School Daze: Chris Hadfield - I realised at a young age that teachers were fallible

WHEN I think about the kind of child I was, I would say that I was the exact same kind of person that I am as an adult. I have always been fascinated by things that I don’t quite yet understand. I recognise that I hardly understand anything and that most of the world is and always has been so beautifully complex to me.

I have always loved becoming good at things, trying to push myself to do things that I couldn’t do before. I have been a student my whole life — really the life of an astronaut is the life of a student. In order to fly a Russian spaceship, not only did I have to learn how to fly a spaceship, I also had to learn Russian and then study orbital mechanics and control theory in Russian.

The key is, to be inspired by something that is bigger than yourself. My parents recognised that you are the result of the things you choose to do and choose to become good at, so they encouraged us not just to be curious, but to find out the answer and then make that answer part of who you are. I was lucky enough to be born in Canada, a place that was supportive, I wasn’t ever hungry for food or worried about the power being off.

I was not a perfect student by any means, I made a few trips to the principal’s office. I had the opportunity to go to special schools too. They came around and tested us when I was in third grade and they thought that some of us could handle a curriculum that was beyond the normal curriculum. So, I went to special schools for grades five, six, and seven. When I finished grade seven, I was looking ahead at grade nine.

In Canada, the transition from eighth grade to ninth grade is where you transition from middle to high school. When I was in seventh grade and had been going to this non- standard study school, I realised I wasn’t ahead on reading, writing and arithmetic. Instead we had been doing odd, mind-expanding things. I actually asked my parents to take me out of this school so that I would be on a level playing field when I went to high school. At the end of high school, I found that I was tired of school; I wanted to go and tour Europe. I realised that if I switched schools to one with a semester system, then I could graduate early and be six months ahead in my life.

I was a good academic student. I didn’t find school difficult, I would say I found it interesting. I liked English best, it was my favourite subject. Socially, I had a good close circle of friends. I joined clubs, I was in the ski club and I was the president. There was an inter-school competition which was called Reach For The Answer — it was one of those panel quizzes, and I was on that. I was in the chess club and the debating club, those kinds of pursuits. I was definitely in the nerdy, geek side of the social scene, and that carried right through to university.

I recognised early on that teachers went home at night to families of their own and had fears and strengths and weaknesses of their own. We tend to view teachers as one or two-dimensional people. When I was in third grade, we were learning how airplanes worked and I realised that the teacher was explaining the process incorrectly. It was something that I knew and understood because my Dad was a pilot. I realised from that moment on that teachers are fallible. They are not ordained with perfect knowledge, they are just doing their best to teach us things to the best of their ability.

I had a few teachers who really changed my perspective for the positive. When I went to the special school for a few years, they assigned us one teacher each for all subjects. My teacher was a lady from Estonia, Irene Wudelis. She was smart, well-read, curious, and tried to have me not just pass the test, but to teach me about life. She lived long enough to be able to see me succeed and become an astronaut and fly into space.

I had one maths teacher in my last year of high school who was the first person to teach me that a maths text book was by its nature a book. It was written by some person who sat down with the idea of passing on thoughts to you. It was to be read from page one all the way through. I had never looked at a text book that way before. It made maths a tool, just like a shovel or a screwdriver — a way to lever your own abilities to do something that would otherwise be impossible.You have to speak to people in their own language. When a person is six or seven, they live in a different world than you do. The line between fantasy and reality is quite different to your own. When you are speaking to a younger person, when you are going to attempt to give them worthwhile ideas, it’s so important initially to get into their world enough that they will be able to hear you.

The three main areas that are important to learn as a young person is that you are responsible for yourself, for your own body, and your own choices. You only get one body, so think about how you treat it. Everybody’s body is imperfect, so think about how you are going to treat your one.

The second is that we are in a complex world becoming more technical and if you are going to be successful then you need to push your own mental abilities as far as education will take you. Plan to be a continuous student your whole life. Be rapaciously curious about the world.

The third thing is, make decisions and stick with them. Proving to yourself that you can change who you are through your own decision-making is a revelation to many people, and a skill that you can get better at. If you want to fly in space, you need these three skills: you need a healthy body, you need to be well educated and you need the ability to make decisions and stick to them with the courage of your own conviction.

Electric Ireland’s Brighter Energy Programme aims to empower customers to maximise energy efficiency. The programme is supported by new products and services, including a 100% Green Electricity Price Plan. The announcement came at the launch of ‘We’re Brighter Together’, Electric Ireland’s brand campaign which features astronaut Chris Hadfield.

electricireland.ie/ brightertogether