Wednesday, February 27, 2008

The One That Rhymes With "Truck"

Mr. Castlebaum, my primary 5th and 6th grade teacher, wasn't a native of West Virginia. He was a New Jersey guy, and fresh out of college. Central West Virginia in 1977 wasn't Trenton, and Mr. Castlebaum always seemed a little stymied over the culture in which he was immersed.

In 6th grade, Mr. Castlebaum was also our softball coach. All rah-rah and prone to whistle-blowing, Coach Castlebaum was dedicated to getting every effort out of our boys team. He yelled, he screamed and he cursed. He cursed a lot. Hearing a teacher swear was sort of cool, really. It was so unusual, so rebellious, that it made practice even more fun.

Apparently some of my classmates and their parents didn't share my enthusiasm.

One day after lunch, Mr. Castlebaum began calling each of the 6th grade softball players into the hallway, one at a time. My turn came early in the rotation:

"Do you like playing softball?" he asked, obviously nervous.

"Sure."

"When we're practicing softball, you've never heard me use swear words, have you?"

"Well, yeah. A few times." It became suddenly clear why Coach Castelbaum was nervous, and where this was heading. Someone had complained.

"No, you haven't." And he said it with a sneer. It was less a disagreement and more of here's-how-this-is-gonna-go, kid.

"Yeah, I've heard you curse. Sometimes you swear at us kids, and you've said the F-word a lot. The one that rhymes with truck."

"I think you're mistaken," he said. He leaned down, and toward my face.

I don't know what kids are like in Jersey, but kids from the holler aren't intimidated that easily. I didn't easily roll over for teachers, especially if it was clear the teacher was trying to weasel out of something he knew was wrong.

"Yeah, you did it. I didn't tell anybody, because it was no big deal. But you did it. You did it a lot."

I walked back inside, sat at the desk and waited as he called other students into the hall to grill them. A couple of them came back in sort of teary-eyed.

I've been suspicious of teachers since.

Behavior like Mr. Castlebaum demonstrated creates an environment where kids are fearful of stepping out of the norm. It promotes the dumbing down of dreams and ambition, and helps above average kids become just average. It dooms less than average kids.

It's my opinion that in order to educate kids, teachers have to encourage and inspire them. Make kids believe in themselves, always being thoughtful not to do anything that will discourage a kid to dream, and to set lofty goals. We have too few teachers that do that on a day-to-day basis. And although I'm saddened when I hear a story that reminds me of Mr. Castlebaum, I'm no longer amazed.

Last night at dinner, my 11-year-old daughter was telling us about her day at school. She was upset about a conversation that occurred with her female Health teacher earlier that day.

"The teacher said women shouldn't be President." Although we haven't heard Maddisen say she wanted to be The Prez, we've never discouraged her from from setting any sort of appropriate goal. We've been especially thoughtful about not discouraging her from setting goals based on societal expectations of gender.

That's just the way we live our life.

"How did she come up with that idea?" I asked, trying to hide my anger.

"She just said her husband always told her women shouldn't be President, and she can't vote for a woman because of that. She kept saying 'Believe me, we don't want a woman for a president!' over and over."

I suddenly had that old feeling of being called into the hallway back in 6th grade.

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope you plan on calling the school??!!

primalscreamx said...

Yeah, I heard the same thing in 6th grade. I'd kind of hoped that would have changed in 25 years, but...

Unknown said...

I remember arguing with my 11th grade history teacher that Yosemite National Park was not pronounced Yoes-Might. I finally embarrassed her by asking if she ever heard of "Yoes-Might Sam".

The horror stories I could tell about my education...

jedijawa said...

Wow, way to go for helping your kids not to get steamrolled by the status quo. It's amazing how many barriers some people would like to throw down.

Unknown said...

That woman needs - NEEDS -a nice firm kick in the teeth.

But calling her superintendant and voicing your displeasure would be a good alternative.

I had to sit in on two kindergarten registrations at two different schools recently, and I was both heartened and appalled at what I saw. At one school, the kindergarten teachers I met were pleasant, polite, good with the kids, and very patient.
At the other, however, they were more interested in standing around talking and making jokes to each other. The teacher whose room we were in was freaking out because kids were touching things in her room. "Oh, no," she said, "We play on the mat, over here in the corner, and ONLY on the mat. And when we're done, we PUT OUR TOYS BACK EXACTLY WHERE WE FOUND THEM."
Then she turned to me, gave me this look, and said "I hate registration, everything gets moved around! I wish they'd do this somewhere else" and proceeded to rearrange the bookcases so that none of the kids could touch what was on them.

I don't know what she had lodged up her ass, but I almost offered to get someone to help her remove it... and then I remembered I had to be there all. day. long. with her. I'm just glad that I don't have kids, and if I ever do, I'll be damned if she has anything to do with them.

The Film Geek said...

Jenny, I'm hugely annoyed when professionals who went to college to learn to work with other people gradate and do so, then become so jaded and rigid in their work that they forget they are supposed to be working with people! Teachers among them. I'm gonna post an update today.

The Film Geek said...

It seems here is the best place to update:

After a couple of snow days to mull it over, I decided to call the principal. The principal is new (as is my daughter to middle school) and we've not yet met. Calling, I thought, might be a good start. Besides, I thought I had one ace in the hole for my complaint: the principal is a woman.

We had a very nice, long talk. She expressed real concern about adding to that glass ceiling that young women have thrust down on them way too often in our society, and was in agreement that she should talk to the teacher about her comments. Because it seemed she really understood and agreed--I'm a pretty good BS detector--I'm going to let it go at that.

Unknown said...

We were watching an old episodes of Freaks And Geeks the other night, the one where Lindsay asks, "Dad, give me one good reason why there can't be a woman president," and Harold responds "It's called three irrational days per month. Now, I would have no issue with the other twenty seven, but we're talking about the atomic bomb here."

It reminded me of your post, and I was wondering what had happened. Thanks for the update, and I'm glad to hear that you got such a good response from the principal.

Rebecca said...

Hopefully when your daughter becomes president, she can work "Eat this Mrs. whatever" into her acceptance speech.

My 5th grader came home with no concept of the Republican party. he asked, "Who do you think will be president mom? Barack Obama or Hilary Clinton?" When I mentioned there were some other candidates, he said "Well, we don't talk about those ones"

Hmph.