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| First Person: Point of View |
Education Without Obstacles
Curtis Rist
02/01/2005
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A single glance at the workshop shared by my sons, Edwin and Anton, would tell anyone that they are deeply involved—one might even say obsessed—with tying flies.
While this started out as an ordinary hobby of creating fishing flies for trout, it soon morphed into something far more ornate. Working with feathers from exotic birds, such as tragopan, bustard and Argus pheasant, the two youngsters tie elaborate decorative patterns that are modeled on 19th-century Atlantic salmon flies. They bid for hard-to-find items on eBay, such as a jungle cock cape that recently showed up as an $82 charge on my American Express card, and spend much of their time waiting for the UPS truck to arrive with new shipments of materials, as it did today with a pair of cinnamon turkey tail feathers and a spool of embossed Indian tinsel. The rest of their free time they can be found bent over their vises tying flies, with all the fury and concentration of factory workers on overtime. To help them out, I had a ceiling fan installed for them one day, and mistakenly turned it on high to test it out. The entire room swirled with feathers while they screeched and clucked in protest, as if the fox had just entered the hen house.
 | A FLY that Curtis Rist and his two sons, Edwin and Anton, have made together. |
Tying flies, for my family, has been far from a solitary interest. I first thought of it as a way for the three of us to spend a few hours a week together, and signed us up for classes with a retired biologist. As the years progressed, the patterns became more complicated, and I soon became aware that they were learning this faster, and better, than I was. When it came to tying gnats—something I could not even see, let alone tie—I realized the burden of this hobby would be on them, not me. Still, I marvel at what they do, help them find materials they need, drive them to faraway lessons with famous fly tiers and talk to them in endless detail about their passion. Once, on a return trip from a weekend fly-tying session in Maine, we spent every inch of the 325-mile car ride home eagerly discussing feathers in minutia. “I bet you’re the only father in the world who knows what a barbule is,” said Anton, my 11-year-old admiringly, referring to a tiny detail of a feather. “I mean, you’re not hip. But you are cool.”
The point is not the fly tying, however, it is the activity. As parents, we can sit back and watch our children learn from others, whether it be teachers at school, summer-camp counselors or afternoon tutors. Or, we can actively cultivate a shared interest with them and watch as it raises the entire family to a whole new level. The world has long been filled with stage mothers and stage fathers who push children, often beyond the breaking point, to try to get them to be something they don’t want to be. I am arguing for something different. Instead, I think it is important to find a hobby that unites a family, in a way that enforced piano lessons, skating lessons or Saturday morning foreign-language classes rarely do. Unless a child is a prodigy in these activities, and born with a Mozartian talent that could never be squashed, they too often become a source of contention for a family, and do more to acquaint children with failure than with success. The goal should be, I believe, to find an interest that unites both parents and children, and creates harmony within a family, while giving children confidence as they learn to do something they genuinely love.
Helping children cultivate a true interest has many advantages, particularly in an age when the children of privilege are coming under increasing scrutiny for their flaws. The discussion now rampant in independent schools across the nation, for example, focuses on the downside of students raised in a culture of privilege. “One of the things that we’re seeing more of in independent schools, among kids who obviously have access to privilege, is an unwillingness to accept responsibility for mistakes, for failure and for their behavior,” says Randy Kleinman, head of the middle school at the prestigious Montclair Kimberley Academy in Montclair, N.J., which is a member of the National Association of Independent Schools.
This plays out in small ways, as well as large. Superficially, there is often a fundamental lack of manners, he maintains—including such little items as failing to say thank you to the cafeteria workers who serve lunch or picking up a piece of paper that has been dropped in the hallway. More damaging is the sense among some students that their problems will automatically be solved by someone else. This is where a parent can help the most, by fueling an interest that a child displays naturally and helping the child take it to an extreme. |
Granted, it can be a fine line between giving children an unfair advantage and helping them develop a talent or interest that is far more lasting. A good example comes from two wealthy parents who could afford to do anything for their son. What did they focus on? “In addition to sending him to a good school, his father helped him start collecting major league scorecards from baseball games,” says Kleinman. “The two of them travel around all over the country, to Cooperstown to the Baseball Hall of Fame and to major league ballparks in other cities, to collect these cards,” he says. “They’re not doing it so they can sell them on eBay later on, or so that the son can get into Harvard; they’re doing it because it’s an interest they share and it’s something they like doing together.” What parent, affluent or not, wouldn’t want a relationship like that with a child?
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