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    Uphill Both Ways: The Truths, Lies, and Tall Tales We Tell About School
    Uphill Both Ways: The Truths, Lies, and Tall Tales We Tell About School
    Uphill Both Ways: The Truths, Lies, and Tall Tales We Tell About School
    Ebook140 pages2 hours

    Uphill Both Ways: The Truths, Lies, and Tall Tales We Tell About School

    By Helen Johnson

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    Free public education was a grand experiment proposed in the mid 1800s by progressive politicians who believed it would increase the growth and development of an educated citizenry and strengthen the nation’s democracy. They were right. Public education in the United States became the warp and weft of the nation’s culture and economic success.

    Today, confidence in public education has been damaged by politicians and the financial interests that support them. Now, schools are dramatically underfunded while being blamed for a myriad of social and economic failures.  

    Drawing on her experiences as a student and a teacher, Helen Johnson repudiates the attacks on public schools and sheds light on the remarkable successes borne from the United States’ education system.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherGoldminds Publishing
    Release dateMar 19, 2019
    ISBN9781946504524
    Uphill Both Ways: The Truths, Lies, and Tall Tales We Tell About School

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      Uphill Both Ways - Helen Johnson

      thoughts.

      PROLOGUE

      Free public education for all children was a grand social experiment proposed by a few United States legislators in the mid 1800s. Progressive politicians, such as Horace Mann, contended that free universal education in the United States would increase the growth and development of an educated citizenry and strengthen the nation’s democracy. The proposed free schools would be desirable additions to the church supported and private schools that were the norm. Contrary to the propaganda of the past thirty years, public education in the United States grew into a grand social success. Public education became the warp and weft of the nation’s culture and an excellent partner for parochial and private schools.

      My sister, three brothers, and I attended rural public schools in southwest Missouri from the early 1940s through 1963. Our parents believed that a good education would connect us to the opportunities in the world beyond our river valley farm, so they supported the local public schools with their time and talents.

      Memories of the Great Depression and a hard boyhood stayed with Daddy. He often said, Get your education. They can’t take that away from you. Daddy was grounded in the realities of life. Mother’s expansive reading and writings opened windows on the possibilities of life for us kids and for Daddy. Her keen mind and imagination stretched us beyond the limiting absolutes of our time and place. Our parents’ unconventional pairing gave us the expectation that good things would come if we got a good education, kept our minds open, and worked hard.

      Our parents prepared us for success; however, we also succeeded because of the times in which we grew up. Healthy industries in the United States provided secure employment for willing workers. President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society initiatives put higher education within the reach of most students who aspired to attend. There was a national willingness to support and promote public education. The United States government seemed to work for the public’s common good rather than for the accumulation of personal wealth for a few.

      Today, our country’s economic, social, and political landscapes are different. Global competition makes employment in the United States uncertain and unstable. Access to higher education is slipping away from all except the most gifted and most prosperous. There is still a willingness to support universal education, but the public’s confidence in public education has been damaged by politicians and the financial giants that support them.

      Politicians maneuver to shift school taxes into favored projects, and their moneyed cronies seek to raid public funds to increase their private treasure troves. Schools are blamed for the social and economic failures that politicians and financial institutions create. Reckless political rhetoric and the media’s irresponsible coverage of it tarnish the image of public schools and make public education vulnerable to subversion and sabotage. Deliberate misinformation, shoddy commissioned research, and unsubstantiated news stories have degraded the public’s confidence in their schools. It is uncertain if free public education can survive and continue to progress in today’s social, economic, and political climate.

      In contrast to the attacks on public schools, reliable research data show that public education has progressed and improved consistently since its inception. My story corroborates those research findings. I experienced consistent progress in the quality of educational opportunities for students and the quality of teacher education during the years I was a student and a teacher. My story refers to some of that data, but it is not a work of research. It is a tale about how my life intertwined with a one-room schoolhouse, town school, college, urban and suburban public schools, private schools, church supported schools, and a time of questionable public school reform. It bridges the years from 1951 to the present.

      During my career as a student and a teacher, I experienced how innovative and dedicated individuals and groups used one-room schools to educate children in isolated areas where education had not been available to the rubbish of society, as Thomas Jefferson referred to us common folks. I witnessed how the consolidation of small rural schools pitted neighbor against neighbor but eventually resulted in better education for children. I taught in, and enrolled my children in, church supported schools and private schools that provided unique and valuable mission-focused education. I have also lived the unconscionable political assault on public education that still threatens to weaken the uniquely successful system of parochial, private, and public education in the United States. My experiences repudiate the last thirty years of criticism and attacks under which the United States’ system of education has suffered.

      My teaching peers and I are the first large group of women who have been allowed to create long continuous careers in education. Our voices and opinions offer distinctive, valid, and valuable education backstories. I am only one voice that can give witness to the continuous positive progress schools have made during the course of my career. There are many others who can do the same. Our experiences shed light on the truths about an ever-evolving excellence in the United States’ education system. This is my story.

      1. REUNION

      Memories of school days stir up varied and often disparate emotions in people. Some recall moments of fear and self-doubt; others remember times of fun and play. When my older brothers speak of their days in elementary school, they usually laugh and start by saying, I walked to school every day, three miles in the snow, uphill both ways. That is fair warning that a tall tale will follow. When we remember and tell stories about school days long past, the tales we tell are sometimes truths, sometimes rose-colored fantasies, and almost always child-like exaggerations.

      I poured coffee into Styrofoam cups as friends gathered around a folding table in the Methodist Church community center. The aromas of strong coffee and something sweet baking in the kitchen steeped the warm morning air. Former students and teachers of Eureka Elementary School slowly gathered in the large room. They came to share food, drink, and memories of school days long past.

      It was Reunion Day.

      My friends and I positioned ourselves around the long table and watched while familiar, and not so familiar, faces settled into small genial groups. What do you remember of the place? Kathryn asked as she set her coffee cup down and gazed somewhere beyond me.

      I’ll have to think on that, I answered. "What are your recollections of school days here?" I tossed the question back to her.

      Not much, she said in a near whisper, not much—except, it was hard. School work was just hard for me. Kathryn brushed back a strand of graying hair from her eyes and continued to tell her story while I allowed my thoughts to wander.

      We had gathered at the church, as we did each year, for our elementary school reunion. As Kathryn talked, I sipped my coffee and called to mind the grey stucco schoolhouse she spoke of. It had stood only a few yards from where we were sitting. My imagination constructed a ghost of the one-room school. I mounted the tall step to the concrete porch and opened the schoolhouse door. I inhaled the smell of the oiled wood floor and touched the teacher’s desk that dominated the front of the room. I walked between the student desks which were bolted to the floor in rows and recalled a minimal world, but one sufficient for the business of school.

      The accommodations of the place were inconvenient, but inconvenience was a common circumstance in rural Missouri schools during the 1950s. We girls walked seventy-five yards from the school’s front door to our three-seater toilet. The boys dashed about one hundred yards to their facility. The hand pump, across the playground and ball field, promised a fresh drink of water. Weather permitting, we children walked to the pump with our teacher to fill our cups once a day. In inclement weather, we relied on water from the crock water cooler in the lunchroom. The inconvenience of the situation never occurred to us children. I smiled to myself recalling those days of the speedy long trips to the outhouse, the pleasant meandering path we took to the water pump, our collapsible metal drinking cups, and the Red Wing water cooler.

      Kathryn’s words brought my attention back to the group. I struggled every day. I dreaded going to school, she continued. Her pain was difficult to hear, because it contrasted sharply with the songs and funny stories we traditionally shared at our reunions. I had vision problems. I couldn’t see the board. The fuzzy words on the chalkboard and in books ran together. Mom and Dad got glasses for me and that helped some, but school work took so much effort. It was just hard. The teachers never made any special accommodations for my situation, but back in those days they probably didn’t have the tools or training to help me. Kathryn chose her critical words carefully. Her mother had been a teacher during those same years. Kathryn knew, first hand, the obstacles teachers faced while serving in rural schools.

      Special attention was not part of the deal back then, Doris said, as she turned to face Kathryn. I remember Miss Duncan complimenting me for reading a flash card she had accidentally held upside down. I guess that was an accomplishment, but do you suppose that was the only commendable thing I ever did at school? Doris’ expression turned sad and childlike. Her little-girl demeanor conflicted with her smart hairdo and fashion-forward style. That is the first and last compliment I remember getting from a teacher. She shook her head recalling the moment.

      The group at the table fell silent until Leota spoke up. She commented about reading with younger students while waiting for the teacher to interact with her class. I too remembered periods of waiting for my teacher’s attention. The waiting was long and the lessons were brief and ineffectual.

      Wanting to read was my first great school frustration, I chimed in. Mother was an avid reader, and I wanted to read like her. When I think of my first grade reading instruction, I still get angry and a little nervous. The group seemed interested, so I told them my recollections of how the school bell would ring, how

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