SCHOOL IS FUN? [T, 9-10-24]

BEYOND WINTER: The Irrelevant Activities of an Old Man—SCHOOL IS FUN? [T, 9-10-24]

 

While we’re on the subject of school… As I walked one morning in the first week of school, I passed a house where a grandfather, a mother, and a little boy were coming out to the car. The boy was wearing a backpack.

“Are you going to school?” he called to me.

I was not surprised that he thought we might be classmates. I look quite young when I walk, with my bright “staggering shoes” [called “running shoes” in the past] and my white socks and my cargo-pocket shorts and my Hoosiers hoodie and my Reds baseball cap. But I had to tell him the truth.

“I wish I could go to school,” I said, “because I have a lot of things to learn.”

I already knew that this boy probably was not eager to go to school, for it was taking both a grandpa and a mom to get him there. Grandpa appealed to me for help. “School is fun, isn’t it?” he called.

“Oh, yes,” I said. “School is fun.”

It was a lie. School was not fun, not when I was his age.

I was so worried about it on the first day that I got sick and couldn’t even go. My mother was desperate to get me out of the house, though, so after lunch, she walked me down N. Oakland Ave. to Washington St. to 23 N. Rural St. to Lucretia Mott PS # 3.

There she sat beside me at the side of the room while the other kids ran around like they’d been there forever instead of just half a day. My February birthday made me a mid-year starter. January is not a good time to start anything. I was already a stranger, an outlier, because I had missed the morning. I was wearing a coat that I didn’t take off. I didn’t intend to stay.

But there was a big sand box up on legs. I had never seen such a thing before. It had lots of good stuff to play with—trucks, cars, toy animals. I thought I should check it out. “Better take off your coat first,” Mother said. I did.

I was having a pretty good time when I remembered that I wasn’t staying. In a panic, I looked around for Mother. Not there. Just my winter coat, hanging on a peg. Well, no choice. I didn’t know the way home. Might as well play some more.

My anemic older sister, who was a denizen of the top floor, in the Fresh Air School [1], came to get me at the end of the day to walk me home.

I liked school, but it was an anxious time, a fearful time, not a fun time. The report cards in our progressive, experimental [2] school in Indianapolis were just notes from the teacher to the parents. Mine always said something like, “John does not participate much, and he needs to work on his spelling, but he knows an amazing amount about current events.” Praise for current events knowledge was not enough to make a fun time.

Then, right after I started fifth grade, we moved to the farm near Oakland City. Oakland City was an old-fashioned “3 Rs” school. They gave letter grades. My first report card was full of the letters A and B. I found out that I was smart. Uncle Ted said he would give me a dime for each A and a nickel for each B. I started to have a fun time in school!

I’ve often told this story as though I started having fun in school because of the letter grades. but that’s not true. I started having fun in school because of the kids I met there. I got smart because I got friends. Because of good friends, not because of good grades, I was able to experience school as fun. 

So many of those friends are gone now—Darrel and Don and Donald Gene and Mike and Ann and Bob and Hovey and Nancy and Donna and… well, it’s much too long a list. But when I think about them, yes, school is still fun.

John Robert McFarland

1] Mary V has always claimed that she did not need to be in Fresh Air School, which she did not like, because she was sure she was not anemic. They put her up there, she says, just because she was skinny.

2] Education professors and text book writers tried out their ideas on us. They figured we were the ideal experimental group—white working-class kids whose parents favored education but were too busy to pay attention. Some of the ideas they tried on us were crazy, but we got extra attention, and that always helps learning.