Self-Reliance, or Getting Glasses

Man wird am besten für seine Tugenden bestraft. — Friedrich Nietzsche

It is not uncommon for an author to look back on some teacher in elementary school who had a significant, even decisive, effect on his emotional, intellectual, and spiritual development. Mrs. Hannah, my fourth grade teacher at West Fork Elementary in West Fork, Arkansas, more than any other teacher, whether in a public school or later at a university, had a decisive influence on the person I am today.

First a little background, its relevance will become apparent later. My father’s mother never learned to read. Neither of my parents graduated high school. My father had to quit 5th grade to help support his family in the Great Depression. My mother quit 10th grade to marry my father when she was 16. My father changed jobs frequently. That meant moving every year or two and a new school. My older sister had had my 4th grade teacher some years before I did. When I was 9, we had just relocated to the West Fork school district. We lived in a house that my 6 siblings still occasionally refer to as “the last house on the road.”

Early on that year, I started having problems with math in Mrs. Hannah’s class. I wasn’t doing my homework. I was doing well enough in the other subjects. She would nag and complain at me, and I would promise to do better and try harder. And Timmy still wasn’t doing his homework. After a month or so of this, she called my parents, no doubt informing them that if I didn’t start doing my math homework, I would be held back and not allowed to continue to 5th grade.

That’s when life got rough. I started getting grief both at school and at home. There was no escape. It was then that I hit on an ingenious solution that worked wonderfully for about a week.

At the end of the school day, when it was time to leave & line up for the buses home, I put a book under my jacket and zipped it up. Before I got on the bus, Mrs. Hannah would ask, whether I had my math book, I proudly tapped the book under my jacket, and answered that I had it right there. Once home, my parents would ask whether I had my math book. I sadly informed them that I had forgotten it at school. This worked great for a week. Then, there was another phone call from Mrs. Hannah.

If I had thought my life was difficult before, now it was unbearable: no playing inside or outside, no fishing, no TV, nothing but math and homework, even on the weekends. I was at my wits’ end. I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t understand how something like this could happen. Nothing like it had happened at any of the other schools that I had attended. I did what my teachers had asked, and they left me alone.

I didn’t know what Mrs. Hannah wanted from me. I couldn’t ask my parents. They didn’t know any more about 4th grade than I did. It didn’t help that none of my classmates were having problems with doing their math homework. Everyone else knew exactly what to do. Why didn’t I? What was the problem? None of my classmates ever asked questions about the homework (math or otherwise) that were even remotely relevant to my confusion. I was at such a loss that I didn’t even know what questions to ask. My father’s solution to any problem with his children was his belt. I definitely didn’t want that.

My life went from bad to worse. Finally, out of desperation, I hit on the only thing I could do. I remember it as happening over a weekend, but I’m sure it took longer than that. I sat down with my math book, a Big Chief tablet, and a pencil. I did all of the math problems. All of them, both assigned or unassigned. Everyone, Mrs. Hannah, the other students, my parents, even my siblings, had thought that I wasn’t doing my math homework was because I was too lazy and too stubborn to change my mind.

After that, life was good. I turned in my math homework on time. I was even doing the problems that hadn’t been assigned. Obviously, a strict approach had worked. But 9-year-old boys being 9-year-old boys are not able to keep anything neat on their own for long. After a while, my homework became more and more smudged. The cheap paper aged prematurely. Mrs. Hannah suspected something. One day she made me open my notebook. She saw all the homework that had clearly been written long before. She had me stand next to her in front of the class as she told everyone that I was lazy, a liar, and a cheat.

It was impossible that somebody like me with parents like mine could have done all those math problems on his own. The only explanation she could find was that, my older sister must have done them all for me. There was no other possibility that she could think of. She made me empty my notebook into the trash. Even as I was doing so, I remember thinking that she was a stupid, stupid ignorant old woman worse than my grandmother. I was right, and the teacher was wrong. There was no question of denying it. Doing so would have been the same as saying the sky was green and grass green. It would have been a lie.

I wasn’t held back in 4th grade. Apparently, I did well enough that there were no grounds for holding me back. Mrs. Hannah never owned up to her mistake, or admitted to the possibility of error. And my parents, like impoverished parents everywhere, were overwhelmed with feeding and caring for a large family. Even if they had not been intimidated by the “experts,” they wouldn’t have had the time, energy, or the emotional and physical resources to advocate on my behalf.

The reason for my difficulties with math? Mrs. Huey, my 5th grade teacher, figured it out. She was young, beautiful, smelled nice, and was the first great love of my life. She had just graduated from the University of Arkansas. Teaching 5th grade at West Fork Elementary was her first full-time teaching assignment. Early in the first week of school, she noticed that I held my books about 4 inches (ca. 10 cm) away when I read. She also picked up on the fact that I relied on voices to recognize people, not their appearance. Most telling of all, I couldn’t read from the blackboard from my seat. I needed glasses, and Mrs. Hannah had written the assignments for math homework on the blackboard.

When I tell this story, I like to include as a coda my math experiences in high school. Most significantly for this story, I taught myself calculus one summer when I was 15. In my senior year in high school, I was allowed to take calculus, even though my bus only arrived about 15 minutes before the end of class. An exception was made for me. I was still responsible for all the homework. Tests had to be taken during study hall. I got an A for the class. The worst thing a teacher can do is to make their students hate what they teach.

And what did I learn from Mrs. Hannah. I learned that I wasn’t stupid; and that intellect and academics could be mine. Academics were a safe space, which my meddlesome and domineering father could not enter.