Things They Did Not Teach Us in School

I love to watch the expression on the faces of the students I work with when I tell them that I was never taught to print.

When they hear that I learned cursive in first grade, they generally want to know, “What about kindergarten?”

Then I tell them that my school didn’t have kindergarten, and my mother saw no reason to send me to public school to play dress-up, play in the playground and the sandbox, and take naps. I had all of those things at home; no reason to catch other people’s germs.

Nowadays, kindergarten has replaced first grade in the learning department, and what my peers did in kindergarten, children now do in pre-school.

I only missed out on the socialization part, and I’m not sure I ever quite caught up.

But those are not the only differences in schools of today versus “in my day.”

I still think I had the advantage, learning cursive and never having been formally taught to print. Our teachers assumed we were all intelligent enough to figure out how to print. It isn’t that hard.

I did.  Well, with the exception of the letters that I reversed until mid-high school. Even those, I figured out ways to fix.

 Z, for example. I reversed that. But I discovered that if I wrote Zorro (a popular TV show of my childhood) on the bottom line of the letter, if all of the letters came before the Z when I tried to read it, it was backwards.

Now teachers teach the children who reverse b and d to make two fists with their thumbs up. The one that comes first (the left) is the b, while the one on the right is the d.

I had my own way. Make the bed.

Huh?

Well, you need a headboard and a foot board. Then put the pillows (the half circles that make up the rest of the two letters letters) in the middle. Then let e jump on it (since monkeys aren’t allowed to jump on the bed.)

Okay, it’s a bit out there. There I go, thinking outside the box again.

But having learned to write, there were other subjects to master. While I know when to use fewer and when to use less – something many do not – and which to/two/too to use, as well as when and how to use lie and lay, there were other things I did not learn in school.

For example, when my husband, Blue Scream of Jeff, told me he learned about the Vietnam War in school, I thought he was joking. Yes, he’s younger than I am by about a decade, but still! We did not learn that in school.

We lived through it.

When I was a senior in high school, they had finally finished arguing about what shape the table should be – I thought at the time round was a no-brainer – and had started the Paris Peace Talks. We sometimes watched that on television in Social Studies class.

Years later, after failing to get a job in my field of study from college, I fell into teaching fifth grade quite by accident. While the school was still as white as mine had been, some color had been introduced to the history books.

“In my day,” African Americans – who were called, by the nun who taught me, Negroes and Nigresses – were not introduced into American culture until we studied slavery. Yes, it was mentioned in passing that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson owned plantations, and therefore slaves – although Sally Hemmings was never mentioned in Catholic school! – the idea that there were free blacks in any of the northern states was something we were not told.

Imagine my surprise as a teacher when, preparing my class notes on the Boston Massacre, I discovered that the first person killed in the skirmish was a man of color, one Crispus Attucks! And he wasn’t the only black man who fought against the British! It was a revelation.

While I learned all sorts of things about Russia, India and China in World Cultures I and II, I never learned word one about the French Revolution. The first time I ever heard of Trafalgar was when I bought a Bee Gees album of that name (With Barry Gibb dressed as Lord Nelson after his having been shot).

We were taught about the French and Indian War – a war not between the French and the Indians – but no one ever mentioned that was a portion of the 7-Year’s War in Europe.

Likewise, we were taught nothing of Spanish, Italian or Scandinavian history, other than where history had to do with the popes or Christopher Columbus.

Moving on to Geography, we were taught countries of modern Europe, Asia and Africa – well the African countries with the names they had back “in my day.” But while Egypt has remained Egypt throughout history, I was never able to locate places like Persia, the Ottoman Empire and the Austro-Hungarian empire in relation to places we have now, like Iran, Iraq, Turkey, Bulgaria, Serbia, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Croatia, etc.

I only know Zimbabwe in Africa used to be what I knew as Rhodesia because it became Zimbabwe-Rhodesia while I was studying in the UK, and their news was full of that fact.

And what ever happened to Sparta? That was my favorite place in ancient Greece! I loved the story about the Spartan boy who stole the fox. You still have Athens, Thermopile and lots of other places, but just try to book a vacation to Sparta (or for that matter, Troy, to see the Trojan Horse.)

I suppose some years had too much jammed into them. Fourth grade was almost entirely the Middle Ages – which is probably why fourth grade was my favorite. Sixth grade had Greek, Roman and Ancient Egyptian history – which is probably why I absolutely hated sixth grade.

Seventh grade had Westward expansion and the Civil War, and Eighth grade covered the Reconstruction era, World War I (for about 5 minutes one afternoon), the great Depression (for a depressingly long time), World War II (forever, but without mentioning much of importance like the D-Day invasion or Iwo Jima), and the Korean War (which was only mentioned as having been a war).

While I believe in general I received an excellent education in my first 12 years of school, much of history was sketchy at best.

We learned about the wave of Irish immigration, followed by the Italian immigration, and then war and things, but we were never taught any reasons why those immigrants left their homes to come to our shores.

Even our shameful treatment of Native Americans was well hidden with excuses such as the idea that they were savages, most of whom refused to accept Catholic Christianity. No mention was ever made of small-pox-infected blankets being given to these people, or the fact that the US government violated every treaty it ever made with the Native Americans.

What I learned of the Potato Famine or Native American history came from my love of reading, well after I had finished my schooling.

All I know about the French Revolution came from reading Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities.

I suppose I could have been a history major in college, although I can’t see that as a good route to a career, especially since most of the history I did learn didn’t much interest me.

I loved the Middle Ages, but my parents refused my request to stay two extra terms at Penn State to earn a minor in Medieval History on top of my dual bachelor’s degrees.

Who knows where it could have led? I could have really been something at the Renaissance Faires!