Tornado!
Why You Should Never Trust Authority
The screaming mass of panicked high school kids ran headlong into the make-shift wall of the library, collapsing it; all trying to escape the tornado bearing down on them. Then the tornado sirens began to wail. Crying and whimpering and the smell of adrenaline hung thick in the air. I'm getting ahead of myself, to truly tell it, I have to go all the way back to 1st grade to set the stage.
I arrived to first grade excited to learn all the wonderful things of this world. I discovered they have this thing called recess, the bell sounds and the children pour out to the playground. I was loving it. We learned math, reading--my teacher was a nice lady. Then one day, the bell sounded, all the kids bolted up and out. I was a bit slower, and as I was making my exit I was lifted up into the air, turned upside down and this large lady held me upside down and paddled me--all the while yelling "NO RUNNING IN THE HALLS! YOU WILL BE NEXT IF YOU RUN! SEE WHAT BECOMES OF YOU IF YOU RUN!" After that, when the recess bell would ring. I would hunker down and cry at my desk. When they finally convinced me to go out again to recess, I escaped through a gap in the fence and attempted a 15 mile walk home. They picked me up 2 miles down the road as I was figuring out how to cross the freeway. The illusion of a wonderful world was shattered.
The Bryant, AR educational system believed in breaking kids early. They thought discipline was the key to learning. To show children the error of violence if they fought, you got a paddling. If you were tardy, you got a paddling, if you had candy you got a paddling. If you talked in class you got a paddling. The teachers would paint their paddles red, with skulls and cross bones to decorate. Some had holes drilled in them to make them whistle as they paddled. They also had 8 foot chain link fence surround the compound, with three rows of barbed wire pointing in to keep us from escaping. They patched the hole I got out. The cliche of the beatings will continue until the moral improves was institutionalized. I think we were being taught how to behave in prison. It seemed the majority of the socialization was geared toward that.
These experiences cemented in me a disrespect for authority that ferments in every youth. There were some teachers who actually tried, like missionaries going into African, but they were the oddballs. In this environment, there was an addition put on in order to have a study hall: classic southern concrete block construction, glass for two walls and a tin roof. Presto study hall and holding pin for 100+ students. In the back they built a library with 2x4's and 1x12's and cheap paneling.
It began right after roll call. There's always regular roll call in any penal institution, to make sure no one escaped. A student looks up from his desk and points out the window and yells, "TORNADO".
To which, the teacher says, "Sit down and shut up or it's a paddling, if there were a tornado they would have sounded the bell."
The student looks at her, looks out the window and makes a break for it to the inner building. Other students are looking and whispering. The teacher yells out again, "There is no tornado. I'm taking names of everyone who is talking and he's getting a paddling. If there was a tornado they would have sounded the bell."
A ripple of nervous tension goes through the crowd of students. A few more run for it. Everyone is looking out the window at this point, and there is a huge unmistakable giant tornado heading straight at the study hall. The rout begins. The crowd breaks like water over the make shift library wall as it collapses in a heap of books. The teacher is still yelling for students to sit down as the bell finally sounds.
The tornado oddly enough, picked up off the ground and skipped the school and went like a magnet for the neighboring -- you guessed it -- trailer park. Thus, our education on tornados, authority and self preservation from Bryant High was complete.
Comments
John Gocke
Posted 9 months, 25 days ago.
See the movie "Brazil" for the rest of the story.
Shawn Garbett
Posted 9 months, 25 days ago.
John Gocke!!! If I'm not mistaken, you are the one who yelled "TORNADO". You are number six.
Paul Fernhout
Posted 9 months, 21 days ago.
I was looking for your work on CouchDB and extjs and found this instead. :-)
Great essay. You really capture the soul of compulsory "Prussian" schooling about staying in your assigned place no matter what.
Decades ago, I had another teacher (big, obese) painfully pull me by the ear just for (IIRC) saying something back to the kid in front of me when we were in a line to go into the school at the start of the day. She made me go to her classroom and I was frightened and worried. She died later than year of a heart attack. I was worried that my angry thoughts about it had had something to do with that (the things kids think -- Mr. Fred Rogers has stuff on that about scary mad wishes don't make things come true.)
I can look back now and just feel sorry for her. Compulsory school may harm kids, but it harms teachers most of all as it warps them from whoever they could have been.
You might enjoy reading "The Underground History of American Education" by John Taylor Gatto, a New York State Teacher of the Year who has spoken out against the compulsory school system. Here is an example from a book he put online on that:
http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/chapters/16a.htm
You can also look up his "Seven Lesson Schoolteacher" essay which is a variant of what he published in the Wall Street Journal when he quit, saying he could not stand to hurt kids anymore. He mentions it in the prologue to that book.
Gatto is also quoted in "The War On Kids" movie about problems with compulsory schooling. I saw a screening of it at the last Alternative Education Resource Organization conference.
But there are others who write related things like John Holt, Pat Farenga, Alfie Kohn, Grace Llewellyn, and many more. Howard Zinn touches on some of this too in his "A People's History of the United States", as does Noam Chomsky in "What makes the mainstream media mainstream", and James Loewen in "Lies My Teacher Told Me",
Anyway, I could go on and on and on on this topic... We're homeschooling / unschooling for these kids of reasons.
I also write sometime on the socioeconomic tornado that is hitting this country in terms of the declining value of much human labor in the face of automation, better design, voluntary social networks, and ultimately self-limited demand, but people mostly are just staying in their seats for that one too. :-)
Shawn
Posted 9 months, 19 days ago.
Wow, Paul. I didn't figure I had that many readers. The story resonated with you. I just picked up Loewen's book, but that's more on the social reasons for the propaganda-zation of our history turning into a national mythology.
The CouchDB blog got hacked. I had a choice of either reviving it, or going with something that is more mature and I ended up going with WordPress. That go hacked so fast my head was spinning so I went middle of the road with Zotonic. So far, it's been great. I still like CouchDB.
Marci (Gray) Porter
Posted 7 months, 17 days ago.
What year was this Shawn? I have told this story over and over again. I remember the teacher saying
"if there was a tornado, they would have sounded the bell"--I tell that story all the time! Mainly because it just BLEW MY MIND a teacher would be this stupid. I remember watching it go down the road and then skipping up just as it got to the school. We must have been in different areas---I was in English class I think. In any case--I replied to the teacher that someone had to REPORT the tornado for there to be an alert issued.
This brings back memories vividly. I also talk about the fence around the school and how it was like they had a "shock leash" on you. They knew if you took one step off of that campus!
Site Administrator
Posted 7 months, 15 days ago.
Wow! Another survivor from those times. Good to hear from you. I think the year was around 1982 or so.