Richard Powers - Bewilderment

Eddie Tresh is homeschooled, and his parents work. It’s easy, Dad. We just fill in a form and tell Wisconsin that you’re going to do it. We can get some course packets and stuff online, if we want. You wouldn’t have to spend any time on me at all .

“Robbie, that’s not the problem.”

He turned to look at me and waited for my objections. When none came, he rolled over on one elbow and retrieved a battered paperback from his little student desk next to the bed. He handed me the volume: Aly’s old field guide to the birds of the eastern U.S.

“Where did you get this?” My tone made even me flinch. I seemed to want to criminalize my son. He got it off the bookshelf in my bedroom—where else?

I can learn by myself, Dad. Give me the name, and I’ll tell you what it looks like .

I flipped through the book, now filled with tiny checkmarks next to the species he knew. One of his parents was already homeschooling him.

I want to be an ornithologist. They don’t teach you that in the fourth grade .

The field guide felt as heavy as it would have on Jupiter. “School prepares you for a lot more than just your job.” He looked at me, concerned for how lame and tired I sounded. I fumbled my fingers into the hashtag sign he’d taught me. “Life skills, Robbie. Like learning how to get along with other kids.”

If it really taught kids that, I wouldn’t mind going . He scooched over on the bed and consoled my shoulder. Here’s how I look at it, Dad. I’m almost ten . You want me to learn everything I need for being an adult. So school should teach me how to survive the world ten years from now. So… what do you think that’ll look like?

The noose tightened, and I couldn’t slip it. He must have learned the argument from all those Inga Alder videos.

Really. I need to know .

Earth had two kinds of people: those who could do the math and follow the science, and those who were happier with their own truths. But in our hearts’ daily practice, whatever schools we went to, we all lived as if tomorrow would be a clone of now.

Tell me what you think, Dad. Because that’s what I should be learning .

I didn’t need to say anything out loud. With his newly learned powers, Robbie had only to look in my eyes, move and enlarge his inner dot, and read my mind.

Remember how Pawpaw just kept getting sicker and sicker and wouldn’t go to the doctor, and then he died?

“I remember.”

That’s what everybody’s doing .

I didn’t much want to remember my father. Nor did I want to discuss bottomless catastrophe with my nine-year-old. The house was peaceful and the night was calm. I fingered Aly’s book, with its dozens of new checkmarks.

“Bachman’s warbler.”

Bachman’s warbler , he repeated, as if in a spelling bee. Male? Black cap, fading to gray. Green body, yellow belly, white under the tail .

I’d gone to the wrong school. He’d learned more in one summer, on his own, than he’d learned in a year of classroom. He’d discovered, on his own, what formal education tried to deny: Life wanted something from us. And time was running out.

Critically endangered , he concluded. Possibly extinct .

“You win,” I said, as if there had ever been a contest. “And lesson one is figuring out how this homeschooling thing works.”

WE FILED OUR FORM OF INTENT with the Department of Public Instruction. I built a little curriculum: reading, math, science, social studies, and health. Mine was better than what he’d been getting. The day we withdrew him from school, he ran around the house singing “When the Saints Go Marching In.” He mimed all the instruments and knew all the words.

The change took time, sweat, and many more babysitters. My hours were somewhat flexible, and he loved to come to campus with me. In a pinch, I set him up at the library. But my other students didn’t get the best of me that semester. My own work for publication ground to a standstill. I had to cancel appearances at conferences in Bellevue, Montreal, and Florence.

It surprised me that we only needed 875 hours of instruction a year. Since Robbie now wanted to learn things even on weekends, that came to less than two and a half hours a day. He had no trouble keeping up with the public curriculum. He polished off his online self-exams with glee. We traveled everywhere that reading, math, science, social studies, and health let us travel. We studied at home, in the car, over meals, and on long walks through the woods. Even shooting penalty kicks against each other in the park became a lesson in physics and statistics.

I built him a Planetary Exploration Transponder—basically my aging tablet computer, gussied up with enamel paint to look futuristic and cool. I created a special sign-on for him, locked down to a grade school browser that limited him to a handful of child-geared sites and a few educational games. He didn’t mind the constraints. Near-Earth orbit was still orbit.

Between trying to tutor him through his curriculum, preparing two undergrad lectures and a grad seminar in biomarkers, continuing to flail against the Asian grad student visa crisis, and writing copious emails to colleagues apologizing for missed deadlines, I felt like NASA in the wake of the Challenger . Stryker gave up on me and dissolved our research partnership. For the first time since coming to Wisconsin, I had to file an annual activity report with no significant publications.

Robin woke me up one Saturday, half an hour before the sun, ending the first few hours of deep sleep I’d had in days. At least he was waking me with joy and not a tantrum. Where am I going today, Dad? Come on. Give me a new treasure hunt .

I searched for something that would keep him busy long enough for me to clear my own backlog of work.

“Draw me the outlines of eight countries in West Africa. Then fill them each with four drawings of their native plants and animals.”

Easy-peasy , he declared, charging out of the room for his trusted PET. By three p.m., the job was done. At the pace he was setting, he threatened to have the 875 hours of fourth grade finished by the end of summer.

I HAVE A GREAT IDEA , Robbie said. Dr. Currier’s lab could take a dog. A really good dog. But it could be a cat or a bear or even a bird. You know that birds are a lot smarter than anybody thinks? I mean, some birds can see magnetism. How cool is that?

I’d taken him to my office for the afternoon while I got things ready for the new academic year. He was playing with a toy programmable scale that showed your weight on Jupiter, Saturn, the moon, or anywhere in the solar system.

“Take a dog and do what, Robbie?” His thoughts these days often grew richer than he could say.

Take him and scan him . Scan his brain while he was really excited. Then people could train on his patterns, and we’d learn what it felt like to be a dog .

I failed to rise above adult condescension. “That’s a cool idea. You should tell Dr. Currier.”

His scowl was gentle compared to what I deserved. He’d never listen to me. Which is sad, you know? I mean, think about it, Dad. It could just be a regular part of school. Everyone would have to learn what it felt like to be something else. Think of the problems that would solve!

I can’t remember how I answered him. Three weeks later, I learned that a prominent ecologist at the University of Toronto used parts of my atmospheric models to map how the Earth’s own ecosystems might evolve under steadily rising temperatures. Dr. Ellen Coutler and her grad students saw thousands of interconnected species failing in a series of cascading waves. Not a gradual decline: a cliff.