I can't say "Argg! Fuck the system!" because the system has worked for me. I went to a private high school, got a degree from college, got another from graduate school, and now work as a successful engineer. It's not the path for everybody. I'm not one of those white-collar workers who spits at blue-collar workers; taking up a trade is admirable. I'm just a guy who realized a long time ago that I'd rather be doing work at a desk than with my hands.
I am, however, pro home schooling. This is because as much as I love learning and academics, the public school system has WAY too much unnecessary bullshit. To sum it up: there are too many requirements for things that have absolutely NOTHING to do with learning. No wearing hats? Reporting to study hall, where there was no studying? No writing in green-ink pens? The list goes on. Never mind having to interact with all the other students, and dealing with gossip, herd conformity, and all of that crap.
One teacher that comes to mind as being the very epitome of these rules-for-the-sake-of-rules was Mrs. Croughwell, my 6th grade teacher. Recently I came across a paper from her class. I'll explain this one in a moment.
And here's a second visual for you. Squat down on the ground, with your knees still pointing up, so that you're resting on the backs of your heels. Now pull up the front of your shirt, and pull it down over the front of your legs. If you did this right, your knees should now look like enormous breasts, and you should be less than 4 feet tall.
You now have some idea of what my 6th grade math teacher looked like. She also had hair like a brown Brillo pad, skin that closely matched that description, and reading glasses so thick that they'd probably burn the school down if they were left by a sunny window.
One of the absolute worst teachers I ever had, was Mrs. Croughwell (rhymes with "troll"). Or as she was better known by other students, "Mrs. Cruel".
Actually, to her credit, she had reportedly gotten better by the time I had her. In the years before I ended up having her, I had heard many horror stories from older kids in the neighborhood. One parent, Mrs. Tesdale (who coincidentally ended up raising a few math geniuses; her son who was my age was taking calculus by the time he was a junior in high school), told me that her soft-spoken daughter had Mrs. Croughwell. However, she was too soft-spoken for Mrs. Croughwell's tastes. Because after school she would hold her and several others behind for "screaming lessons". This involved taking the quiet students into the empty gym, and commanding them scream at the top of their lungs. I also heard stories about her taking off her clog to hit some students over the head.
I finished grammar school in 1986, after which the school system was changed. From that point on, it was broken up into grammar school (grades k-5), then middle school (grades 6-8) and then high school (grades 9-12). Croughwell was a 6th or 7th grade teacher, who, like me, got moved to the middle school. As luck would have it, she became my 6th grade math teacher.
The year started off great. She gave out candy on the second day. She was laid-back, yet enthusiastic about the subjects. We sincerely had fun learning about different things in math. I even impressed her on the first day, when she wrote some exponents on the board, and I was the only one who could answer what they all meant (or at least have the bravery to raise my hand and answer the question).
But SOMETHING happened. I don't know what it was. I've seen this happen with other teachers. They start off nice at the start of the year, then by the end she's ready to torture each and every student. Looking back as an adult, I'm sure it has to do with being stuck with the same group of kids for a year, and the shitty-paying job of teaching, and pressure as deadlines approach.
She was one of these teachers with really annoying little rules. For example, your numbers had to be written a certain way. If you didn't do it, it was wrong. I remember my friend Matthew getting a 0 on his test because he wrote his decimal answers like this: "0.042" (with a leading zero) instead of ".042" (without the leading zero). The answers were probably correct too; this was a friend who ended up providing invaluable help to me with geometry homework when we were later both in high school. Likewise, if the answer was "3 centimeters" and you wrote "3", it was wrong. As for me, before the first half of the school year even ended, she had me taken out of ATP (an extra curricular group for exceptionally smart students). And there were the degrading insults, either to your face or in front of the whole class, as the year continued.
And yes, there was the test you can see in the photo. I remember this vividly. First of all, all papers you submitted to her had to include 4 things: your name, your homeroom number, which math class you were in (these were denoted by color) and the present date. And they all had to be in the correct place. I remember getting yelled before the class for doing it wrong once.
So after filling out all the answers on this test, I was about to turn it in. Then suddenly I noticed the words on the front page: "Do not print". Oh crap. Crap! Obviously, I didn't have time to erase every answer and rewrite it in cursive. So in fear of getting all of my printed "yes" and "no" questions marked wrong, I quickly scrawled over each and every one of them with the correct cursive writing, "yes" or "no".
Mrs. Croughwell, as you can see from her written comment, saw the results as simply being extremely messy handwriting. What I SHOULD have done was explained what happened, and showed her one of my many A+ handwriting papers from my English class (my English teacher adored by hand writing -- it was good when I had the opportunity to do it correctly, instead of as a disguise to put over printed writing). But alas, no. I hadn't yet been toughened up to the skilled debater I am today. I went to see Mrs. Croughwell, and she gave me two pieces of paper upon which I was assigned to cursively write the entire alphabet one or two dozen times, both in upper and lowercase.
And this is 6th grade. I hadn't had to write out a cursive letter alphabet since 2nd grade. Imagine being assigned by your math teacher to write the alphabet, at age 12.
I did however try to leave an anonymous note on her desk on the last day of school. A really nasty one. I can't remember the full details, but I do remember ending with "P.S. - Fuck you". And I knew I was speaking for other students fed up with her shit, not just me. Unfortunately, long story short: the note was found before the end of the day that year. (I watched from the adjacent room as she went in and found it, and read it, then showed it to the other teachers in the hallway. I also saw my history teacher frustratingly rip up something in front of them that wasn't the note. I always wondered what that could have been.) Eventually my homeroom teacher confronted me, and while I didn't confess, she knew it was me anyway.
What busted me? Well here's the tragic irony.
In 6th grade, my friend Frank and I used to draw math and science stuff on the side chalkboard. Stuff like chemical equations, formulas like "C = pi x diameter". Why did we do this? I don't know. I guess we thought it looked brainy and cool, like something out of a mad scientist's lab. You would think that a teacher might have noticed and say "Hey, they're doing stuff that kids don't normally learn until they get to high school! We should complement them and ask them about that." But alas, no. Unfortunately, a couple of these doodles were on the back of the piece of paper I used to write the note to Mrs. Croughwell. My English teacher didn't know what pi was, but she knew whose doodle that was.
I was sent to the principal on that last day. Mr. John Murtagh was actually the principle of my grammar school too. Like myself and Croughwell, he got transferred to this new middle school. Though he was long-time buddies with Croughwell. He took a stroll with me down the hallway and said "Bill, you're a good student and there's no reason to screw that all up on the last day. So you know what I'm going to do? I'm going to forget about it." I'm sure he had bigger fish to fry. I was however escorted to the teacher's lounge where a quiet, sobbing Mrs. Croughwell sat, smoking one of her awful brown cigarettes. She didn't look at me. I gave her my mandatory apology. The principle asked her if she'd like to say anything. She sighed and nervously shook her head.
Like I said, I felt like I was writing a note on behalf of others. All those other students whose class life she made miserable. I can't emphasize that enough. And from her reaction, I think she knew that. It obviously hit her, hard. I don't really regret doing it, especially if she finally reevaluated her dictatorship as a teacher and changed her ways after that.
I was originally going to end this essay with the line "I would love for the opportunity to meet her face to face again, just so that I could hold up and wave my Bachelor's and Masters in Mathematics degree in her face." But now that I wrote all of this out, I feel like I've successfully done that in some strange sort of way.
I do, however, still wish for the opportunity to meet up with my abusive 1st grade reading teacher, and hit her on the head with a pencil like she used to do with us. It's a wonder I made it through academia.
