Primary Thoughts

Neil Mufson, Head of School

 

I still remember that telescope — the first thing I saved up for on my own — and the outing my father and I took to Boston to purchase it once I had stashed enough of my allowance and birthday money into an old Christmas card box. I also can still recall the satisfaction I experienced once we set it up and stood in the backyard gazing up at a now closer moon and Saturn.

 

Saving up for some of the things I really wanted was one of the ways my parents tried to instill within me a growing sense of responsibility. Another was having to clean up a number of my own messes, an instance of which occurred while trying to earn a little extra money to hasten the day I could get the telescope. 

 

One of my friends and I decided to set up a small neighborhood business selling worms door to door to make “everyone’s” fishing expeditions to the nearby pond that much more convenient. We devised this entrepreneurial project since we knew of a ready supply of worms – under the bricks that bordered a number of my mother’s gardens. Whenever I’d go fishing, I’d simply remove a brick or two, extract a few worms, and carefully replace the bricks so as to elude detection. However, when my friend and I decided to go door to door, we removed the bricks bordering an entire garden, sloppily put them back, and hurried off to sell what we saw as a highly perishable and precious commodity.

 

When I returned home, not having sold a single cup of worms, my deed had been discovered. My mother was quite upset, but remained calm while demonstrating exactly how each brick was to be replaced. Since my friend had gone home, it seemed like it took me an eternity to restore the garden border to a state approaching what it had been before my failed sales venture. So, along the way to that telescope, I learned many lessons about responsibility, which was perhaps another reason I appreciated it all the more when I finally got it.

 

With the coming of March and our school’s focus on responsibility, I am reminded that there are many ways to instill this virtue within children. Most take a fair amount of parental work and resolve. Many take more parental time than doing the task for the child. However, without this kind of commitment, it is unlikely that children will develop into the dependable, trustworthy people we want them to be.