Old School?

My 7-year-old son’s assignment was to read aloud the following passage while being timed to see how many of the 136 words he could accurately read in one minute.

Old School

Long ago, schools were only for boys. Most schools had just one room. Boys of all ages sat in the same room. The boys learned about reading. They learned about math. In history, they learned about kings and queens and wars. Paper cost a lot of money, so they wrote on little chalkboards called slates. The teacher was always a man. He could be very mean. He could whip the boys if they were bad. There was no place at school to cook lunch. The boys had to bring their own lunches from home. There were no lunchboxes like we have. They used pails or buckets to carry their food. Most people did not go to school for very long. Only rich men went to college. We are lucky to have schools where everyone can learn.

                The line about all teachers being men was the first thing that struck me as odd. I wondered whether all those Western movies with a “Schoolmarm” character were wrong, or whether my son’s assignment was misleading. But the next lines really rankled: “He could be very mean. He could whip the boys if they were bad.” Surely there were teachers worth mentioning who were wise, kindly, tough but fair, or primarily concerned about uplifting their students mentally, socially, and morally.

Generally, I’m not one to see liberal bogeypersons under every rock, but I am familiar with the arguments of Christina Hoff Summers, whose book War Against Boys critiques contemporary education as anti-male. So, as an involved parent, I further examined this little history lesson, which was produced by a publisher of Common Core educational materials (www.secondstorywindow.net) and assigned to all 2^nd graders in my son’s Land That Time elementary school.

While I’m not suggesting that Robert Caro write 136 word essays for second graders, history, at any level, should provide context and be specific and factual. Talking about things that happened sometime in the “long ago” and that have trouble meeting a simple standard of accuracy (the teacher was “always” a man, kids didn’t have lunchboxes) don’t cut it as “history,” even for 2^nd graders. In any case, my son is not learning about the history of education, and I suspect his next assignment won’t be about the Montessori Method. For the pedagogic goal of his assignment to be achieved, the subject could have been “Our Woodland Friend, The Beaver.”

The essay posits an educational dystopia different from the contemporary system that, as the writer concludes, “we are lucky have.” The writer explicitly details what he or she believes are the consequences of a system that only serves the needs of males. Okay, so the boys learn reading and math, but when it comes to history, what male instructors taught is the lives of kings and queens (the powers that be) and of wars (militarism). I hear in that assertion echoes of the academic rivalry between traditional and revisionist historians – the “great personage”/”key battles” approach to history is disparaged in left-leaning academia, which focuses more on history as a struggle between the elites and the marginalized.

Then, the essay gets provocative – after saying the teacher was “always a man, ” the first thing we are told is that this man “could be very mean,” with the prerogative of administering corporal punishment upon his charges. The word used is “whip” – a harsh word with many unpleasant connotations. Slaves were whipped. Abused children are whipped. Historically, would “paddle” have been more correct than “whip”? Certainly corporal punishment was only part of the story, and likely a small part – so why go there first, and to 2^nd graders? What image of the past is author trying to put into their heads?

Next, the narrative gets weird: “There were no lunchboxes like we have. They used pails or buckets to carry their food.” The writer is clearly thinking of the terms “lunch pails” and “lunch buckets,” both of which are defined in the dictionary as “lunchboxes.” Could the writer, and all the educators who reviewed that passage prior to publication, really be that clueless?

Finally, there is the non sequitur bit about “only rich men” going to college. This brings class into the equation, and since gender and class are two of the great bugbears of the Left, I cannot read this essay outside of an ideological context.

The historical inequities the essay points out were remedied long ago – today, more women than men receive college degrees. Why not talk about the progress our society made since the one-room classroom? Conversely, why not talk about some of the great achievements performed by American lads who came from such benighted circumstances? Because tremendous things were accomplished in this country, and why shouldn’t our children be learning about the positive values that made those achievements possible, giving them the chance to internalize those values instead of the language and logic of grievance?

In any case, the essay doesn’t exactly persuade me that there isn’t a war against boys in public school. I have been unpacking the story with my son in an age-appropriate manner, and using it as a teaching tool to help him understand the importance of asking questions and thinking independently. This way, when he is ultimately assigned Howard Zinn’s “A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present,” he’ll be prepared.