On several occasions now, a short, very moving and inspiring video has been circulating on social media about a boy who was judged at school to be unable to be educated, and about a mother who supports him... we soon learn that this is about one of the most important scientists in modern history, Thomas Alva Edison. And we ask ourselves, what actually happened...

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Thomas Alva Edison was born on 11 February 1847 in the small town of Milan, Ohio. His father was Canadian, but after taking part in a rebellion against the British governor of Ontario, he fled to the USA, where he set up a profitable business. He had moved from Canada with his wife, a former teacher, and their four children. Three more children were born to them in the USA. The youngest of them was given the name Thomas.

When Thomas turned seven, his family moved from Ohio to  Port Huron, Michigan, where the boy started school. His teacher soon called him "addled", which would mean a confused pupil, or one with a muddled brain. The teacher called him by that name often, and even described him that way to the school inspector, adding that in his opinion the boy should not be kept in school. Thomas was deeply hurt by what he heard about himself, and when he got home he told his mother everything, in tears. His mother immediately took his side and told him that, clearly, as a boy he "had more brains than his teacher".

The fact is that little Thomas Alva Edison did not want to (or rather, could not) sit still in the classroom like most of his peers. He would rather doodle something than copy out exercises. He always had more questions than  his teacher had the time or patience to answer. The situation was made even harder by little Al's poor health (that's what they called him at home), as he was already losing his hearing, which made it even more difficult for him to concentrate in class. Some suspected the kind of disorders common today, on the ADHD spectrum, dyslexia, dysgraphia, or something similar that makes it hard for young people to concentrate and to listen, read and complete schoolwork in the usual way. Still, it is known that later, through his youth and his whole life, Thomas read a great deal and delighted in literature and research.

His mother Nancy knew her child very well, and was disappointed and angry after he was declared unfit for further schooling. She made a sacrifice typical of mothers: she withdrew him from school and decided to teach him herself, at home. Thanks to his mother's love and effort, it is recorded that by the age of twelve little Thomas already had a broad general culture and education. Edison later testified through his life: "My mother was the making of me." She was devoted, sincere, and believed in herself and in him, and she worked a miracle where formal schooling had given up. And while his mother taught him the skills of reading and learning, it could be said that his father guided him in what to read and learn... He introduced him to the passionate polemics of Thomas Paine, the history of the Roman Empire, philosophical treatises... which shaped Thomas's view of the world.

One particularly interesting and very candid assessment Thomas made of himself and his rich creative life is: "Everything on earth depends on will. I have never had an idea in my life, I never daydream. I never dream. My so-called inventions already existed in the nature around us - I merely brought them to light. I have created nothing. No one has. There is no such thing as an idea being born in the brain - everything comes to us from outside... A genius wanders around his laboratory day and night. If he discovers anything, he catches it... if he doesn't discover it, someone else will discover the same thing another time!" Later, another of his many pieces of hard-won, life wisdom was recorded: "Genius is one percent inspiration and ninety-nine percent perspiration", along with the assertion that giving up is mankind's great weakness.

Alongside the broad education gained from learning with his mother at home, Thomas supplemented his childhood and youth with hard work. He worked, for instance, very hard in the corn, radish, onion and beet fields. Using his father's old cart and horse, he carried vegetables to a town a mile and a half away and sold them door to door, going from house to house. Later he took up growing and selling fruit - apples, pears, figs. He became  successful in business. He earned money for his family, and put all his "pocket money" into equipping his own laboratory. To earn even more, by the age of ten he had already become a seller of sweets and newspapers on the train running between Port Huron and Detroit. That was when he managed to set up his first laboratory in the basement of the family home and began carrying out his first scientific experiments. With the money from selling sweets, in which he involved his friends too, he could afford to buy the chemicals needed for further experiments. At the same time, he read a very great deal. He began writing, publishing articles and printing his own newspaper. Later he grew the business so much that he opened two small shops in Port Huron. In the meantime, with the permission of the railway superintendent, he even moved some of his chemicals from the family basement into the luggage compartment of the train on which he sold sweets and newspapers, working and experimenting there at the same time.

In August 1862 an incident occurred that changed the direction of Edison's career. Travelling by train, he spotted a two-year-old child playing on the tracks, along which a locomotive was approaching at considerable speed from the opposite direction. With enormous effort, young Edison saved the boy from certain death at the very last moment, but the front part of a wheel still caught and threw them both aside. Both suffered injuries to the face and hands, but fortunately without more serious consequences. The little boy was the son of the stationmaster, who out of gratitude offered, the very next day, to teach Thomas Morse code so that he could become a telegraph operator. Edison agreed, and after a few months, alongside all the other work he continued to do, he trained as a telegraph operator and would go on to work as a railway telegraphist for the next six years, travelling the Midwest as far south as New Orleans.

In October 1868, at the age of 21, he filed his first patent - a vote recorder. This was a device that made it possible for votes in parliaments to be recorded quickly and accurately, and counted automatically.

Finally,  it is well  known that his numerous inventions (from the light bulb, the film camera, the megaphone...) significantly influenced the development of various fields of electrical engineering, and the great Nikola Tesla himself worked for a time in his laboratory.

Ours is a time - a time of disturbed concentration, a time of great challenges in the field of upbringing and education, a time of schools falling behind technology and the age, and of minds that stagnate because they think they have the answer to every question with a single click, so that a more serious approach to problems and genuine inquiry become increasingly rare. Our intellectual effort is ever more rarely "filtered" through emotion, and everything remains in short-term memory, on the surface. School is above all a place for reproducing knowledge rather than acquiring skills and understanding. At the same time, there is a growing number of pupils with concentration disorders, and various burgeoning diagnoses from the modern spectrum of  learning, memory and behavioural disorders. The labour market lacks special education teachers, speech therapists, rehabilitation specialists, psychologists and psychiatrists. Little by little, they are becoming the central figures of our educational processes. Education professionals are facing great challenges. Perhaps this inspiring story about Thomas Alva Edison can help us finally understand that we too often go in the wrong direction. A modern school without an individualised approach to every pupil is merely the upkeep of the outward form of education. God created every human being as an excellent original. With today's problems, this is becoming ever more obvious. Every person, every pupil, deserves maximum attention and an individual approach, both in education and in upbringing. This calls for radical changes in the way everyone relates to education - teachers, pupils and parents. Above all, society and those responsible in social bodies and institutions. As in every field of life, so too in this fundamental one, where, as Edison said, "we make people", there is no need to wait for anyone or anything any longer. We must start with ourselves and change the given, uniform, impersonal and outdated rules about this and that (yes, about grading too, and syllabuses and programmes, curricula and lesson plans...) One person teaches another, passing on their experience always in a new situation and in an original way. The most successful teachers are those who have always done their work this way. Who have lived their calling. That is the message that Thomas and Nancy, in such a fantastic way, send us even in the 21st century through social media. It is even more relevant in this age of distance learning, where all of us can, in our own way, be Nancy. And is there really any more important or beautiful mission in the life of a parent and educator, and indeed of every person, than passing on experience, knowledge and faith to children... Selfishness is what holds us back from this more than anything else, and so I will finish with one more of Edison's inspiring quotes: "There is a way to do it better - find it!"