When I was growing up in the late 1930s, school was serious business. It was a place of work — homework, classwork, work on multiplication tables, and workbooks. Each day, I came to school with a notebook and pencil that I placed on a dark brown desk that was nailed to the floor, with iron supports on each side that kept my legs pinned in place. In one corner of the desk was a round hole for an inkwell in which you dipped a pen with a thin metal point that scratched and pulled on paper when you tried to write with it. Under the desk was a shelf for a reader, arithmetic book, geography book, history book, and penmanship book. When I was in 6th grade, Mrs. Cusack, my teacher, inspected our desks every Friday to make certain we had no scribbled drawings, no idle writing, no comic books, and no baseball cards disturbing the careful placement of the texts.
A large teacher’s desk fronted the room facing the rows of pupils, boys in white shirts and ties and girls in middy blouses with sailor-style collars. On the wall behind was a portrait of George Washington, his eyes staring over the heads of 11-year-olds, most of whom came from first-generation Jewish and Italian families. Posted around the room were black cards with white uppercase and lowercase cursive letters, demonstrating the handwriting perfection we were to strive for in our daily penmanship lessons.
The routine of our days
“All right, children. Pay attention. Look at me. Hold your pen in the air. Now move from left to right, left to right, and back. Everybody together.”
We began each day by waving our pens in the air to practice our letters and then attempting to replicate the movement on paper. The days were unremitting in their uniformity. A half-hour of penmanship, flashcard multiplication drills, spelling practice, reading out loud from the reader, doing exercises at the end of the chapter in our geography texts.
We ended each week with a penmanship test, one of a series that included spelling, arithmetic, geography, and history. Mrs. Cusack started each test with a warning. “Neatness counts! Ten points off for poor handwriting, and 10 points off if you don’t put the correct heading on top of the paper.” Because test scores, we were told, were inscribed in the permanent records that would shape our future all the way to the grave, we took this admonishment seriously.
I was lucky enough to have a mind that allowed me to absorb and remember facts that remain with me to this day, whether they’re useful or not: I before e except after c. Add a zero to multiply by 10. Ponce de LeÓn discovered Florida. Birmingham is the Pittsburgh of the South. Grand Rapids manufactures furniture. Augusta is the capital of Maine.
Sherman Sklar and Frankie Sorace were not so fortunate, and Mrs. Cusack had a knack for finding those least likely to respond correctly. She pounced on Sherman and Frankie with regularity. “We learned the products of Louisiana last week. Weren’t you listening?” “How many times do I have to tell you that Albany, not New York City, is the capital of New York state?”
Defining good conduct
Mrs. Cusack never smiled. She glowered. She insisted. She commanded. She ordered. “I’m coming around the room to check your fingernails. Hands folded, eyes straight ahead, elbows in and when I come to your desk, show me your handkerchief.” Children competed to see who could sit straighter, taller, clasp hands tighter.
I learned that good conduct meant no talking, no unnecessary movement, no interaction with others, no giving in to biological urges.
I learned that good conduct meant no talking, no unnecessary movement, no interaction with others, no giving in to biological urges. I worked hard to keep still, stay silent, and control my bladder, but I had occasional lapses. One day, my line of vision strayed from the teacher and my textbook — the only acceptable targets of pupil attention — and I saw my friend Walter in the corridor and waved at him. Mrs. Cusack shrieked, “Eyes up front. Keep your mind on your work. What goes on in the hallway is none of your business.” From then on, I’d set my eyes on the teacher’s mouth as though I were an inadequate lip reader seeking to decipher slurred speech.
Because Mrs. Cusack usually directed her questions at those less likely to know the answer, I learned to maintain an attentive look while shifting my mind to thoughts of baseball, movies, and girls. And if the teacher was occupied with a child who had gone astray, I ventured to shift my gaze too, often landing on Mary Vaccarella with her dark brown eyes and clear olive skin. I handled this secret journey with great care. I didn’t want Mary Vaccarella (or anyone else) to know that I was looking at her, and I certainly didn’t want to be condemned to a life of ineptitude for the sin of inattention to schoolwork. Although Sherman and Frankie were Mrs. Cusack’s usual targets, I never felt totally safe.
Moments of defiance
My moments of rebellion were furtive because I’d lost my power to resist authority openly in 4th grade. My eight-year-old body rejected catatonia as a natural state, and so sometimes I moved and talked to my neighbors, violating classroom decorum. And then Reinhard Federson — class monitor, the lead in all class plays, teacher’s favorite — accused me of pushing him. Reinhard wore long pants, and his parents were born in America. My mother sent me to school in knickers, and she spoke with a foreign accent. “I didn’t do it. I didn’t do it.” I vehemently protested. But our teacher, Miss Lammy, believed Reinhard and sat me on a cardboard box by the front door, no doubt believing isolation and discomfort would restrain my inclination to be active.
Release from my corner prison came only because I mentioned one evening at supper that my back hurt. “Where does it hurt?” my mother asked. “What happened?” My mother’s major aim in life was to keep my body whole and healthy. I needed to get enough sleep; avoid drafts; change out of wet clothes; wear a hat; and not eat delicatessen food, which she referred to in Yiddish as chazerei (garbage). So when I told her where I had been sitting, all the fury of the protective parent emerged.
The next morning, I held tightly to my mother’s hand as we entered the classroom. I felt both pride and embarrassment as my 4-foot-10-inch immigrant mother pointed to the box with horror and anger, shaking her head and saying, “No, no, no!” It was the only time I ever saw her confront the outside world. Miss Lammy returned me to my regular seat. A tyrannical action had been reversed, but only with my mother’s help. When left to my own devices, I could only resist with quiet, furtive glances.
Still, despite the forbidding faces and the ever-present threat of punishment, incidents of defiance did occur. One morning, when I was in 6th grade, I came to school to find chairs and desks upended and contents of the supply closet scattered over every part of the room. An inkwell had been thrown at the glass-enclosed picture of George Washington and become lodged in his face where his nose had been. Thin trails of ink had dribbled across his mouth down his chin while his eyes maintained their blank stare.
Mrs. Cusack and Miss Delaney, the school principal, exchanged whispers as the class sat in stunned silence, vibrating with excitement at this extraordinary event. Teacher and principal turned to study our faces, looking for expressions of guilt. I wondered if my satisfaction would show. Someone — I didn’t know who — had shouted back, “No more yelling. No more bullying,” and I was pleased.
I had come to school eager to learn, full of energy and a childhood belief that adults are good. Instead, I discovered a place that valued obedience, silence, and sameness. As a teacher, principal, and professor, I have sought to build learning environments in which students are seen not as docile depositories of information, but rather as individuals seeking to explore and learn as developing human beings.
This article appears in the October 2022 issue of Kappan, Vol. 104, No. 2, pp. 56-57.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Sidney Trubowitz
Sidney Trubowitz is professor emeritus of education from Queens College of the City University of New York and a former elementary school teacher, assistant principal and principal, high school English teacher, professor of education, and associate dean and director of the Queens College Center for the Improvement of Education. He is the author of The Good Teacher Mentor: Setting the Standard for Support and Success.
