (top row, fourth from the right) for these pictures]. Here things are just as they should be. But as the years unfolded, the elementary classes became relatively segregated into academic “lanes” – 4A, 4B, 4C, etc; a shallow, brutal system that wounded everyone, even those in the A lane. Speaking at least from my own perspective:

Being in the A lane limited me. I spent grades 4-6 with the same 30 kids instead of getting to know the other 90 better. It made me feel superior as a child and even afterward, which was a lie. Thank God I lived long enough to appreciate how truly narrow academic gifts are, to have learned how much I can’t do that others can, and to have finally come to know and value the infinitely broad and multicolored human spectrum that lives in allof us, but not in any of us individually.

So one great irony is that growing up in the A lane delayed my learning the most important truths - truths that many others probably learned much earlier.

One last note, regarding class reunions: A lot of people still, years later, are conflicted about their school experience and avoid their reunions. But my experience has been that somewhere along the way we all grew up, and reunions are now wonderful events where people really do come together. I’ve heard many people say “That was the first reunion I ever attended, and I will never miss another!” So I hope you will consider attending yours when it comes around. It will make you more whole, and your presence will contribute the wholeness of everyone else there as well. It will be a blessing.