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Education Yesteryear
My past...
By: David K. Every
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2002-10-08 07:02:16
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 have a real problem with education in America, as I’ve been a victim of it. Not only as a child, but also as an adult; I’ve worked for educational software companies like Jostens Learning and later PowerSchool; as well as gone to various schools as a trainer, consultant or observer. I also taught Martial Arts for a decade; working with kids, you can get their unique perspectives on school and teaching. So I’ve seen the issues from a few different perspectives.
        
Here are a few of my stories about growing up, and what’s happened to me.
In 3rd grade they did an IQ test on me, and I was off the charts; and no, not the low side as some might quip. The schools solution was to stuff me in a gifted program the next year, called MGM (mentally gifted minors). While a good effort to offer some specialization, the program was designed by bureaucrats and failed to take into account things like socialization, peers, and that kids might not want to go to a school that’s three miles from home when all their friends are across the street.
Basically I was unhappy, and even this program wasn’t able to keep up with me; and I just wanted to be with my friends. Their solution was that while I was already a year ahead in the fourth grade, they were going to skip me ahead another year (and maybe two). Yeah, a small nerdy 8 year old in the 6th or 7th grade, I’d survive that experience. Do these administrators even understand the social pressures that kids are going through?
Schools just couldn’t understand that teachers needed to be flexible enough to teach kids at multiple levels in the same class. They wouldn’t adjust to the students, but instead, like true bureaucrats, they tried to make the students adapt to them. Their solution was to just keep sticking the kid into higher and higher aged classes. Which totally screws with their socialization.
My solution was sort of a work-strike. Not really, I liked learning so I still read and did math and so on; I just didn’t want to go forward. So I was reading about 2-3 books a week, but I wouldn’t do book reports. My response was “Why, I know I’m reading it”. I could answer questions and write well above kids my age, but if I did book reports they’d give me grades for it, and they’d skip me ahead another year. Kids aren’t stupid. I wasn’t disruptive, and they knew I was reading at a high school level, but I wouldn’t do the work. Math was my stronger subject; but with the same result. Every now and then I’d do an assignment if it was challenging enough, but I didn’t want to do enough to get credit to be skipped forward. I’d occasionally ace a test and freak them out, then they’d test me “for real” (an “official” test), and I’d somehow come out as a dunce (actually, more middle of the road, I knew they’d catch on if I blew it by too much). It was a game of wills or wits. Finally, they agreed to put me back with kids my own age (and hold me back a year, and send me to my regular school). It is hard to say if that was the right decision or not; for either them or me. It was a complex situation; but school is never about the kids as in the individuals, it is about the middle of the bell curve and teaching to the group.
When I went into my own grade, academically, things weren’t much better. Socially they were a lot better; I got beat up less often, and could at least hold my own. I guess my charming personality and self-righteousness (combined with “knowing-it-all”) made me someone who other kids loved to beat the crap out of; so I had to learn to fight early in life. I remember one kid that was about a foot taller than me said something obnoxious and abusive, and I quipped back; I didn’t believe in letting people step on others (including myself), even verbally. He responded, “I hate little smart-asses”, and my response was immediate, “Not as much as the world hates a big dumb-shit”. The audience approved, but I didn’t even see the punch coming. My mom joked the other kids used to form a line to take turns beating on me, and her ever loving and all too common response, “you probably deserved it” or “what did you do now?” Thanks mom. My step dad (at the time) was raised on a farm in Idaho, and believed in the rural “stand up for yourself, ‘cause no one else will”. So it wasn’t like puffy lips or black eyes was going to get complaints from my parents. At least the kids my own age couldn’t punch as hard. The schools “solution” was to ignore it, or blame and punish both kids; but never try to figure out what was going on or how to really resolve it. So the playground was only slightly better than the lord of the flies, and teachers decided to rarely get involved.
Academically, I was still bored by school. I remember in 4th grade (the second time), the teacher gave me a set of 2 digit by 4 digit multiplication and division type questions (yawn). So I did them, in my head, and wrote the answers. She gave me an ‘F’ because I didn’t show my work and I could have cheated. I challenged her, I did my work, and how dare she call me a liar/cheater. I dared her to put the problems on the board, and I’d do them in my head; which I did. She was indignant, and said if I didn’t show the work, then she’d give me an ‘F’. I said “OK”. “What do you mean OK?”, she asked. My response was, “We both know I did the work, and if you want to give up your professional integrity for sake of an ego trip with a 4th grader, and lie and state that I didn’t do my work, then that’s your problem”. She was perplexed and offended, but still gave me the ‘F’.
Later she gave the entire class still more long division problems, and frankly I was bored with the tedium of 200 problems testing the same thing. So like the second or third time I got them, I did something else. She asked me what I’d done since I’d done the first few homework assignments OK, but on this one I got every answer wrong (and why was I doing decimals when the class hadn’t gotten there yet). I explained that instead of division I done square roots. She used a calculator to find out that I actually had, and had carried them out to the 4 or 5th decimal place. She threatened me with another ‘F’ if I didn’t go back and just do division. I argued that there was division in doing square roots; but she wouldn’t hear of it. “OK, I’ll take the F, again”. She walked away perplexed. How could a kid not care about their stupid little constructs to try to rank children or attempts to order the universe?
I didn’t have a problem with authority, I had a problem with stupid authority, and there is a huge difference. Give me rules that made sense, and I was fine with them. Ask me to do something, and I generally did it. But when it became stupid, repetitive or just dumb make work to make the babysitter (teachers) life easier, and I got more obnoxious. And as usual, it wasn’t the teacher or the schools fault, obviously it was the child that was the problem. Their answer was that “none of the other kids were having these problems/issues”, despite the fact that I, and others, could see plenty that were.
So between the fights, and the teacher saying I was “difficult”, I had to see a counselor. They felt I had a problem with authority, which I generally didn’t. I wasn’t disruptive in class, and did my assignments (mostly). Often I’d read the entire book, and then go on and read my own stuff or draw and do other things quietly. I didn’t act out, unless you attacked me first. The teacher would get mad because I wasn’t paying attention, and she’d ask a question, and I could answer any of her questions without even looking up from what I was doing. That just pissed her off more. However, the goal was learning and she was boring me, so I’d actually try to learn and skip ahead and learn, or entertain myself; and they didn’t like that. (She was just one of many teachers that I had in my life that couldn’t give others control of their own learning).
The counselor liked me; and generally “got it”. I was occasionally suspended for fighting. Who started it wasn’t the point; rules are rules, even if they are stupid ones. Needless to say, I thought they had a screwed sense of justice, and they only undermined their own authority in most kid’s minds. But that’s school. They’d ask me if I started it, and I’d respond, “Yeah, like I’m going to pick on that Orangutan who is a foot taller than me and outweighs me by 50 lbs? Or those two kids at once?” Most figured out that it was my diplomacy skills that got me into fights, but also I wasn’t rude or obnoxious first, I just tended to reflect the attitude of others; and bullies hated that. Plus I was different and looked different, that’s like having a bull’s-eye on your shirt; dark looking, quiet, and tried to avoid fights (and walk away a lot), but had a smart mouth when pushed. Bullies figured that if they could harass me, and I’d leave, then they could beat me and look cool. But then if they pissed me off, I made them look like an idiot, and so they’d try to hit me; and then hell broke loose. Plus we moved a few times, so I was always the new target, er, kid. I felt like a little hate magnet. Once they forced me to fight, and I’d made it costly enough for enough kids that picked on me, that I’d get the reputation to be left alone, and things would be fine for a couple years; and then we’d move again.
Junior High School, and High School actually got worse academically, but better socially.
Socially, I was in soccer, waterpolo and martial arts; and had a rep that while I was quiet and wimpy looking, I’d taken on kids years older than me (when they hit me first), and those kids still avoided me. So it might be wiser to go pick on others; which they usually did. For a brief stint, I start to became the bully to a few (shit rolls down hill, and learning by example stuff), but I didn’t like the roll at all and refused to be a hypocrite (or become that which I hated), so I apologized to one of my victims, and never did it again.
Academically, it was the same as elementary school though; I wanted to work and learn. Once work and learning got into rote boredom and I had mastered the skill, I wanted to go on. If they wouldn’t let me, then I’d do it on my own. If they wouldn’t accept that, and they usually wouldn’t, that was OK too. I just had to make C’s to stay with my own grade. Occasionally I’d get a flexible teacher that would let me do assignments at my own pace (fast), and I’d get A’s, and usually get about two to three times the work done as anyone else. But more often it was about tyrants who tried to hold me back, or get mad because I wasn’t trying and “living up to my potential”; when they were the ones that were sucking the life out of any potential. They’d play their tyranny games; and I’d stand up against that stupidity or injustice when it impacted me (as only an obnoxious teenager can), and my grades would reflect their insecurities. I didn’t care if they hated me (and a few did), I’d do good enough that they couldn’t flunk me. But I got funky grades that were all over the board.
    
School was frustrating for me. The usually teenaged angst stuff, combined with the frustrations of finding my place in society, and so on. But all of it was made far worse by an education system that had no ability to adapt to anyone who was “offside” in the game of “stay in the middle of the bell-curve”. And they certainly had little clue as to what they were doing.
As it was, I barely graduated High School. Not because I was stupid or lazy. By 15 I was working at a computer store, and by 16 I was consulting to another school district writing classroom management software for them and I started consulted to Aerospace companies writing custom software. But schools didn’t give credit for work or life experience (or not much). I did my work, but I tried to use my brain too; and some just hated that. Some teachers were great; one math teacher challenged me with a computer program or two; and once they saw what I wrote, they left me alone as a “study class”, and I’d just occasionally write some program for them. But that type of teacher was the exception.
Bad grades were often a sense of pride for me because of how I’d usually earned them. I got lower scores because I’d turned in assignments “too early”, or because a term paper was too long (and done on a computer instead of a typewriter like she’d required), and so on. Some were only about their rules, and not about learning. I always got C’s or even D’s in High School English, because of occasional grammar or spelling problems; when I was doing technical and user documentation for various companies I was consulting to. I’m borderline dyslexic and probably a little ADD; but I also valued what was said and how well, and the minor grammar and spelling things where mostly problems with an anachronistic language that needs to be fixed anyway. So I didn’t care that much. My Chemistry teacher gave me a C- despite doing all the labs and homework (well), and even solving some trick questions. (She asked the burn temperature of some substances, one being diesel fuel, without telling is what they were. I figured it out and got it alight, but she had to evacuate the classroom. She hated me for that one.) Yet, my College said I’d gotten the highest natural science score on the ACT of any student in their history. So there was a huge dichotomy between what some teacher’s thought of me or my abilities, and what the real world did. So who had the problem?
I dealt with many kids. And my stories are not unique (though sometimes a tad more extreme). I’ve worked in and around higher and lower education since then; and things still haven’t changed much. Is it any wonder that drop out rates and dissatisfaction in students is so high? Our state controlled schools are an embarrassment to learning. Good teachers are not rewarded and bad teachers are not punished. Administrators create middle of the road learning assignments to make their lives easier; not to teach. Students are forced to try to fit this little societal role that the teachers have made out for them, and then they wonder why their “best” students often lack any imagination or ability to learn on their own; after spending 12 years getting grades by only following directions (and getting punished for veering or taking any initiative).
Are we trying to become a society where the mindless sheep are going to get ahead and run the country, and all other will be crushed under the wheels of conformity, tyranny, or mediocrity? Our cookie cutter education system seems to be striving for that goal. 
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