I am trying to write up little pieces of memories that will be incorporated in a fuller biography at some point. I did this one for our writing group this past week.
Not too long
ago, I read a brief essay by Robert Reich that told of his expulsion from his day
care center when he was a small boy. Young
Bob had refused to eat another tasteless lunch prepared by the dragon-lady
proprietor of the school and she had cashiered him out and sent him back to his
parents with the dire warning that he was a petulant smart-ass and would never
amount to anything. Granted that poor Oliver Twist had wanted a bit more gruel,
but the Dickensian echoes do remain.
Child nursery
school behavior has also come up in the PBS Doc Marten series. I remember an
episode where the Marten’s young son and only child, James, attracted teacher
and parental concern when he did not appear to mix easily with the other
children. This James, like young Bob,
was small in stature, but was basically shy rather than outspoken.
All of which
leads me into one of my own early confrontations in the educational realm. This
story was told to me by my mother a number of times when I was growing up and
was the result of my still active penchant not to suffer fools gladly. In the 1940’s the Milwaukee school system gave
a competence test to all kindergarteners before promoting them to first grade. I
suspect it involved such things as taking simple words or pictures and putting
them into categories or crossing out things that did not belong in a
group. It was a late spring afternoon in
1943 that my mother said she received an
urgent and concerned message from my kindergarten teacher and could she please
come to the school for a conference at her earliest convenience.
She
diligently turned up the next day right after school with me in tow. The
teacher, whose name was Miss Van Raalte, was probably around twenty-five and
single although I no doubt thought she was a grouchy old maid. No matter. My
mother said she was told that I had refused to complete the required promotion test
and would be kept back in kindergarten for another semester if I did not pass it.
Not only had I refused to do the required test, I had loudly asserted that I
had done all of those exercises before and it was stupid to keep doing them over
and over again.
Luckily, I
had done what I was supposed to do on one account. I had been instructed to
take all my work home to show my parents and I had done that. My mother brought the papers with her to the meeting
and was able to remind Miss Van Raalte that I had indeed not only completed all
the various practices for the test, but had gotten lots of good-work stars
affixed to the papers. A serious discussion and stern warnings by both teacher and parent ensued. Both of
them insisted that being a student and doing well in practices was never going
to be a substitute for passing a required test. At this point, I was apparently
convinced of my error and rapidly filled in the appropriate answers on the
blank test sheet displayed by my teacher. Come the fall I was happily ensconced
in a first-grade classroom and for the record can say that I have managed tests
and promotions pretty well ever since.
Dr. Jim De
Young, PhD 2/3/2024
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