Austin Dispatches | No. 182 | June 29, 2015 |
One day in
early August 1975, Mom handed me an envelope from the mail she’d just gathered.
A letter for me?
“Dear Danny,”
began a mimeographed form letter on goldenrod paper, from the nearest district
elementary school. “We’re sure you’re looking forward to attending kindergarten
next month.”
My excitement
vanished. As best a five-year old could articulate, I expressed my strong
displeasure these strangers dared presume what I was thinking, and so wrongly.
“Besides, I’ve already been to school” – the neighborhood preschool, where I’d
even learned about negative numbers, a useful concept when considering the
national debt, or the IQs of Libertarian Reform Caucus members (but that's
another issue).[1]
In
retrospect, I may have had an even better education. Because of how my parents
are, they knew a broad cross-section of interesting people. If, as my siblings
claim, I had an “unfair” advantage as the “favorite child,” it’s that these
people were favorably predisposed toward me, because I was “Mike and Lynn’s
kid,” the first and only for four years.[2]
They’d take time to tell me stories or teach me how to do things. I also
observed how all these adults interacted with each other, and with other
children.
My emphatic negative response to that letter prompted a half-bemused, half-quizzical expression from Mom, as though she were witnessing the emergence of her son’s distinct personality, one yet simultaneously reminiscent of his father’s.
She ruefully
half-laughed, half-sighed. “Well, you have to go to school. It’s the law.”[3]
I continued
to object to this future other people had planned without consulting me. Mom
half-laughed, half-sighed again. “You’re just like your father. We’ll discuss
this when he gets home.”
Dad backed
Mom, and they both acquiesced to the State, so off I went.[4]
I didn’t
realize how right my objections were until the second day of school, when the
teacher marched me into a corner, scolding me in her harping, passive-aggressive
tone that I’ve come to know so well the past 40 years.[5]
The cause? I
objected to reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.[6]
“Again? We just did that yesterday.”
My remark
wasn’t even directed at the teacher. I was talking to one of my new friends.
I listened to
them and the rest of the class mumble the pledge for the second consecutive day
while I stood facing a corner on the other side of the room. Bear in mind, that
happened coincidentally with early commercial and media celebrations of the
Bicentennial – marking resistance to tyrannical authority – beyond the
schoolyard chain-link fence.[7]
If I’d only known my rights.[8]
However, I
can’t complain the teacher singled me out, because she displayed the same
low-level hostility to other extroverted boys in my class. Gradually, I learned
at recesses that other boys in other classes received the same treatment.[9]
(At the end of the school year, she proclaimed all of us her best class ever,
but I later learned from other pupils that every teacher said that about every
class at the end of the term every year. Maybe they meant every year
they improved at breaking us.)[10]
Regardless,
that second day set the mood for the rest of the school year, during which the
staff also objected to:
·
My
handwriting, even though the world doesn’t run on elegant penmanship.[11]
·
My trying to
write left-handed, just to see if I could do it.
·
My talking to
the other kids in the classroom, even though a standard defense of mandatory
schooling is that children won’t socialize properly otherwise. So for
socializing I got low conduct grades on my report cards.[12]
·
My checking
books about World War II out of the school library.[13]
They would’ve objected more had they known that during this time I learned from
a juvenile history in the city library about the FDR administration maneuvering
the Japanese government into attacking Pearl Harbor – a sneaky trick worthy of
the playground ("I double dare you…. Teacher, he started it!"), but something
never taught even in my last
college-level American history class.[14]
Best of all,
the staff objected to my stories based on the characters in our basal reader,[15]
on gray 18” x 12” picture story wide-ruled paper with a No. 2 pencil for text
and a 72-count Crayola pack for the illustrations.[16]
The school was fussily specific about the supplies the parents had to provide,
which roused Mom to grumbling from that first shopping trip onward.
While
researching this issue, I discovered the Sterling No. 526 roll top pencil
box, which everyone had, is a discontinued object commanding $100 on eBay.[17]
The Pee-Chee folder illustrations changed after I left
high school and that brand
folder has since declined in prevalence.[18]
Those school supplies were actually useful, even if my classes weren't, and
they’re what’s become passé.[19]
It’s almost
as though having failed to kill any more than a third of my generation in the
womb during the Kinderfeindlichkeit of the ‘70s, the preceding generations
attempted to eliminate external proof of our memories.[20]
Anyway, I set
about improving on the source material with accretions of popular culture
accessible to me.[21] Popular culture then had a
stronger New York sensibility.[22]
The teachers lacked familiarity with these outside influences. That was my first
experience of a pattern through college of credentialed instructors in the
liberal arts knowing nothing of art or media beyond the most publicized
mainstream fare through the late ‘60s, and knowing nothing of anything that had
been produced since about 1970.[23]
Consequently,
my stories (e.g., “Bing and Sandy fell into the toilet and wound up in the East
River.”) became another topic of concern at parent-teacher conferences, rehashed
at the dinner table. Fortunately, Dad was sanguine and even amused about the
matter.
“Wow. You
were weird and cynical even as a child,” said my College Station girlfriend when
I recounted the story between then and now.[24]
So my early
efforts weren’t worthy of Joseph Conrad, but all I did was follow the teacher’s
instructions.[25]
In turn, she was following the curriculum guidelines, which reflected the
then-fashionable trends in pedagogy that were supposed to free the child from
earlier, rigid approaches to learning, but in practice candy coated an
intrinsically coercive experience, and thus was doomed to failure.[26]
The two
approaches didn’t mesh well, or at least our teachers failed at integrating
them, and I began to suspect the whole thing was just a scam.[27]
My suspicions catalyzed with the first of an annual elementary school viewing of
“Free to Be … You and Me.”[28]
It was so sappy, after viewing it Mr. Rogers growled the best way to rear
children was tanning their butts with the business end of a belt.[29]
I couldn’t help notice all the people self-actualizing in the movie
weren’t stuck in school from about 7
a.m. to 3 p.m. five days a week.
Moreover, did the teachers interact with the students the way the characters did
in the movie? No they didn’t. Did the teachers encourage us students to interact
with each other the way the characters did in the movie? No they didn’t.
So maybe I
did learn something, just not what the educrats planned in the curriculum. And
even that wasn’t something I first learned at kindergarten.[30]
In Central Park, I met another kid who insisted the English alphabet wasn’t
sequenced ABCD etc., but something else.[31]
I pointed out his two demonstrative recitals also differed from each other in
sequence. His response: “Nah-ahh.” Sort of a preview of the usual discourse on
Internet forums.
And this was
just my first year in the system. Off school grounds, the closest comparable
treatment I received from adults was trick-or-treating the night before
Halloween 1975 because Dad’s band had a Halloween gig so he couldn’t accompany
me to acquire candy.[32]
Even though I explained the situation up front, adults were so cross you’d think
I told them I showed up to commit home invasions.[33]
Gradually I
figured out that another set of rules applied inside school – that of the
prison. Consequently, I treated my teachers the way one would guards,
with as little interaction as necessary.[34]
The most
damning commentary on all this comes from people I’ve met years after having
done my time. Because they think I sound smart, or at least can talk with
correct syntax, they assume I attended private or Catholic schools – never
government-run institutions.
My sentence
could’ve been worse. Fortunately, it coincided with some overlapping,
self-sabotaging crises caused by the American power elite that riled the
public and put proponents, minions and beneficiaries of the corporatist,
managerial-therapeutic, warfare-welfare state – down to the neighborhood school
– on the defensive, in the first of three phases, until 9/11.[35]
Home | Archives |
NOTES
[1] AD No. 93
(Oct. 15, 2006); AD No. 98 (June 11, 2007); AD No. 99 (Aug. 10, 2007);
AD No. 111 (June 12, 2008); AD No. 113 (July 12, 2008); AD No. 116 (Sep.
7, 2008).
[2] Sowell, Thomas. "Life Is Unfair." Forbes. 5 Dec. 1994: 50.
[3] Gatto,
John Taylor. Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher’s Journey
Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling. Gabriola Island,
B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2006: xvi-xix.
[4] Ibid., 57.
[5] AD No. 88 (Dec. 23, 2005); AD No. 139 (April 1, 2011).
[6] Baer, John
W. The Pledge of Allegiance: A Revised History and Analysis,
1892-2007. Annapolis, Md.: Free State Press, 2007.
[7] Adams,
James Ring, and Laurel Ann Adams. “The Great American Birthday Party.”
The Alternative: An American Spectator Oct. 1976: 14-15; Bronson,
Gail. “The Spirit of (19)76: Is It a Bicentennial or a Buy-centennial?”
WSJ 15 Apr. 1975: 1; Jacobs, Frank, and Harry North. “The Bauble Hymn of
the Republic, or One Bicentennial Every 200 Years Is Enough!” Mad
Dec. 1976: 22-23; Jones, Jessy, and Bruce Elliot. “Bicentennial.”
Retro Hell, 16-17.
[8] West
Virginia State Board of Education v. Barnette, 319 U.S. 624 (1943).
[9] Jones et
al. “Recess.” Retro Hell, 173.
[10] Sommers,
Christina Hoff. The War Against Boys: How Misguided Policies Are
Harming Our Young Men, rev. ed. New York City: Simon & Schuster,
2013.
[11] Strauss,
Bill, and Neil Howe. 13th Gen: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?. New
York City: Vintage Books, 1993: 78, 80.
[12] Iserbyt,
Charlotte Thomson. The Deliberate Dumbing Down of
[13] AD No.
180n4 (Feb. 10, 2015).
[14] Barnes,
Harry Elmer.
[15] Cooper,
Elizabeth K. A Happy Morning. New York City: Harcourt Brace
Jovanovich, 1970; Cooper, Elizabeth K., Charles C. Fellows, and Margaret
Early. Sun Up. New York City: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1970.
[16] McCue,
Donna, and Stacey Donovan. Your Fate Is in Your Hands: Using the
Principles of Palmistry to Change Your Life. New York City: Pocket
Books, 2000: 104; Petroski, Henry. The Pencil: A History of Design
and Circumstance. New York City: Alfred A. Knopf, 1990: 119, 157.
[17] Petroski,
op. cit., 351.
[18] Hansen,
Dan. “Pee-Chee Folders Aren’t Just Peachy.” Spokane (Wash.) Chronicle
16 Aug. 1989: B1+.
[19] Eisler,
Dan. “Re: How're you faring on the roads after this weekend?” E-mail to
Chris Loyd, 26 May 2015.
[20] Strauss
and Howe. The Fourth Turning: An American Prophecy. New York
City: Broadway Books, 1997: 194-196; Strauss and Howe. Generations:
The History of
[21]
Borgenicht, David. Sesame Street Unpaved: Scripts, Stories, Secrets,
and Songs. New York City: Hyperion, 1998; Boys’ Toys of the
Seventies and Eighties: Toy Pages From the Legendary Sears Christmas
Wishbooks, 1970-1989. Ed. Thomas W. Holland. Calabasas, Calif.:
Windmill Group, 2002; Children’s Television Workshop. The Electric
Company: An Introduction to the New Television Program Designed to Help
Teach Reading to Children. New York City: Children’s Television
Workshop, 1971; Daniels, Les. Marvel: Five Fabulous Decades of the
World’s Greatest Comics.
[22] Biskind,
Peter. Easy Riders, Raging Bulls: How the Sex-Drugs-and-Rock 'n' Roll
Generation Saved
[23]
Kostelanetz, Richard. “Exposing the ‘College Teaching’ Scam.” Liberty
Nov. 1989: 64-66.
[24] Strauss
and Howe, Generations, op. cit., 328.
[25] Ford,
Ford Madox [Joseph Leopold Ford Madox Hueffer]. Joseph Conrad: A
Personal Remembrance. London: Duckworth & Co., 1924; Strauss and
Howe, 13th Gen, op. cit., 77.
[26] Strauss
and Howe, Fourth Turning, op. cit., 197-198.
[27] Strauss
and Howe, 13th Gen, op. cit., 75.
[28] More,
Riley. “Free to Be You and Me.” Retro Hell, 76.
[29] AD No. 24n12
(Dec. 24, 2000).
[30] Fulghum,
Robert. All I Really Needed to Know I Learned in Kindergarten.
New York City: Villard Books, 1988.
[31] Dr. Seuss
[Theodore Geisel]. On Beyond Zebra! New York City: Random House,
1955.
[32] AD No. 42n32
(Oct. 30, 2002).
[33] AD No. 88n9.
[34] Cox,
Stephen D. The Big House: Image and Reality of the American Prison.
[35] AD No. 96n52
(Feb. 6, 2007); AD No. 143n6
(June 28, 2011); Sandbrook, Dominic. Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the
1970s and the Rise of the Populist Right.