So, here I am, in an actual school, in the actual first grade. Do you remember how I mentioned earlier that my family lived next door to the school where my father taught? (No? Then read the rest of my posts!) Well, they closed that school this particular year and sent its students and my father to Hermosa Elementary. He taught fourth grade there. One thing I should mention is that when we lived next door to the school, my father would bring home puzzles for my brother and me to play with on a daily basis.
The one thing I will focus on during the first grade is that a few weeks in, my teacher had me taken out of class once a week for at least two weeks. I was driven to another location in town. There, this man asked me several questions and had me solve puzzles. I had no idea what was going on and I really don't know why any of the other students weren't taken out of class to take part in this. I just know that the second time, I arrived back at the school late for lunch, literally with five minutes to eat before class started.
I was never taken out of class again. I never asked what was going on. Nobody explained what happened until I was about 25 years old. My father told me that when I was in the first grade, the teacher noticed that I could put the puzzles together really fast. These happened to be the same puzzles my father used to bring home. They moved them from the old school to Hermosa, so I was very familiar with them. Add to this that I could already read at least at an eighth grade level. The teacher is trained to recognize advanced mental development and had me taken out of school to be tested. My father says that what they determined was that I was of average intelligence, but I could put puzzles together really quickly.
I don't buy the "average" intelligence label, but I was definitely not "off the charts" intelligent. All the same, I have no idea what they would have been able to do if I had been. Maybe they would suggest I be sent to a private boarding school somewhere. There was definitely nothing in Artesia designed to accommodate someone at a "gifted" level of learning. Gifted programs in Artesia weren't put into effect for another 30 years.
And this brings me to my biggest complaint about public education as I experienced it. What does a school do with a first grade student who is able to read and write at least at an eighth grade level? Well, they just keep him in the first grade and keep him with the other students his age in order to raise the school system's standardized test score average.
Another problem is that the teachers were very ill-prepared to deal with students who were clearly several grade levels above their peers. One of the things I would do during down-time in class is read ahead in the book. You have no idea how many teachers would get angry when I did that. Usually the problem was that you would learn something, and then later in the book, it would explain that there were several exceptions. Trying to point out these exceptions during the first encounter with the material really irritated the teachers, who were trying to teach the material according to the agenda set forth in the book.
When I was in the sixth grade, one of the teachers had a newspaper clipping showing a picture of a 10-year-old boy who was attending college in El Paso. I really don't know what the point of this was. Was it something for us to aspire to? We were already 11 years old. It was too late for us to go to college. The thing that got me about this is that the teacher who passed around the clipping was one of those who got on my case for reading ahead in the book.
Something else that gnawed at me about that story was that there was this kid, who was going to graduate from college in four years. He was going to get on with his life. In my mind, he would be considered an adult and could move out of his parents' house, get a job, get a car and start really living. I now know that's not how it likely worked for him. He probably had to go to college at least another three years to get a Master's, become a doctor or a lawyer and still be living at home. But again, in my lack of life experience, that was how I viewed his situation.
I should point out that I was not the only one who was not properly serviced by this approach to exceptionally bright students. I met several who were much smarter than me and definitely deserved a better level of education than the one we got. And there was nothing we could do about it.
I don't know that I would have had a better life if I had been able to finish school any earlier. I just know I was miserable later on in high school and would have done anything short of dropping out to get it all out of the way.
I will have more on my issues with public education in an upcoming blog post.
No comments:
Post a Comment