educate.mem

educate.mem

EDUCATE  MEM     7956   1-22-03   9:10a

My early education was spectacular, because my parents taught me so much,
although they refused to teach me to read, even going so far as to forbid
me to learn to read on my own, for fear of my being so well educated when
I got to school that I would irritate the teachers; something I could not
understand at the time.  Somehow, in my continuing naivete, through great
numbers of years, nay decades, I always thought a teacher should/would be
welcoming highly advanced students in the same manner a sports coach will
welcome a highly advanced athlete.  Hey, I SAID I was naive, but. . .I am
forced to admit that I still think this is the way it should be.

*Not sure I should include the next paragraph here, or even elsewhere.*
If schools recruited for academic performance the way they recruit for an
athletic performance, things would be much different.  As it was Deans at
the University of Illinois thought I made the university look BAD because
I was doing so well, rather than making them look GOOD.  They even tried,
and failed, to stop me from graduating in two years.

So, while I learned HUGE amounts about all sorts of things, from cultures
throughout the expanses of world history and learned all fundamentals for
the sciences and mathematics at a VERY young age:  literally before I can
remember, and I can remember knowing arithmetic up to the decillions when
I was one [see my godfather:  Jim Siberg].  I didn't actually learn a lot
in school, not just because I had learned so much at home, but because it
was not the model in our schools at the time to teach very much.  It must
be said it was mostly a socialization process, one that continued all the
way through college, as I will mention later on.

School in the US was mainly created to mesh the immigrants from different
places, with different languages and customs.  In those deepwater seaport
cities such as Tacoma, with such a wide variety of immigrants, this is an
important, nay primary, feature of the departments of education, as it is
and was in many placed throughout the US.  The purpose was to rub off all
the differences, and homogenize the new generation, and thus I was not at
all encouraged to be "different" other than to excel at sports, but not a
bit in scholarship or the arts.  Oh, they SAID that good grades were nice
. . .but that was about it, there was no push for excellence.

Until Sputnik, that is. . . .

In October 1957, on the 40th anniversary of the "October Revolution," the
Russians [USSR] launched the first satellite to orbit the Earth, and "The
Space Race" began. . .only 40 years, from a revolution that was basically
fought on foot and horseback in 1917 to starting space exploration.

This was much more shocking at the time than you might think, following a
quick progression from the A-Bomb to the H-Bomb for both the US & USSR in
only the previous decade.

[Footnote:  it would now appear that Julius and Ethel Rosenberg were very
far from access to the H-Bomb [then called "The Super-Bomb"] infomration,
and did not have access to the information they were convicted, executed,
and publicly vilified for supposedly having given the Russians.  Media is
not saying much about this, as it is still considered "bad form" to say a
gevernment convicted the wrong person, as IS much in the media right now,
as per legislation in North Carolina to free those wrongly conviced.  One
example, sorry I missed the name, as of a man convicted of rape, 20 years
ago, but who may have been proven innocent about half that time ago.  The
media are heaviliy involved with both sides, some wanting no convictions,
none at all, to be overturned, some wanting justice, no matter the delay.
I find it interesting that no one ever speaks out against justice delays
when it takes 20 years to catch someone, but that the do when the person
was caught and convicted 20 years ago.] [Should I move this to the end?]

The US school systems BURST into action to created a generation that must
be prepared to catch up, nay surpass, the Russian threat.

Finally, the US educational system had something to fear more than bright
students. . . .

This is a premise some, even many, of you may find hard to accept, _I_ am
only just now learning to accept it, even after people telling me for all
of thirty years and longer. . .teachers, scholars and administrators were
and still are deathly afraid of bright students who don't fit into cookie
cutter molds that were used to create a school system whose primary focus
was the homongenization of the student population.

I had to be told by large groups of people on the threshhold of PhDs in a
quite psychology department. . .over and over. . .for weeks on end, month
after month, before I finally even considered the idea. . .and still that
idea kept escaping me. . .it was just not in my mental model of the world
that professors in famous colleges could be frightened by a student. . ..
Perhaps more about that some other time.  Much of the time I was labelled
as not as bright as I thought I was. . .and at the same time was labelled
as a classic underachiever.  Hee hee!  Luckily _I_ knew who I was and was
not about to accept anyone else's label of who I was.  Later. . . .  L8r.

Shift now to the beginning of the first post Sputnik school year in 1958.

I'm not going to pull any punches here, I am going to include things that
I could have left out, things that may allow you an escape from the truth
of the situation. . .and many of you may use just such escapes.

First, I was in a different school system, 2,000 miles further east:  BIG
differences being noticed between East and West. . .and these people were
Easterners to me:  even though they called themselves Midwesterners.  The
place was nearly 200 miles east of the Mississippi and I'd never been out
of Tacoma more by more than 300 miles except for a couple trips to Canada
which even included one trip on my own, when I stayed for three weeks, at
the age of 8.  The world WAS different back then.

Before I ever even got to class on that first day I was literally grabbed
and dragged by the collar to the office, to be summarily thrown out!  Had
I done anything to deserve this?  I had only asked for directions to find
my classroom.  I was told in no uncertain terms that I would be sent home
. . .several times, before I could finally get them to tell me why.

I was wearing "bluejeans!"

"The Horror. . .The Horror. . .The Horror"  [Apocalypse Now!]

[There is a separate memoir called bluejean.mem about all the details.]

[I have been asked to include more of the details here, now expanded.]

So, we'll skip most of that, other than to say that my Levi's, and _I_ am
speaking of genuine Levi's, were NOT blue, but were wheat and I *refused*
to go home, threatening to call the police and sue them all if I they did
not leave me alone and let me go to class.    ["Wheat jeans" = "chinos."]
[These were a West Coast thing, and like my Frisbee, had never been seen]

So, even while _I_ didn't yet realize I was not the average everyday kid,
THEY probably realized it.

Instead of just going home and putting on slacks, I, who had never heard,
in my 11 years, of any kind of "dress code," demanded to see it, written,
before I would blindly obey. . .I just wasn't brought up to blindly obey
anyone, particularly a stranger, no matter how authoritarian.

The dress code was written down, but it said "bluejeans," not jeans, and
I told them that I wasn't wearing ANY blue and that I already knew where
the courthouse and police station were, and that I would go straight for
them if they didn't let me get to class ontime.

/

I didn't realize how important this evet was until the third revision of
this document, when I realized that I probably would NOT have gotten the
special classes mentioned below if they had not already put me in a mood
to threaten going to court beforehand.

/

At any rate, back to the Sputnik train/rocket of thought, later that day,
the University of Illinois sent over one of their most promising graduate
students, as part of the beginning of recruitment of my generation as the
weapon to counter the Red Threat.  This took the form of the person doing
a 10 minute announcement in each class, looking for "best and brightest,"
as the movement began to be known, with particular emphasis on science or
math interests, and, luckily for me, also asking for volunteers.

"Lucky for me?"

Why?

Because, without even realizing it, I had just run headlong into "fear of
the unknown". . ."not invented here". . .and all that jazz. . . .

My teacher, close as we became later [I was also her paperboy] was afraid
of letting me into the "special section" simply because I was an unknown.

I tried and tried to get her to put me on the list, and when she wouldn't
I finally had to forcibly remind her, in front of the class, that we were
being also asked to volunteer, not just those teachers recommended, and I
threatened to take her to court if she blocked my admission.

Once again, I had to read back what was actually said to get in.

Remember, first thing that day, I had had to read the dress code. . .must
say I had never even HEARD of a dress code before. . .things just weren't
like that on the West Coast. . .not much in the way of repression, least,
INSTITUTIONALIZED REPRESSION. . .I actually had to threaten to go back to
the office. . .again. . .to invoke the "volunteer" category as read to us
by the graduate student. . .and also to go to court.  I reminded them the
fact was that I only knew where the courthouse and police station were as
part of my Boy Scout orientation, but apprently they didn't think highly,
as least as highly as where I came from, of the whold Boy Scout thing.

I should probably add that while I went through the whole Boy Scout thing
from Cub Scounts to Explorers, from Bobcat to Eagle Scout, and was even a
counselor at the second largest Boy Scout camp in the United States, that
I was/am a revolutionary, something I reminded my Eagle Scout Board, when
I told them I was revolutionary, and that they might not want me, as I am
not the standard cookie cutter Eagle Scout.  I was rather surprised, 1964
was not at time being revolutionary was popular with the system.


Back to my first day at school, after my second threat of court action.

And yet I felt no hostility about either case. . .this behavior was soooo
outside my experience that I had no way of knowing what it was. . .yet.

There's yet another couple stories that end up with me threatening office
personnel, even a vice-principal, with calling the cops and suing them if
they didn't obey their own rules. . . .

I wasn't a renegade or a juvenile delinquent, heck I was on my way to get
my Eagle Scout award, and much more. . .but I was soo far OUTSIDE THE BOX
that they couldn't see me. . .and I couldn't see them. . . .

So, when it comes down to it, without the experiences of that first day--
and being threatened with being thrown out of school for the jeans--maybe
I would never have made it in time to catch the wave I surfed all the way
through from grade school, to junior high school, and through the kind of
college programs that allowed me to think up Project Gutenberg.



***Some extra notes that didn't fit in well in the above***


I was truly a child of the Atomic Age, so much so that when my mother said,
"Up and at 'em!" in the mornings, I thought she was saying, "Up and Atom!"

Because atom/atomic was synonymous with high energy back in those days....

Being a kid with LOTS of energy wasn't regarded as a bad thing back then.