"If they give you ruled paper, write the other way."

Thank you Mrs.Thornton, wherever you are. In eighth grade you assigned Fahrenheit 451 and changed my life.

The little line that serves as the title of this piece was used by Ray Bradbury to introduce this book, written by him in a college typing lab. I thought of it today while in a Facebook conversation about snacks sent to an elementary school.

One mother expressed exasperation because she made homemade snacks for some school function, only to find out that the school required all snacks to be storebought. Another parent said they made brownies, found out the same thing, and brought them anyway. The first parent said she was tempted to do the same, but was afraid that her daughter might learn that it was OK to break the rules.

That bothered me a little. Our country's entire history has been shaped by people breaking the rules. Some saw it as unfair to pay taxes when not represented in government. Others rebelled against Jim Crow laws and the earlier Fugitive Slave Acts. Tomorrow we may need a rebellion against confiscatory taxation, gun confiscations, or some other example of authority abused. One of our shining moments earned us the condemnation of the world; we deliberately ignored Hitler's instructions to all Olympic teams in Berlin in 1936. Our athletes refused to perform a Nazi style salute or dip our flag to the swastika. Hermann Goering told his furher "Americans dip their flag to nobody."

Perhaps elementary school snacks is a battle worth fighting, perhaps it is not. I strongly disagree with teaching children that rules ought always be followed. Sometimes you have to think about the rules, about who made them, where they come from, and why they are there. You may come up with the idea that the rules are unjust or foolish. At that point you must decide what, if anything, you have to do about them. What you should not teach, unless you are in the military, is that rules must always be blindly obeyed without question or thought.