I almost flunked out of high school. Two things saved me. First of all my mother had had a year of college and she had been a public school teacher in the 1920s. The other was a special characteristic of the backward State of South Carolina in the benighted age of segregation when everybody else was smarter than we were.
South Carolina has the highest proportion of military veterans among all the states in the Union. It has been that way since I was born. That proportion has always been even higher than the Volunteer State of Tennessee. When the GI Bill of Rights came in at the end of World War II, this presented a problem. A lot of vets qualified for the GI Bill of Rights but they hadn’t finished, or even gone to, high school.
This was before we had the GED, where a person above 19 years of age could take a test and get the equivalent of a high school diploma. Back then, what we now call the SAT was called the National College Boards. The University of South Carolina wanted to say that anyone who passed the National College Boards, which, after all, were NATIONAL, could enter the University of South Carolina.
The national accreditation board went berserk. If a university down in what they called “peanut” and “hillbilly” country were allowed to do that, it would destroy the value of a high school diploma, which they also accredited. They threatened to take away South Carolina’s accreditation if it adopted that rule.
On the other hand, the University was not about to keep thousands of self-educated veterans out of school if they didn’t spend years going back to high school. So a compromise was reached. The University adopted a rule that a person who scored in the TOP QUARTER of the national college boards could enter whether he had had any formal schooling or not. So the national accreditation group accepted that.
My mother knew that the reason I was almost failing out of high school at ages fifteen and sixteen was because I was bored into helplessness. So she arranged for me to take an intelligence test. That was before my drinking days, so My IQ was out of sight. That convinced my father to let me go ahead, take the College Board exam at sixteen, and go to the University.
If my mother had not been a teacher or if I were anywhere but South Carolina, I would have flunked out of high school. I had already done plenty of manual and skilled work on our brick plant, so I would have become a skilled worker.
Whenever Mensa, the high-IQ group, is discussed, reporters always comment on the large number of manual laborers who belong to it. There are, of course, endless numbers more who would qualify but it never occurs to them to try. If you’re not “educated” you’re not supposed to be smart.
So, besides my being raised with working people in Pontiac, South Carolina, there is this other reason I am able to deal with leaders of grassroots, working-class protests. I respect them, and it shows. So they trust me.
Let me add one more part of my history which shows just how smart these “educated” people are. When I was flunking out of high school, there were national SUBJECT tests. That is, all the students in selected schools throughout the country who were just finishing a course in basic algebra or second year history or whatever were tested on their knowledge of the subject in order to compare teaching nationwide. Columbia High School, which I attended the last two years of my high school career, was one of the schools in that national test.
My teachers always made damned sure that I was part of the group taking EACH of those subject tests. I made them look good. In every single subject I scored above 95% in subject knowledge, and usually at 99%, compared to the NATIONAL average, including the much-publicized, highly financed schools with rich kids in New England. I was specifically selected as the shining example of a South Carolinian who learned all about the subjects in our poorly-financed school system which was forty-eighth in the ranking of forty-eight states.
The SAME teachers who insisted that I show how much I knew about each subject were the SAME teachers who gave me Cs and Ds in their courses!! They were following the grading techniques Mommy Professor had given them in college.
It never once occurred to a single one of these teachers that there was something wrong here! The fact I was their star example of someone who knew the subject and that they were giving me low to failing marks never struck them as the slightest contradiction. It never even occurred to them that there was something wrong with what Mommy Professor had taught them.
And that, boys and girls, is what I mean by Militant Ignorance.
#1 by Alan B. on 10/15/2006 - 2:36 pm
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Regiment, “To subject to uniformity and rigid order”. High School is all about conformity, teachers expect students to regurgitate what they say and not think beyond the group which relates to the extremism that exists today in our public schools and universities today. Think left act left or face the the wrath of the system, or in Bob’s case, wander beyond the fence led to poor grades. Just think Bob, if the drug Ritalin been around back then, the system would have doped you up to dummy you down.
Remember, it’s about conformity.
#2 by Sam on 10/15/2006 - 5:58 pm
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I thought all my schooling was a terrible joke.
Middle school thought me valuable lessons about authority figures, minorities with power, anti-white racism and how WWII was the only thing that ever happened in history. Ever since then I’ve had a problem listening to anyone telling me what to do. Especially if they include the words “its for your own good” or “i have the rules behind me”. The law is an ass.
Depression, boredom, and hopelessness were the three feelings that weighed heavily on me. My teachers could never figure me out. My parents said i wasent trying hard enough and they were damn right, but they refused to listen to my reasoning about why i was failing. I just couldn’t take the busy work. I could never figure out how answering a bunch of mindless questions on a piece of paper signified i sufficiently learned a concept or historical event. it produced nothing but 30 other similar copies. The curriculum in my mind came to signify conformity, there was no room for independent thought.
I realized in late 2002 that the teachers were the products their “education”, the standard attitudes developed in their jobs and the JOB ITSELF was the problem. I realized that underperforming schools wasn’t just the folly of the student, it was the system. It failed big time (or succeeded) and no adult could see there was no hope in reforming it, they all wanted to see more money go to it. I knew what i was feeling had to be shared by others. I made one of my lifelong goals that day, the complete and total destruction of the education system.
Once again i feel depressed knowing that i still wont be learning by attending the university system, but this time spending vast amounts of money to be there. I really don’t know what to do about college and the depression both are tender on my nerves right now.
#3 by Pain on 10/16/2006 - 12:20 am
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“They were following the grading techniques Mommy Professor had given them in college. It never once occurred to a single one of these teachers that there was something wrong here”
If they did differently, they would have been fired same as today. Your youth was stained by an adults’ fear of money.
#4 by Elizabeth on 10/16/2006 - 9:13 pm
Sam,
A good college is REALLY different from high school. I didn’t go to a good college, but it wasn’t high school, and it had a BIG library. I got a lot more out of that library than I did out of most of my classes. I did make a REALLY BIG mistake by not trying to talk a friendly professor or two into signing off on some independent study projects so I could get some paper evidence that I
know some stuff that the college didn’t teach at the time.
Look for a state college with a lot of computer, physical science and engineering programs. That means there’s a higher likelihood that there will be lot of smart people around, some of whom
might be really interesting. Also, don’t feel obligated to just talk to folks in your own
age group. Some of us older students — I’m 48 — have been around and might want to hear
what you have to say. Just understand that we might have heard it before — from ourselves, 10,
20, 30 years earlier.
You can get a much better estimate of the REAL student viewpoint by looking at the bumperstickers
on the cars in the commuter parking lots. You can also get a little dizzy comparing the bumperstickers in the faculty and staff parking lots with the bumperstickers in the commuter
parking lots.
Commuter student.
#5 by Elizabeth on 10/16/2006 - 9:19 pm
When I took the PSAT and SAT, I scored in the high 90s (percentile) on the verbal
and the low 70s on the math.
The principal at the school where I took the PSAT accused me of deliberately doing
badly on the math section to look dumb for the boys.
I knew something was wrong with my concentration in math class beginning the year
before, but kept my mouth shut about it until I was in college, when Ritalin
became available for what we now call ADD. The Ritalin helped my concentration, but
I’d had had enough of being regularly humiliated in math class, so I was pretty solidly
non-numerical liberal arts as an undergraduate.
#6 by Sam on 10/17/2006 - 10:33 am
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Elizabeth,
I’m scared to death of college, like i am with the DMV. I really don’t know the first place to start to even get into one. I’ve been stalling on taking my SAT’s for reasons unknown.
My problem with math is that I’m unable to put the formula for problems to use and end walking away in frustration. After a couple of failed courses, I’d rather keep what little pride I have left.