My father was a career Navy man. For me, as a child, this meant a career as, “The new kid.” I attended 2 grade schools, 2 junior high schools and 3 high schools. My favorite, by far, was, Memorial High School, in what is now the Silicon Valley, in the state of California. Memorial H.S., was created as an experimental school. No formal classroom seating, just one great open structure where we could gather around a teacher, or not. No formal teaching style was demanded, whatever the teacher was comfortable with, that was the rule. Did I memorize lots of knowledge there? The answer is, “No.” Did I learn to think there?
“Absolutely.”

Many of the parents, teachers, even some students, became unsatisfied with the Memorial model. I hear that walls were soon created, and the openness was killed by the lack of satisfying test scores and a desire for more discipline by those discipline loving people. Perhaps, the model should have started at grade school. By the time we washed up on its shores, we had become institutionalized by our normal school experiences.

Today, many years later, I still cherish my time there. Soon after, we again moved, and I was put back inside of a box sitting in the last row half asleep, bored to tears by another bored teacher and the rigors of rote learning. Often telling my new school mates about this amazing place I had attended in California. A place where good teachers were made great and bad teachers went away because they could not compel you to want to sit down and learn (our failings, not theirs). Is it any wonder that this is now the heart of Silicon Valley? I often wonder, too.