the things they do not teach you in school

in school, they teach you 1 + 1.  they teach you the days of the week, the months, the seasons, and that columbus discovered america in 1492.  when you get older, they teach you the names of the countries in africa and make you fill in maps.  you learn that soñar con is to dream about, not to dream with and they drill the difference between indirect object pronouns and direct object pronouns into your head not only in english but in spanish as well.  they fill you with knowledge that is essential to getting into an ivy league college but useless when your cousin asks you if his older brother is going to die.

they do not have a course about how to hold your friend when his mother dies.  they do not teach you how to adjust your weight and position so that they can collapse onto you and sob, shoulders heaving, breath coming short, staining your shirt with tears and grief.  in school, they can teach you when the battles were and the statistics, the number of people that died.  but they do not teach you the sorrow and heartbreak that those millions of mothers keened to the sky when the death notice of their son, so young, so alive, so full of potential, arrived on their doorstep one clear, spring day.

you cannot learn what it is that you must do to comfort your seven year-old cousin while he cries and cries and asks you to make the hurt go away.  there is no book given to teachers to instruct you on how to react when his little brother tells you that all he wants is for kenneth to go back to normal, and you are never taught how to tell him that soon kenneth will travel far away and he needs to say goodbye now.

in school, they teach you 1 + 1.  they teach you the days of the week, the months, the seasons, and that columbus discovered america in 1492.  but they do not teach you the things that you really need in life.  they do not teach you compassion.  they do not teach you, in this education system full of guidelines and rules, facts and figures, what to do when the boy in your homeroom dies.