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Seorang Ibu yang Luar Biasa

Suatu hari, Thomas Alva Edison pulang sekolah dan menyerahkan selembar kertas pemberian gurunya untuk ibunya. Sang ibu menangis sambil membaca isi surat itu dengan mengeraskan suaranya: “Putra anda seorang jenius. Sekolah ini terlalu kecil untuk menampungnya dan tidak memiliki guru yang cakap untuk mendidiknya. Agar anda mendidiknya sendiri.”

Jauh setelah ibunya wafat dan Edison telah menjadi penemu ternama, dia melihat-lihat barang lama keluarga. Tiba-tiba dia melihat kertas surat terlipat di sorokan sebuah meja. Dia membukanya dan membaca isinya: “Putra Anda seorang anak yang bodoh. Kami tidak mengizinkan anak Anda bersekolah lagi.”

Edison menangis berjam-jam setelah itu dan kemudian menuliskan ini di diarynya: “Thomas Alva Edison, adalah anak bodoh yang, karena seorang Ibu yang Luar Biasa, mampu menjadi seorang jenius pada abad kehidupannya.”

Penjelasan:

Thomas Alva Edison memang keluar dari sekolahnya saat masih kecil. Sebagai penderita diseleksia, Edison memang sulit beradaptasi dengan situasi belajar yang statis. Salah seorang gurunya memang ada yang mengatakan kalau Edison anak kacau dan sulit diajar. Ibunya, Nancy Matthews Elliott, tidak pernah menutupi kekurangan sang anak dan Edison paham kondisinya yang kurang mampu beradaptasi dengan kondisi belajar di dalam kelas.

Apalagi, guru yang mengajar Edison kala itu, memiliki pola belajar mengajar yang kaku sehingga Edison tidak betah duduk diam di dalam kelas. Dengan demikian, klaim pada narasi tidaklah tepat. Detil penjelasan mengenai kondisi Edison saat masih kecil dapat dibaca di situs truthorfiction.com. Berikut kutipan penjelasan dari situs tersebut mengenai kabar Edison:

[…] This rumor contains a few accurate details. Thomas Edison was dyslexic, which made it difficult for him to succeed in an 1800s classroom. And one of Edison’s teacher’s reportedly described him as “addled.” But the central claim — that Edison’s mother hid that fact from him — is not accurate.

The Foundation for Economic Education reports that Edison was well aware of his teacher’s diagnosis, and that he was enraged by it. Edison was seven years old when his teacher, the Rev. G.B. Engle, described him as “addled.” The boy stormed out of the school in Port Huron, Michigan, and returned the next day with his mother, Nancy. Nancy hoped to reconcile, but she became frustrated with Engle’s “rigid ways” and decided to educate young Thomas at home.

In the biography, “Thomas Alva Edison: Great American Inventor,” Louise Betts goes into more detail about why young Edison had problems with Reverend Engle’s teaching style. Betts writes that sitting still in a classroom was “pure misery” for Edison to begin with, and Engle forced his students to learn by memorizing lessons and reciting them out loud. Students were whipped with a leather strap if they made mistakes, and “Mrs. Engle also heartily approved of using the whip as a way of teaching students better study habits. her whippings were often worse than her husband’s!”

Betts concludes that Edison wasn’t able to memorize lessons and needed hands-on experience to understand and learn things. Edison also needed to ask lots of questions, which frustrated his teacher. Later, Edison said, “I remember I used to never be able to get along at school. I was always at the foot (bottom) of the class. I used to feel that the teachers did not sympathize with me, and that my father thought I was stupid.”

Later in life, Edison said, “My mother was the making of me. She was so true, so sure of me: and I felt I had something to live for, someone I must not disappoint.” […]

Referensi:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/fafhh/permalink/246832858982590/

After a Schoolteacher Called Thomas Edison “Addled,” His Heroic Mother Stepped In-Mostly Fiction!