Peter Gray

Putting it mildly is correct.

He hated school right from the beginning, and he complained all the way from kindergarten through fourth grade.

He would come home and be angry.

He would say, you know,

They're acting like I'm a puppet and I'm supposed to just do what they're telling me to do and I have no say in it.

And of course, that's the way school works.

And I would say to him, well, just do what they tell you to do.

You know, it's not that hard.

Just do it.

Yeah, I mean his rebellion was very different from the typical naughty boy who's maybe shooting spitballs and so on.

His rebellion was almost like a planned rebellion.

So just for example, when the teacher would teach him a specific way of doing arithmetic problems and how you're supposed to show your work, he would deliberately –

find a different way to do it.

And then the teachers complained to us about that.

And I asked him, so why do you do it a different way?

And he said, it's because it's the only way I can make it fun.

And when they were teaching about punctuation and capital letters and how to put them into sentences, he actually declared, I'm going to write now like E.E.

Cummings, the poet, and put punctuation and capitals wherever I please.

So that was, that was him.

Ultimately, it led to a meeting in the principal's office in which his teacher, the principal, assistant principal, school psychologist, another psychologist called from outside, his mom and me were all there to tell him in no uncertain terms that he had to follow the rules of the school.