Thoughts on my schooldaze

In an article in the current issue of Voices Jon Farber refers to the angry misanthropic spinster teachers he had in elementary school who "treated him to the last dying strike from the scorpion of 19th century pedagogy". As a product of a preparatory school for girls, I am all too familiar with this brand of teacher. I was terrified by teachers pretty much non-stop until late high school. Maybe by then I knew I was getting out of there soon and they wouldn't be coming with me. Not that all of the teachers were horrible. They were not. But the school was founded by a spinster and administered by her spinster best friend who worked at the school long after the first headmistress died. In fact this dried up relic was still there during my fourteen year sentence at that academy and scared me the entire time. I'd hear people say what a wonderful person she was, but all I knew was every time she looked at me, it was like that finger writing on Belshazzar's wall "You have been weighed in the balances and found wanting". I still get a knot in my stomach thinking of her.

Like Farber, I endured some very much out-dated instruction. I was amazed when I went to college and learned what other kids my age had studied in high school. In retrospect, I am grateful for having to study Latin, for a superb American History class and for exposure to a lot of Shakespeare, however my science knowledge is weak and what we did in the way of "analyzing" great literature was simply criminal.

I subscribe to the Writer's Almanac which puts a poem a day in my mailbox. Today's poem is The Walrus and the Carpenter by Lewis Carroll. In fifth grade, I had to memorize the verse in the middle starting with "The time has come, the walrus said..." That one verse was all we memorized! As I read the entire poem today, I realized it was an hilarious allegory of my education. We girls were the eager little oysters and we were taught (even required to memorize) so much nonsense. Were those spinster teachers identifying with the Walrus and the Carpenter? We were the children of privilege. It wouldn't surprise me if our teachers often resented their little charges who vacationed in Florida and played at the local country club. So we all were required to commit to memory one verse smack dab in the middle of a poem about cannibalism. Go figure! No wonder I was afraid.