As I write to you across the years, I wonder if you still think of me on occasion, indeed if you ever thought of me as other than an object to be "handled", or taught as it were. I now count about the same number of years that you did when I was in your 4th grade class. Never since was I to achieve the level of professional recognition you enjoyed then, and after, but then neither was I to assume the mantle of ruthlessness and cynicism that tainted your authority. I have remained true to myself, and I question if you even have a notion of what it means to fight for one's integrity.
It was the first week of January, 1957. This was to be my first day at the new school. I was coming from a situation in which I was the "apple of the teacher's eye", from a school in which "underprivileged" kids predominated and I was one of a very few pupils considered "gifted". If I was scared, I was also hopeful.
Oh, yes, things were different here. The very first class test I took, I only got halfway through before time was up. "This is a fast atmosphere here, you'll adjust", you told me. Small consolation for nearly failing the test.
Speaking out and showing off my knowledge was no longer something I was rewarded for. You weren't quite sure how to treat me, alternately calling me a "walking encyclopedia" or subjecting me to veiled derision. It did not help that I had no concept of the social niceties and had not yet learned to fight for my own dignity.
Do you still remember Iceland? It was a democracy even in the early Middle Ages, a time when democracies had no right to exist according to your world view, and you at first ridiculed me for bringing it to your attention. This was your special early history class and I was, I guess, only tentatively permitted to participate. Your misgivings were fully justified when I showed up with facts that challenged your knowledge and authority.
Strange that you chose the class bully as your favorite. But then, this would have been perfectly consistent with the Social Darwinist ethic of the 50's. Jack was obviously a "survival type", and he was intelligent to boot. That he enjoyed tormenting kids like me was a minor foible, perhaps even a virtue in your eyes. I was an outsider, an alien, a potential threat to the stability of your world because of my creativity and flashes of... strangeness. Ah, yes, where there are favorites, there will be scapegoats.
Think back to the day you announced you were leaving. I was in the fifth grade by then, in a mixed 4th / 5th grade class experiment that would scarcely be countenanced in the present era. You had confided in another of your favorites, Marvin, but forbade him to tell us the secret before lunch. You were to abandon us in a matter of days, only, leaving us to the tender mercies of a teacher trainee. Were you not offered a one-time opportunity to teach in a posh suburban school (where you would years later win prestigious awards)? How could you justify abandoning in mid-year the children who desperately needed you?
Ruthlessness and ambition... are those still your guiding lights or have you come to understand the pain of the victim now that you are elderly and subject to the whims of others for your care, just as your pupils were once subject to yours?
Is it even necessary to summarize? You were a good teacher, an effective teacher in the conventional sense, but fatally flawed. You were the implacable enemy of originality, an assassin of the imagination. You truly belong to that previous era, a time when the Depression and the horrors of the Second World War were still open wounds. Compassion was disparaged and toughness was the prime virtue. The social atmosphere condoned your casual cruelties. You were altogether a creature of the times, a cold blooded, rigorously efficient one. You had not the intellectual depth to see past your limitations, to break out of the tight little niche society had prepared for your sort. You were ordinary.
Know that after all these years I hold no personal grudge, but I do bear witness for all the victims of teachers temperamentally unsuited for their calling. I can only hope there will come a day of healing for all of us, you included, Mrs. P.
Sincerely yours,
One-who-remembers