The student who doesn’t want to learn might as well leave.

 

By David Jones

 

At the IRS, I gave Procedure Update Training.

A young lady asked if she really needed to be there. I replied by asking what she was supposed to do in a particular situation I laid out. She didn’t know. Then I said I thought she probably ought to stay. She did it two different years, and I responded the same way.

One year, error trends led management to ask me to have a class on those trends. The employees were divided into two classes, and in both classes, I was confronted by several folks who had one question: “Do we have to be here?” In the first session, some folks had been told the class was for something else, like tips on increasing production. When I said that it wasn’t, some wanted to leave, and I allowed it. It wasn’t mandatory.

The second class was a mess. They came in complaining, and were just getting angrier. They asked if they had to be there, because they had actually important work to do. I barked, “No, if you don’t want to be here, I don’t need you here. Go ahead, leave. Go on, git.” They stood in stunned silence for a minute, then left. After class, folks who stayed thanked me for holding the class, because I answered all their procedural questions. They benefitted.

The student who doesn’t want to learn might as well leave.

A Dream Lesson 10-05-2026

I was a teacher, walking with a student into a field. There was a door standing in the middle of it. The student was a bit afraid of this. He’d heard that terrible things happened to anyone who opened the door. Even as I drew closer to the door, he stopped and wouldn’t get any closer.

He asked “What is this?”

I said, “It’s just a door in a field. Why not try opening it?”

His eyes grew big. “What? No way. No way I’m touching that door.”

I nodded. “I understand.”

He said “Then we can leave, right?”

“Yes, absolutely we can leave.”

He started to turn back to the village, then noticed I was still standing there.

“Then why aren’t we leaving?”

“I think you should consider trying to open the door.”

He put his hands on his hips. “Why don’t you try to open the door?”

“I did try, once. I couldn’t open it.”

“But you think I could open it when you couldn’t?”

I turned to look at him. “I don’t know. Maybe, maybe not. But I think it would be a good lesson for you to try.”

He folded his arms. “And if I refuse?”

I actually chuckled at that. “Dude, stop. This isn’t trick or treat. This isn’t the opening scene of some horror movie. I don’t know what happens if you open it. No one else has, as far as I know. Nothing bad happened to anyone trying to open the door.”

His arms dropped to his side, shoulders relaxed, as he stared at the door suspiciously.

“But you think it’d be a good lesson if I tried to open it?”

“Yeah. Yeah I do.”

He stepped closer to the door. “And if I succeed in getting it open?”

I shrugged a little. “No one knows. No one has ever done it.”

He sighed heavily, then shook his head at the ground and sighed again.

“Fine.”

He stepped past me and glared a threat at the door sitting in the middle of the field. The door just existed, there in the middle of the field. He circled it, touched it, glared again, and turned and looked at me. I smiled and waved at him. He shook his arms and then his whole body, stepped up to the door and blew out a big breath, almost like a big bad wolf would. Then, he knocked on the door.

Nothing happened.

He looked at me. I smiled and gave him a thumbs up. Finally, he placed his hand on the door knob, then suddenly turned his head to see if my expression had changed. It hadn’t.

“What?” I asked. “I’m not Admiral Akbar. I’m not going to suddenly yell ‘It’s a trap!’” He nodded and turned his attention back to the door and steadied himself. He turned the knob.

And nothing happened. The door didn’t open. He tried again, circled the door and tried to open it from that side. He returned to the front of the door, tried again and put his weight behind it by throwing his shoulder against it. He huffed and grunted and kicked the door and then slapped it. Hands back on hips. Shaking his head, he came back to where I stood.

“I couldn’t open it.”

I looked at the door. “That’s true. Shall we go back and have breakfast?”

He looked at me, eyes big, mouth open.

“Breakfast? What was all this for?”

I furrowed my brow. “This was a lesson. What do you want me to explain?”

He stormed around, pacing, glaring. “Why did you want me to try to open the door if you knew I couldn’t do it?”

I nodded. “Excellent question. Except I didn’t know that. I didn’t know any of this beyond the lesson. Look, I’m not trying to make you mad. I’m just trying to be a teacher here. Unpaid, I might add.”

He sighed. He was good at it. Finally he threw his hands in the air, and we walked back to the village to have pancakes.

Then I woke up. If the door had opened or not didn’t matter. This wasn’t about opening the door. There are lots of things we can learn from this. I hope one day he’ll learn one of them, but right now he thinks he wasted his time. But one thing he didn’t learn here? How to express exasperation. He had that shit down cold.

 

Photo: Pixabay

Editor: Dana Gornall

 

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