My Middle School Education

For most of my childhood, I was educated in a private school. As busing was being argued in legislative chambers across the country, I avoided having to board the cheese wagon for a lengthy ride to an integrated school. I wore a uniform which identified me as a member of a select group of lucky kids. I was overseen by men and women who were committed to my education. They were so dedicated that they never married. You probably think I was privileged. I would think that too until I tell you that the private school I went to was Catholic. Now you’re likely thinking,

“You poor bastard.”

Some of my classmates were into the whole religious thing. They could recite biblical versus, were altar servers, and knew all the seven sacraments. They used words like “ecumenical” and "liturgical" in meaningful sentences. Not only did they know who the Pope was, they could list them in order all the way back to Saint Peter. I, on the other hand, flunked religion. In a parochial school failing nonsecular instruction draws out the ire of the teaching staff. Back then Catholic schools were still taught mostly by nuns, unmarried, childless women who wore dark clothing. They were called by God to live a lonely, celibate life. Their focus was supposed to be their parish, not their husband nor their kids. That was the theory anyway. In practice, raising children causes you to be more introspective. Having kids enrolls you in an upper level course on patience. When you experience birth, it softens you. Before kids, you sympathize. After, you empathize.

For the first two years of my Catholic education, I didn't say a word in school. I was too scared. All the nuns were old, mean and French in that order. They each had odd things about them like Sister Ahmad, who taught third grade, always asking,

“What did Jesus said?”

None of us kids ever corrected her grammar because we were afraid of her. Sister Ahmad was a thousand years old. She had no qualms with corporal punishment, and we all entered third grade knowing it. Most of the nuns didn’t hit us, but a few were quite adept at sparing with defenseless children. In fact, the only time Sister Ahmad smiled was when she was exercising the devil out of some hapless kid. On the first day of school we lined up in the front of the class as Sister Ahmad read off our names then assigned us a desk. When my name was called, I walked forward. Sister Ahmad noticed that my tie was black with thin red stripes, not the solid dark blue required by the uniform code. She pointed to me and angrily asked,

"Why is your tie like that?"

I froze. Sister Ahmad continued badgering the witness,

"Why don't you have a tie like everyone else?"

I tried to speak, but I could see on her face that it wouldn't matter what I said. She leaned forward then yanked on my tie as she commanded,

"Get the right one!"

Sister Madeline was the fourth grade teacher. She was very tall. She had accidentally lopped off the end of her middle finger with a paper cutter. To punish kids that got out of line she would make them hold her foreshortened digit. She once told this story to us,

A poor boy was very sad. He had to weed a large field. He didn’t think he could do it. A little angel appeared before him and said,

“What’s wrong poor boy?”

“I have to weed this field, and I can’t do it,” the boy said.

The little angel told the boy to weed a small patch which he did because it was easy. When he finished, the little angel said,

“Now do this patch.”

The poor boy weeded it because it was easy too. The little angel had the boy weed patches after patch until the whole field was done.

What’s the moral to the story?

I raised my hand. Sister Madeline called on me,

“Bobby Languedoc thinks he has an answer.”

Now here is where good judgement and youth do not intersect. I said,

“Forget the moral to the story. This kid saw an angel?”

From the look on her face I thought her habit was going to burst into flame. I was lucky though. Instead of having to clutch her amputated stub of a finger, Sister Madeline resorted to her second go to punishment, rapping you on the head with the stump.

Sister Evangeline was the fifth grade teacher. For some reason, she was always spitting up phlegm even in the summer. If she made a math error on the board and one of us pointed it out, she would say,

“Thank you teacher.”

Sister Evangeline had no need for science so she skipped that subject in favor of extra tutelage in French. My father had a subscription to National Geographic from which I got all my science instruction in grade school. Once Sister Evangaline asked us,

“What causes the tides?”

I had just read an article about how gravitational attraction between the earth and moon resulted in two bulges of water in the ocean moving around the planet. My hand shot up. Sister Evangeline said,

“Bobby Languedoc thinks he has an answer.”

Confidently, I responded, “The moon causes the tides.”

Before I had a chance to elaborate, Sister Evangeline interrupted,

“God causes the tides, not the moon.”

I thought of Galileo when the Inquisition put him under house arrest for stating that the sun and not the earth was the center of the solar system.

“I’m pretty sure it’s the moon,” I issued.

“Who made the moon?” Sister Evangeline asked.

I hesitated as I tried to recall previous issues of National Geographic.

“God made the moon!” she shot back.

I got off easier than Galileo on that exchange. All I had to do is write “God made the moon” on the board a hundred times while my fellow students mocked me.

On another occasion, Sister Evangeline was seated at her desk in the front of the room when she reminded us that Jesus was born on Christmas Day in a manger because there was no room in the inn. I had read a newspaper article that stated that the actual day Jesus was born was likely not in the winter because shepherds didn't tend sheep then. The author suggested that December 25 was chosen as a day of christian celebration to compete with pagan festivities around the winter solstice on the 20th. Quoting the article I noted,

"The Gospel doesn't say anything about the season when Jesus was born."

Sister Evangeline glared at me at length, her face flush with anger. She wheezed audibly as she labored to breathe through ample pent-up loathing. Flinging open a drawer to her desk, she retrieved a green grade book which she flipped open. Snapping up a pencil, she licked the end then peered through her bifocals as she scratched something on the page. She closed the book abruptly then returned it to the drawer which she slammed shut. She paused briefly as she glanced in my direction then said,

"The three wise men brought gold, frankincense and myrrh."

To this day I don't know what Sister Evangeline wrote in that book, but I'm sure it wasn't a praising acknowledgement of my extensive understanding of historical events.

Sister Stellar was the sixth grade teacher. She was short and had a scar on her chin. A classmate of mine once mused that her scar was from a bullwhip accident while under instruction when she was living in the order. Sister Stellar hated when any of us looked to the back of the church during mass. She would point any infraction outright in the middle of the service by yelling,

“Bobby Languedoc is more interested in what’s going on in the BACK of the church.”

The priest conducting mass would frown after Sister Stellar's frequent outbursts which she took as approval, but I was pretty certain he didn’t appreciate the frequency of the disciplinary disruption which was more distracting than some kid glancing over their shoulder towards the choir. You can always tell the Catholics who were confirmed as adults. They’re the parishioners who look about the church during mass. I alway feel compelled to tell them,

“The miracle is happening up at the alter.”

But I never say anything.

Sister Betty Ann taught seventh grade. She was on loan from a parish in Kentucky. She was tasked to venture up here and straighten us yankees out. Every Wednesday morning the whole school went to mass. After each service, Sister Betty Ann sauntered to the front of the church and critiqued our participation by grade. She would call out the fourth grade for not singing loud enough or the sixth grade for not enunciating during the Lord’s Prayer. We were all inadequate sinners not worthy of our station. Once Sister Betty Ann played The Devil Went Down to Georgia for us then asked,

“What's the meaning of this song?”

I raised my hand. Sister Betty Ann said with a twang,

“Bobby Languedoc thinks he has an answer.”

“I don’t know what that song is about, but who taught the devil how to play the fiddle?”

“How would I know that?” Sister Betty Ann exclaimed.

"Wasn't it a sin for Johnny to gamble his soul for a golden fiddle?"

"Yes, it was."

“How come the devil admitted to Johnny that he was a better fiddle player? Doesn’t seem like the type.”

“I don’t know."

"What key did the devil play in?"

"It's just a song."

“What does ‘chicken in a bread pan picken` out dough’ mean?'”

“What?”

"Sister, why do we get presents on Christmas when it's Jesus's birthday?"

“Because, uh...”

"Sister, do you hear God's voice in your head?"

"Yes! I mean no..."

"If God knows everything, does he need to know how to read?"

"Huh?"

By the time I had reached seventh grade, my education was complete. Sure I had a lot to learn, but I no longer feared humiliation. My parents scraped up what little money they had to send three kids to Catholic school, and we heard about the sacrifices they made often. In 1976, my father went on strike from his factory job, and mid year he stopped paying the tuition. The school sent my parents a letter stating that if they didn't resume payment, I wouldn't be allowed to take finals and would have to repeat the sixth grade.

I wore the wrong tie all through middle school receiving admonition from many of the nuns for what they believed was my brazen rule breaking. The truth was my parents were often strapped for cash even in good times. My Catholic education taught me a lot. As my parents cobbled together what they had to get by on a limited budget, I learned to absorb aversion as I stood out from the crowd, not for academic achievement but for my inability to afford conformity.

What better lesson to survive in this world today.

The Telephone Game

When our son, Aidan, was old enough, my wife was adamant that he go to a private school. Christine was bullied horribly in public school which left an indelible mark on her opinion. I wanted a rule free, creative, avant-garde teaching environment staffed by former pot smoking hippies from the 60's turned educators. You know, a real artist's haven so we looked into the only private school in our area. When we attended an open house, one administrator boasted,

"We don't have to follow any state mandates, being a private institution."

 

This appealed to my conservative sense that all state mandates are bureaucratic wastes of time. What I didn't know then was that boys are more difficult to educate than girls, and knowing how to effectively teach them requires real skill. For years people always said,

"Girls mature faster than boys."

Today, this is generally regarded as untrue. Girls are more inclined to try to impress their teacher, who is often a woman while boys are equally likely to wonder aloud what will happen if they jump out of a nearby tree. Since girls are more compliant, they are more likely to be regarded as intelligent.

The private school we sent Aidan to was stuck in the 70's. They used outdated techniques like round robin reading and math bees which were rejected by public institutions years ago since such approaches reward the most competent students while ignoring those who need the most help. Public schools know how to educate boys because some of those state mandates thrust new ideas in education into the system. Public teachers understand that boys are sometimes not going to sit still and need to move about now and then.

Early on Aidan was deemed ADHD by his kindergarten teacher who requested that he be tested. In most states it's illegal for a public school teacher to make such a determination due to their lack of actual medical or psychological training. This wasn't my idea of mandate free radical teaching I was hoping for. The previous year Aidan took the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (WISC) which showed he was two standard deviations above the norm for vocabulary and one standard deviation for math. They didn't want to hear about that even though their own school psychologist administered the test. The first time I heard the letters ADHD strung together was when his teacher called me in to tell me about Aidan's misbehavior. He said,

"I was teaching a lesson when I said to the class, 'Watch carefully. This will happen quick.' Aidan said, "You mean, 'quickly.'"

I was puzzled.

"You do know he's right," I responded.

"That's besides the point. I'm the teacher!" he retorted.

So I got dragged into my son's private school which was costing me $21,000 a year to listen to his kindergarten teacher espouse his grammatically incorrect sentiments. This along with other infractions led Aidan to be put on the "ticket system" which was a punitive scheme by which a student is given five tickets for the week. Each time they get in trouble they lose a ticket. If on Friday they have less than four tickets, they can't go out for recess. If they have at least four, they win a prize. When his teacher explained this to Aidan, he asked,

"Don't you think there should be something for all five tickets?"

His teacher told him that they do it that way so you can lose one without penalty. Aidan inquired,

"If I have a friend who has three tickets on Friday and I have five can I give them one?"

"No, Aidan, you can't do that. You have to follow the rules. One ticket for one infraction," his teacher recited.

"So there's nothing for five tickets?" Aidan asked.

"No, nothing," she explained.

It just didn't seem sensible to Aidan to have a system that didn't reward the top score. One spring day, his teacher had all the kindergarteners sit in a circle to play "Telephone." That's the game by which each student in the circle whispers a phrase in the ear of the adjacent classmate. His teacher started off the game with,

"Spring is here!"

As the phrase made it to Aidan, he whispered to his friend, Hampton,

"Dunkin Donuts."

When the last student recited the phrase aloud, the top of his teacher's head almost blew off. She angrily asked,

"Who told you that?"

She backtracked up the circle looking for the culprit. Aidan knew he was busted so he just waited for the phrase to reach him.

"Give me a ticket Aidan," his teacher commanded.

Now here is where good judgment and youth do not intersect. Aidan explained,

"That's okay. It's Friday, and I have five tickets."

This angered his teacher so she tried to take another ticket from him.

"You can't take two. One ticket for one fraction," Aidan exclaimed.

It didn't help that when his teacher called me, I chuckled a bit. Most of my friends who are parents thought I was teaching Aidan to be disrespectful, but I didn't see it that way. His teacher established a set of rules which he followed to the letter, and in doing so, he found a way to beat the system. Many of the same parents had previously advised me to establish "504 status" for Aidan via an ADHD diagnosis in order to get him more time on tests and preferential treatment. One parent told me,

"It's the only way to level the playing field for boys."

The problem is Aidan was not disabled, and as such, didn't warrant protection under the Americans with Disabilities Act. That would be more than disrespectful. It would be criminal.

We left that private school a short time later. I homeschooled Aidan for two years in which he completed three years of education. He entered middle school in sixth grade. He's in the national honor society in high school and plays varsity tennis and trumpet in the jazz band, all things that were unavailable to him at the private school. He was one of the youngest members in Bugles Across America, a nationwide, organization which provides volunteers to play Taps at military services in honor of veterans. He's also a second class petty officer in the Naval Sea Cadets.

The dirty secret about private schools is that they generally have less money than most public schools, and likewise, hire lower qualified teachers. Ignoring state mandates ensures that private schools remain stagnant. We discovered teachers at the institution had assigned the same project to all four of a colleague's children. They use an ADHD diagnoses to cover for their inability to effectivly educate. While most parents welcome an ADHD diagnoses and raise their kids comfortably behind a snowplow, my wife and I were confident that Aidan's behavior was his choice. Boys are three time more likely to be diagnosed with ADHD than girls, and the diagnose is on the rise. One leading expert in the field said,

"We need to find out why boys are more susceptible to ADHD than girls."

I think the answer is because one of the biomarker for ADHD is having testicles. This is not the same thing as believing vaccines cause autism. This is drugging your child on a baseless diagnoses so that he becomes more compliant in an educational system that processes children in batches according to a factory model.

One thing I learned from teaching my son for two years is that kids like Aidan are the real deal. You can't stop them from becoming. Just give them sunshine and some room to grow, and they'll do the rest.

Editor Note: Originally posted on March 16, 2017.

The Middle School Infatuation with the Scientific Method

It's impossible in this country to traverse middle school without a thorough examination of the scientific method, which usually involves multiple full on projects, topped with presentations. Most of us have studied the scientific method more extensively than the Constitution, the seminal document written by the founding fathers that defines your rights as a citizen. People in this country learn the Pledge of Allegiance to the scientific method all through middle school.

Bill Nye

It's great that our preteens learn to make a hypothesis, collect data and evaluate the results. That's science. Bill Nye would stand in ovation and clap like one of Pavlov's dogs at the mere utterance of the term. It's been around since the 17th century. If it wasn't for the scientific method, we would still be going for a haircut, and a blood letting to balance the humors.

It's great that everyone has to learn about the scientific method so we don't have to argue arcane stances against creationism or intelligent design. We can simply pull out our scientific method banner and march, lock step, over anyone who doesn't agree with our well-formed, thoroughly researched, extensively tested hypotheses. The only issue I have with the middle school infatuation with the scientific method is that most of us in the course of our daily activities for better part of our entire life will never have need for the scientific method. What we more likely will need to do is some form of reengineering.

Now, reengineering is likely something you didn't study in middle school. Simply put, reengineering is figuring out how something is made, how it was assembled, how it works. You reengineer something for a very important reason, to fix it. A lot of things are going to break in your lifetime, and being able to fix things is a valuable skill. Calling in the trades every time something doesn't work is an expensive proposition. If you own a house, a car, a boat, a computer, a bicycle, anything you got to be able to fix things.

A good example is a 3-way switch which is used when you have a need to turn on a light from more than one location. I'm sure you have a 3-way circuit in your house. My son, Aidan, did in the science room in sixth grade. There were two doors in the science lab with light switches at each. The simple circuit for a switch and a light looks like this,

Simple Switched Circuit

Obviously if you have two switches at different locations you need something more in the wiring and switches to allow one switch to operate independently of the other. Understanding how this works is crucial to repairing a 3-way circuit. You can call an electrician, but it will cost you a minimum of $400, or you can fix it yourself in about twenty minutes. Your choice, Einstein.

When it came to the science fair, Aidan became very interested in the operation of a 3-way circuit. He wanted to teach his friends how to set up the circuit given wires and switches, a battery and a light. Commensurate with his generation, he developed a simulated three way circuit in Minecraft, a popular, creative building, sandbox video game.

His teacher initially rejected his proposal on the grounds that it didn't follow the scientific method. He asked if she knew how a 3-way circuit worked. She didn't. True, he wasn't purposing a possible solution to a problem plaguing mankind, but if you ever worked on one of these circuits without knowing what you’re doing, you know how difficult it is to get the wiring right. There are six connections to be made which offers you 720 possible combination with only two of them being correct.

After some negotiations, he managed to convince Madam Curie to let him proceed. He did a fantastic job explaining how a 3-way switch is actually a logical OR gate. He traced out the circuit from the power source to the light for each switch position. He even called his presentation The Or Gates Around Us.

Van da Graaf
Generator

When the judges voted on the best science project, a student whose father build a Van da Graaf generator out of some copper gutters won first prize. I sat through the kid’s explanation of how it worked, and he was under the impression that the charge came from the cord to the electric motor. Wrong answer, Tesla.

Second place was a girl with an orange and some litmus paper. As far as I could tell, she was technically correct with all her findings. It's just not very hypnotizing to hypothesize that dipping litmus paper into a glass of milk would give a neutral response, however true. Not bad, Rachel Carson.

Third place was a balloon on a string. The hypothesis was that when the clothespin was removed, the balloon would zoom along the string. Since tape was used to form a loop through which the string passed through, when the clothespin was removed, the balloon popped. Good enough for third place, Orville Wright.

Aidan got "honorable mention" because he didn't follow the scientific method. The kid who won didn't either, but when you got electric bolts shooting across the classroom and students hair standing on end, you got a winner with or without the scientific method.

I know what you're thinking. I'm a disgruntled, snowplow parent, who's annoyed that my son didn't win. That's what a friend of mine told me. He's probably right. The other day at his house, I flipped a switch, and he said,

"Don't touch that switch. If you do, the other switch over there won't work anymore."

Aidan said,

"The travelers are hooked to the wrong screws."

He was right. I took out my Swiss Army knife, and he and I wired the switch up correctly. I don't know much about snowplows, but if I had a problem with mine, my son and I would certainly figure out how to fix it.

Editor's Note: Originally posted on October 20, 2016.