150 years of Noblesville Schools

By BILL KENLEY

Guest Columnist

As we celebrate the 150th anniversary of Noblesville schools, I’d like to address a question I’ve often been asked over my 24 years teaching at the high school: “How is school these days?”

My standard response? “School is good.” Then I add, “Mostly.”

I feel the need to add the caveat because school isn’t all good. It’s not perfect. Families aren’t perfect. There’s a lot wrong with religion. Getting old sucks. But there’s a lot good about those things too. See my point? Anything deeply human is going to have some issues. That said, I get back to my original comment – school is good.

Actually, Noblesville High School is the best place I know. And not because Forbes Magazine and U.S. News and World Report and their algorithms said so.

Sure, we’ve got decent SAT scores and a killer weight room. Nothing wrong with that. But I mean good in a different way. Good the way Mr. Rogers meant it when he said something was good. Noblesville’s schools are good because of the number and nature of the people who populate the places every day.

All those different people … Life’s rich pageant is what I call it as it scrolls past the bench near the drinking fountain in the English hallway where I sit most mornings, drinking coffee, enjoying the parade. In five minutes more than a hundred specimen of humanity will slouch, skip, shuffle or speed-walk past with three other girls while whispering loudly about some other girl’s outrageous Instagram post as I sit there and take it in.

See, in each one of those kids there is a brain. And in each of those brains there are over a hundred billion neurons (something like the number of stars in the Milky Way) making over a hundred trillion connections. And each nanosecond in each kid’s head, as they walk by me as I sit on my bench enjoying my coffee, is an entirely unique moment in the history of everything – absolutely never to be repeated. When Mr. Rogers says you’re special because there’s nobody like you, he’s profoundly right.

After being asked the question about the state of school, I sometimes get a second question, one directed not at school but at teenagers these days. This is most often asked by someone for whom my positive response about school was unsatisfying. The teenager question is usually delivered in a sympathetic tone, as if I’m a martyr of some kind for doing what I do – for having to be among all those emotional black holes and angry time-bombs eight or so hours a day. As if things in the world of young people must surely be getting worse as society hurtles towards the End of Times.

The implication is that kids were once very different than the ones we have to deal with these days. As we’re in our 150th year of systematically educating kids here in Noblesville it makes me wonder … Were those kids from the past so different? Were they better? Kinder? More whole and humane?

I have to believe that life’s rich pageant was, in 1869, pretty much the same as it is today. Sure, the kids back then wore different clothes. Sure, their tablets didn’t turn off. They sounded different when they cussed. Otherwise? I’d guess they were pretty similar to the students I watch go by every morning.

They had teachers they looked forward to seeing and teachers they didn’t. They felt a flush of heat in their chests when they saw that handsome, shy guy or that beautiful and kind girl. They worried about how their lives would turn out, their sick cat, their upcoming quiz, but mostly they worried about how other people saw them. And they were just as unique as the kids today.

That’s the paradox at the heart of life’s rich pageant. It’s one of those big paradoxes, the kind that seem to be at the heart of all things human: If you love something you have to let it go. It’s death that gives life meaning. It’s our stunning uniqueness that makes us most similar to every human being who ever walked the halls of a Noblesville school. Of any school anywhere, really.

So, 150 years in, how is school these days? If you look at it the way I do, it’s awesome. Awesome not in the Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure/Jeff Spicolli way but in the Carl Sagan/Neil deGrasse Tyson way. And like all of the most human things in our lives, it’s not perfect. It’s better than that. It’s good. Mostly.

Bill Kenley is an NHS English teacher and head boys track and field coach. He’s taught at NHS since 1996 and is also a 1989 NHS graduate.