'THE ANIMAL SCHOOL' AN EXCERPT BY LEO BUSCAGLIA, PH.D. FROM LIVING, LOVING & LEARNING
I always tell the story of the animal school, a fabulous story that educators have had around for years. We laugh about it but we never do anything about it. A rabbit, bird, fish, squirrel, duck, and so on, all decided to start a school. Everybody sat down to write a curriculum. The rabbit insisted that running be in the curriculum. The fish insisted that swimming be in the curriculum. The squirrel insisted perpendicular tree climbing be in the curriculum. All the other animals wanted their specialty to be in the curriculum too, so they put everything in and then made the glorious mistake of insisting that all the animals take all of the courses. The rabbit was magnificent in running; nobody could run like the rabbit. But they insisted that it was good intellectual and emotional discipline to teach the rabbit flying. So they insisted that the rabbit learn to fly and they put him on this branch and said "Fly, rabbit!" And the poor old thing jumped off, broke a leg and fractured his skull. He became brain damaged and then he couldn't run very well either. So instead of an A on running, he got a C in running. And he got a D in flying because he was trying. And the curriculum committee was happy. The same way with the bird- he could fly like a freak all over the place, do loops and loops, and he was making an A. But they insisted that this bird burrow holes in the ground like a gopher. Of course he broke his wings and his beak and everything else and then he couldn't fly. But they were perfectly happy to give him a C in flying, and so on. And you know who the Valedictorian of the graduating class was? A mentally retarded eel, because he could do almost everything fairly well.