Outside, the rain, which had started as a drizzle was now pouring down in sheets. As I crossed the street, I became soaked to the bone. Ah! My poor grandmother would have been unhappy to see me in that state. She resented my mother letting me go to school on cold and wet days.

“What more are you going to learn? You are better off staying warm with me at home,” she would say with her soft and caressing voice.

“What's the point of arriving at school soaking wet; the two of us aren't going to get bored, are we?”

I would look at her with gratefulness since I already saw myself saved from the martyrdom of school. I did not see any harm in it and was happy to stay with her and benefit from her warm presence. I thought of the birds that don't leave the nest until they are ready to fly. My grandmother had never gone to school, but she knew how to love us and give us affection, which was much more enticing to me than the alphabet or the numbers. What is the good of going to school if it is not appealing? We have our whole life to learn. Once our childhood is ended, we are thrown out of our paradise. We are educated without regard to our inherent ability and desire. And so we risk being put in a lifeless mold.

What means do we have at that age to resist that life discipline imposed on us? We are helpless, but our case is not unique. The lion, for example, is tamed against his will; consequently he loses his freedom and his crown when put behind the bars of a circus cage.

Our poor kindergarten teacher! She loved us so much in that little school that she never married. She had never known the feeling of motherhood. Her life was not easy with us, but she was always so understanding, even when we left live grasshoppers on her desk; all she would say was,
“Oh! Those poor little creatures!”

We did not really intend to frighten her, and we would bring her flowers to win her forgiveness, as we were really very fond of her. We enjoyed the grasshoppers, the birds, the flowers, we didn’t see any harm in that, and it was all natural. She would say to us,
“You are little devils, my children, but I love you because you are good-hearted.”  We spent our days either in class or outside in the covered playground. We built sand castles. It was in this playground that we first learned the folk songs, “Au clair de la lune”, “Sur le pont d'Avignon”. We had no idea of the significance of Avignon then, but it was this way our teacher introduced us to French culture and to France which was then so far from our little sheltered environment.

At the end of the school day, the bell rang and we left our little childhood dreams to return to the world of the grown-ups, as our parents were waiting outside. We were too young to know the way to our own homes. When we grow up we will behave in the same way with our own children. After all, we, as children, lived in a different world and our parents could not penetrate the world of the little ones without our help. We had to learn our parents' language in order to express ourselves. We knew what we wanted, but the grown-ups could not understand us. We were in the same situation as foreigners who have to learn the customs and the language of the country in which they have to settle. Being children, whether we were Christians, Moslems or Jews we spoke the same language, we understood each other. What bound us together the most was the fact that we were of the same age.

For us graduation to first grade meant, we were growing up and with it, our understanding of grown-ups was enhanced. We discovered gradually the world of the alphabet and the numbers. We learned them by heart, but the use of this knowledge was far from clear to us. One thing we understood was that we were at the threshold of the complicated adult world which would perhaps lead us on unknown paths.
At school our teachers didn’t have the answers to our questions. They would stay vague or use words like sin, forbidden, prohibited in their daily vocabulary, which seemed strange to us. No explanations were forthcoming; their meaning was left to guesswork.

One day, at age four the meaning of "Sin" came to me by chance while playing with the little girl next door, when on the spur of the moment, we stripped off our clothes.  The grown-ups' concept of "good" and "evil" was unknown to us.  Discovered and scolded by my mother we
were told: "Being naked is a sin".  It was my first understanding that whatever didn't please the elders was bad, sin or forbidden.  After this experience we played secretly, away from the sight of parents.  In that sense we became good children since everything we did surreptitiously was nnoticed provided we were not detected.  And if by chance we would catch a glimpse of grown-ups naked, we had to pretend we had not seen them.  Our parents and teachers were our
best examples.  What was allowed for them was automatically allowed for us.  Their rules were difficult to understand, nevertheless we understood them from our own angle.  Our teachers followed them too, when they kissed in corners or in the school garden.  If we caught them, we turned away, in order not to see what we were not supposed to see.  Seeing them was forbidden, and was part of the rules.

 When we'll be grown-ups, we'll follow these rules and perhaps we'll create new ones, I thought.  Any rule we would adopt would probably not be right, since one must first know the limits of the meaning of "good" and "evil" as to find the right measure.  Good is subjective, acceptable to some, not to others, similarly evil.

Today, space ships go to the moon and tomorrow they may explore another planet. But a fact remains: we will discover the Moon or Mars without having discovered our own heart. Children do not need boats or spaceships to explore their world, for theirs is not so remote. Each of us can explore their world but to do so, we must forget we are adults. It is not easy to become a child again but it is the only way to enter their pure world and it is easier than we may think. After all, there is no need for a passport, money, education or baggage. It is so simple: just think plainly without malice or intrigue. We must free ourselves from all the problems which have overburdened us for so long. We must be true to ourselves and recognize our own value as in the children’s world the roles are distributed without concern for hierarchy.  All that matters is to be part of the game.

Copyright Emile Tubiana