My brothers and I were brought up by intellectuals, whose sole job was to ensure that we had the best education possible.  Okay, the rentals (AKA Mummy & Daddy) were not your stereotypical nerdy-type intellectuals.  Quite the contrary, with  parties that would commence on Friday nights and end on Sundays.  OMG!  I don’t mean they were wild rock ‘n’ rollers.  More like THE WHO and ABBA admirers back in the seventies.  According to my mum, their friends would drive all the way from Kingston to May Pen and then up towards Mocho to our house.  It was such a long journey in those days (‘sans’ Highway 2000), that the friends and their kids would stay for the entire weekend.

Anyway, back to the education.  I do not remember a time when it did not play some important part in our lives.  At the dining table, we were drilled with our Times Tables; at bedtime, we would read; during Christmas holidays, we would be dropped off at the May Pen library to research 100 (yes, one hundred) general knowledge questions which were given to us each year at boarding school (our parents insisted that we be the ones to do the research and that we be the ones who would score the highest marks, by getting 100% of course); and any question about life which we ever dared to ask would be answered with a “think, girl/boy, think!”  Lest we ever get comfortable with the notion that our parents would spoon-feed us.  Not happening.

Equally, my brothers and I were given a fair amount of freedom when it came to hanging out and going out with friends.  Perhaps the same mindset that calls for your child to have intelligent thought is also the one that allows your teenager to make independent and wise decisions about his/her social life.  We had been forced to calculate sums since we could speak, so the assumption was that we would be capable of working out what or whom to trust when we were at a party or a night club.

Our parents were on point.  At eleven years old, I told an Italian boy, who was a few years older, to stay away from my girl friend.  At fourteen years old, I slapped a man seven years my senior across the face for attempting to kiss me on the lips.  At sixteen years old, when my flight home was diverted into JFK, I refused to ‘double-up’ and share a room with one of my fellow passengers (all of whom were complete strangers, BTW), but insisted I was to be given my own room.  Oh, there were many more situations similar to this.  I was forced to think on my feet from toddlerhood, and there I was growing closer to adulthood, continuously capable of coming up with a plan for any circumstance.

Here I am now, with two young sons, hoping that I will be able to pass on a similar sentiment to them.  It helps that they go to a school which encourages free-thought and the freedom to express these thoughts.  I recall the first time I looked around the school six years ago, when my eldest was only six months old.  The principle led me into Grade 6, where one student was politely voicing his objections to what the teacher was discussing, while the other students, with raised hands, patiently waited to express their opinions on the matter.  The teacher, in turn, listened respectfully and agreed with much of what these kids had to say.  This struck a chord with me, confirming that I would have to send my child here.  A school whose teachers encouraged this kind of interaction between themselves and their underlings was worth everything.  Needless to say, my eldest started a couple years later, and now both boys are there.

Recently, while studying for his exams, our big son (who is in Grade 2) questioned some issues, which would ordinarily be beyond his years.  The matter that stood out the most was his nonchalant dismissal of the validity of the bible story about Adam and Eve.  His immediate reaction to the story was: “God took dirt, made man and then breathed air into his nostrils?  And then he took the man’s rib and made a woman?  Come on, Mummy.  That’s just not possible.”  To which I replied, “Do you believe in God?”  “Of course I do, Mummy, but it’s impossible for this to have happened.  Everyone has a mother and a father.  You can’t make a man from dirt.”  I proceeded to switch on a video about the evolution of man from monkeys.  After watching it, he said to me.  “Mummy, humans really do come from monkeys.”  Six and a half years old, and already his mind is ticking away.  Whatever his beliefs may be now and going forward, I am happy to be raising a thinker.