Education in America

Education in America

I’ve been watching the national debate on our educational system for many years now. I have very mixed emotions on the whole subject. At different times I can cheer or I can cry.

Back in the 1970’s I volunteered to serve on the School Accountability Board in Western Montrose County, Colorado, which was trying to develop a common curriculum so students could move from one school to another with less difficulty. One evening we had a special guest from Denver who worked high up in the state school system and came to tell us what we needed to know.

We watched the ancient equivalent of a PowerPoint presentation only with a slide projector and a Kodak Carousel full of slides. About three slides in I noticed a spelling error, and I carefully noted it on my notepad--something like, “On the third slide, the rule is ‘i before e except after c....’” and planned on telling him quietly after the presentation, as I was sure he would want to know. Could have just been a typo, you know.

Well, I spotted another misspelling on slide five, and then more on seven and eight. Some of them were completely different words than the ones intended. Some slides had more than one word misspelled. By the time he got to slide thirty or so I had wadded up the paper and tossed it in the trash. Not only had he gotten his degrees and accreditation without learning to spell, he hadn’t even learned to check it with a dictionary open beside his writing. He may have been dyslexic--I don’t know. But he was also lazy and careless.

Needless to say, nobody referenced him again in our discussions.

Mr. Richard Jackson taught me several math classes at Lodi Academy in my last two years of high school. He was probably the best teacher I ever had. He was tall and lanky, much as Lincoln must have been. He was not handsome, and he was very SQUARE. Maybe that’s good for a math teacher! His habit of using his middle finger to point out numbers on the blackboard some times made it hard for a bunch of teenage boys to not laugh out loud, but he never seemed to notice.

His talent was making us think, not just memorize facts. He would basically follow the book, but expand on points we needed to understand. In Solid Geometry class we spent a whole period trying to prove that the big slide rule hanging on the wall at the front of the room either sagged in the middle or not. By the end of the period we all understood that by definition it most assuredly did, even though we could not measure it.

When a question arose during Trigonometry class as to what good knowing this was for anybody, he devised a plan to show us. 

Lodi Academy was a boarding school, with the girl’s dormitory on the south side and the boy’s dorm on the north side and the main administration and classroom building was right in the middle between them. Nobody in either dorm could see the other dorm, even with binoculars or telescope. I think it was planned that way!

The next day Mr. Jackson showed up with a transit and a 100 foot tape and told us to find the distance between the center of the girl’s dorm front door and the center of the boy’s dorm front door. He suggested we measure to a point by the flagpole in front of the admin building visible from both dorms.

He had notified the dean of girls, so she didn’t call the cops or freak out because a bunch of boys were stomping around on the front porch of the girl’s dorm. (This was in 1960--no girls ever took Trig back then.) We soon had a straight line measured from the girl’s dorm to a stake by the flagpole, and another straight line from there to the boy’s dorm. We set up the transit above the stake and determined the exact angle formed by the two lines.

After making sure we all had the same measurements, the class was over. Our homework was to find the distance between the dorm doors with the two vectors and the included angle. We had a blast bisecting the triangle we had into two right triangles and using the Trigonometry tables to calculate all sides and summing up the distance we needed to know. We were all comparing notes and helping each other until we all had the same answer.

The next day in class we all compared our answers to the teacher’s diagram and answer on the blackboard. Of course, we all had the correct answer, but more importantly, we understood the need for trigonometry and the enjoyment of knowing something that most people never learn. It’s fun! I still love surveying, and I found other uses for trig in machine work and turbine diagnostics in my job later in power generation plants.

Later when I became a pilot, I learned spherical trigonometry so I could write a computer program to calculate and print out my flight plans. All because one teacher taught me to love trigonometry!

In the fall of 1971, I quit my job in Woodland, CA, where I made parts for everything from tractors to Rolls-Royce’s in a small machine shop. I found a job in Silver Springs, NV, creating an experimental engine from plans and raw steel. Great job--I couldn’t wait to get to work each day--but low pay and no benefits. I knew I wouldn’t be staying long.

The reason I mention this is that our daughter Darlene had to change from a California school to a school in Fernley, Nevada. About Christmas time my wife Carolyn got a message to talk to her teacher at school. She said, “Mrs. Rogers, do you know your daughter doesn’t know her multiplication tables? She should have learned them last year. We may have to hold her back.”

Thus began our first stint as home school teachers. We got flash cards and spent afternoons after school and she knew those tables backwards and forwards in a week! She went on to excel in math, and I had to study myself to learn the “New Math” so I could help her later.

This probably explains my interest in curriculum coordination years later in Colorado.

Our son Wes didn’t have too much trouble in school in Colorado up to the second grade, except he had one teacher who explained to us that he wasn’t getting all his work in because he was falling asleep in class. We asked why she didn’t wake him up, and she seemed to think that was our fault, somehow or other. But we could see he was reading well and learning  fast, so we didn’t worry much.

Then we moved to Winnemucca, Nevada. I still have trouble talking about the Winnemucca school system without breaking into tears or screaming.

Wesley started for the first time trying to find ways to avoid going to school. He had stomach aches. He had headaches. He felt sick. If we made him go, the teachers would call and berate us for sending a sick kid to school. If we kept him home, the teachers would call and berate us for keeping him from school. 

His grades began to plummet, even though he passed the annual tests several grades ahead of his actual grade.  In the fourth grade Wes was reading at the twelfth grade level. One day I came home with both Carolyn and Wes crying because his Social Studies teacher had given him an “F” grade on a workbook he had spent two weeks on. I drove to the school to confront the teacher, workbook in hand, but she was smart enough not to be there. I might still be in jail otherwise.

We found this teacher brags about flunking most of her students through the years. She knocks off a letter grade for every punctuation error, spacing error, spelling error, etc. with no chance for rework. I went back home and told Wes that he had to go back to class and learn whatever he could, but that he didn’t have to do any work for her ever again unless he wanted to. I told him it was a lot easier to get an “F” than doing all the work he did. I don’t know what kind of a sadistic b----- she is, but I can’t think of a better way to demoralize and demotivate students. With the pressure off, he actually finished the year with a “B” in her class.

Wes had another teacher who belittled him in class, and called him “Weird Wes” in front of the other students. Picking up the cue, other students would trip him or knock his books out of his arms going down the hall. How do you fix it when the teacher is the bully?

We became desperate to find a solution to the problem. At our own expense we took him to a pediatric neurologist in San Francisco for testing, looking for some kind of disability. After hours of testing, the doctor said his problem was his school, not him. He said if he could be put in a private school in Marin County, he would shine. 

That was out of the question financially for us. We went back to the Winnemucca school system and told them what we found, and they were offended and defensive, of course.

After another year worse than the one before, we sent Wes to a school in Ojai, CA, with a month long summer program for students who test high and grade low, again at our considerable expense. For admission he needed a recommendation from the Winnemucca school system, and they seemed reluctant to give it. The superintendent made a big show of looking up the word “integrity” in the dictionary to make sure Wes had enough of it. 

He loved the school at Ojai and made friends with some very rich kids, including the daughters of Kasey Kasem,of Top Forty fame.

When we returned to pick him up, the teachers could not believe that he would be having trouble in school. He was tops in the computer class, and near the top in all the other classes. One of his teachers said,”He is a teacher’s dream. Just give him the book and the next day he’s read it and can answer any question you ask.” 

We knew that if we went back and reported what we had found, the reaction would be the same as the year before. We asked the superintendent of the Ojai school to call the Winnemucca school and tell them what they found, and they promised to do so. 

They evidently did it well, because we found an attitude change immediately on returning. They had been threatening to hold Wes back for low grades, but now there was no more talk of that. They allowed him to start his Freshman year in high school.

Not long after school started, Wes started having stomach pains again. But these were not the same as before, and one evening we rushed him to the ER with pain so bad he was vomiting. Eventually, when a surgeon came in, they scanned him with a procedure that showed one kidney was greatly enlarged because of a blocked ureter. They immediately got him to Reno for major surgery which saved the kidney. 

He had to miss about a month of school recuperating, and the school was reluctant to let him continue in the same grade, even though he had kept up his schoolwork. They said the teacher didn’t have time to grade it all. They let him return provisionally, but then they harassed Wes and us constantly about him missing days when he was still not feeling well. Once again it was either us sending him to school sick or us keeping him home too much. We found out later the pressure was causing Wes to think about suicide or running away from home. We had enough!

We went to the school board and told them we were taking him out of school, and we would be home schooling him with correspondence courses from American School out of Chicago. We met all the state’s legal requirements, so they had to let us take him out. This was years before the evangelical Christians got the laws changed to make it easier to home school.

After they gave their approval, I stood and addressed the school administrators, telling them they had failed Wes, but that they had failed him for the last time. Then we left.

It was like the sun came out after a dark storm for all of us

Wes thrived with home schooling. He could do the work in the morning before lunch and be free all afternoon. He had no problem passing the annual testing at school. His only regret was they would not let him continue in the band playing his French horn. (The law has since been changed to require the school to allow home schooled kids to play in the band and go out for athletics.)

The correspondence courses were dull reading, of course, so we supplemented them with lots of travel and hands on experiments when we could. In my spare time at work I made a series of nearly perfect one inch square cubes from iron, copper, aluminum, lead, and other materials I found around the shop. Using a 12” wooden ruler balanced across a pencil, we found we could calculate the specific gravity of each metal by noting the ratio on the ruler when we balanced them against each other. 

Incidentally, he also learned the properties of different metals, and the principles of ratios, arms, moments and mass.

After we had nearly worn them out, I loaned them to friends who were home schooling their children and they never did come back. I hope they gave many parents as much use as they gave us.

Later Wes chose to take the GED, which he passed easily, and went to Elko Community College with a full scholarship, graduating with an Associate Degree in Nursing, with honors. He later went to the University of Oregon in Corvallis, OR, where he got his Bachelor’s Degree and this year, his Masters in Public Health. 

Wes’ first wife came with a daughter, just as mine did, and he raised her as his own, as did I. Long after they had gotten a divorce, we continued to treat her as our own granddaughter, and she stayed with both Wes and us on summers and vacations. She was going to Arizona public schools, and by the third grade it was obvious she was having trouble. She could not read at all, and was afraid to even look at a book because she had been shamed and ridiculed at school for not being smart enough to read. By gently questioning her, we found that she did not understand the relationship between sounds and letters.

Carolyn and I invested in a set of “Hooked on Phonics” books and teaching materials, and we also asked teachers we knew if there was a way to get around her fear of books. Wilma Wright, Carolyn’s sister-in-law, suggested making a game of learning the sounds, so we used just the flash cards at first, one at a time, to teach the sounds of the letters. Very soon she could see the sounds in short words, and as she learned more sounds, she was soon reading us the words on billboards as we drove down the road. When she realized she could read after all, she began to pick up the books and read them too. Soon she was teaching herself, which of course is the whole idea of reading.

In one short summer she went from last in the class and maybe being held back a grade to being at the top of her class and helping the teacher with other kids having trouble with reading. When she wanted to visit with us one Christmas vacation for an extra week, the school in Arizona was pleased to grant her the extra time when they found out she was staying with the grandparents who taught her to read.

One summer at the power plant where I worked a new engineer was hired on. As the machinist usually works closely with the engineer I went to his office and introduced myself and we began talking. One of his concerns was his young son and how the schools were in Winnemucca. I started to tell him but I soon broke down sobbing. I was embarrassed and he was shocked. I swear I suffered from PTSD for awhile after we got Wes out of the Winnemucca schools.

When I regained my composure, I recommended he move to a house somewhere out in Grass Valley southwest of town, where there was a brand new school with a lot of new teachers who were still enthusiastic about teaching kids and not burned out, cynical, or sadistic as too many in the Winnemucca school system are. I have heard good things about the Grass Valley School for years now. The new engineer thanked me several times for the information. His son did well and loved the school.

How can I sum up what I think of the educational system in America? I have many relatives and friends who are teachers and administrators in the public schools. I know some who think the whole system stinks, and can get on a real rant about teaching to the test, No Child Left Behind, and other quick fixes for what everyone knows is a failed system. It is teaching too many kids to hate school, losing too many kids to suicide or just dropping out, and graduating kids who can’t read or write.

I can make a few observations based on my personal experience. Years of classroom experience and degrees on the wall don’t mean as much to me as real enthusiasm and a zeal for teaching children--inspiring them to love learning all their lives. Checking off the boxes and having the kids do the problems on page 24 is no substitute for having a passion for the children. Sometimes you have to put the book down, go outside and find out how far apart the dormitory doors are!

I cringe when I hear a teacher try to tell me how much more he knows about teaching than I do.  He may be right, but I’m still picking up his failures and making them successful child by child. A modicum of humility presents a much better picture than self-important boasting. I hate the belief that the only way a person can learn is to sit in a classroom and listen to a teacher talk. If a person can and will read, there are books that will teach you everything you can learn in a classroom. You just don’t get paper proof.

My wife and I surprised ourselves once by comparing what we would do if we won the lottery, and we both found out we wanted to create a free school in Winnemucca for all the kids who are failing in the local public schools. We want the kids who don’t fit in, the ones the teachers think are stupid, the ones who need a different way of teaching to find their unique skills and abilities.

We want to hire teachers with a passion for teaching a kid to love learning. My son sent his daughter to a Montessori school, and there are some great ideas there, too. Art and music appreciation, as well as STEM subjects, are vital for creating people who love living and learning. 

Maybe we should buy a lottery ticket someday! It might improve our chance of winning a little bit.

Don Rogers 10/13/2013