My friend, Mark, is brilliant but failed in school because he could not get information from a book off the printed page. Today, he would have been identified early on as a dyslexic reader and given strategies to compensate for his weaknesses. However, this was not the case when he attended school in the 1980s.

Even today, it is uncertain to me that Mark would have found success in schools because, ultimately, what set him apart was his contrary behavior. Mark thrived on his independence and worked hard to burnish it. Mark “visited” the principal’s office frequently in high school. However, he was very comfortable being sent home by the principal – spending the day in his family’s garage, where Mark would happily tear a car apart and put it back together. In his twenties, Mark built an airplane in this garage. By age twenty-five, Mark had applied for and received fifteen patents for inventions that were always dazzling but never easily translatable to financial reward.

Mark bounced through various low-level jobs for five years after high school graduation. Mark knew he was smart, and he knew he was a hard worker with ambition, but his schooling had labeled him a failure. His parents worried about him and paid for a therapist to sort through the mixed emotions of success and failure that inhabited Mark’s psyche.

Mark struggled until he stumbled into a job as a custodian at a prominent marine science laboratory. Mark was quickly identified by the scientists there as a brilliant, hard-working employee who understood the importance of organisms for scientists in the laboratory. In short order, Mark was put in charge of its supply room, where he maintained 50 fish tanks of varying species. Mark was responsible for sending a live specimen when a scientist needed a rockfish, a lobster, a horseshoe crab, or other marine organisms.

Mark’s 50 fish tanks were each populated by different species, and he had concocted an elaborate system of tubes and wires to monitor water temperature, salinity, and oxygen level to allow each organism to survive. When a tube clogged or an electric current failed to spark, Mark jerry-rigged a system that would send a tone to the beeper he carried. At the sound of the tone, he would rush back to the gymnasium-sized room (day or night) to fix the problem and ensure the survival of the specimens. This was done in the days before technologies were created to assist in the monitoring process. In fact, Mark was able to adapt many of his advances to increasingly sophisticated systems at other laboratories.

Mark loved speaking to the scientists about each of their research projects, frequently adding to the quality of a research project with creative suggestions. I would often get enthusiastic updates from Mark on the latest developments in blood coagulation, sonar system applications, chemical additives to paint (based on mollusk research), and fish farms as a source of protein in underdeveloped countries. Mark was certainly not the highest-paid employee – money just never really seemed to interest him. But his passions drove his interests, and in later life, Mark spent considerable time developing more durable fish farms in underdeveloped countries.

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Coming next week: Intellect Versus Character- What Would You Choose?

     From an earlier posting: As parents and teachers, we need to reclaim our traditional role as influencers of our children, not by shouting louder than the influencers our children discover online, but by stressing ideas that are more important than fancy shoes and snappy TikTok tunes. We need to emphasize traits that everyone agrees children will honor.  We need to convince our children that the people who are most important to them have a better understanding of what it takes to be successful in life.

John Zurn began his educational career teaching fourth, fifth, and sixth grade children in K through 8th grade independent school settings.   He went on to serve as Head of School for three independent schools over a twenty-eight year period.   John has written a book on a comprehensive school-wide character education program which was published in 2022 and updated in 2024.  He is currently working on a book directed towards teaching Traits for Success to students in grades 4 through 8.

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