First Person: Lessons in obedience — and resistance

Abstract

Long-time educator Dr. Sidney Trubowitz recalls his years as an elementary school student in the late 1930s. His teachers were rigid, students were taught to be quiet and compliant, and Trubowitz learned to follow instructions without questioning them. When one teacher went too far with her discipline, his mother, an immigrant, stood up for him — one of many acts of rebellion that Trubowitz observed with satisfaction. He draws on these memories to underscore the importance of bringing children into the learning process and treating them, in all their complexity, as complete and curious independent beings.