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The Gaffer's Philosophy:
Part 65: Poor Oliver T:
August 25, 2003:
This is about violence, intimidation and what happened to poor Oliver T. I want to tell you about some of my own educational experience in Wyandotte, Michigan. I could easily have titled this piece, poor Oliver and me. In one part of his work, John Holt briefly discusses physical abuse of kids in school. He just touched on the tip of that iceberg. I have some personal experience to add about physical and other forms of abuse.
My very first experience with a violent assault on a human being was in Washington Elementary School in Wyandotte, Michigan. Much later I was in Korea where I expected to see violence. However, my Korean experience, bad as it was, was not nearly as traumatic as that first exposure in school. I had never been attacked and I had never seen anyone being attacked before. That first assault was not directed toward me. It was against poor Oliver T. It was profoundly revealing and disturbing. It was and remains an emotional scar on my soul. I have never forgotten it and I never shall. From then on, I knew that school was a very dangerous place for midgets like me and Oliver. For me, that fact was to be powerfully reenforce by later events.
I don't know Oliver's background. He was most likely central European of Slavic descent. He was short with a pinched, but not unfriendly face. He was kind of skinny with blond hair. It was clear he wanted to be liked. He had a ready smile. He was also given to speaking out of turn. In a few short seconds, Mrs. Slack cured him of that and any other spontaneity he may ever have had.
His crime was nothing more serious than a minor vulgarity, one that I am sure he had learned from his father. My memory is not pure on this, but I think it had to do with bovine feces. His problem was, Slack took it very personally. She had just given a direct order to the kids when Oliver said it.
When herding kids around in the hall, Slack always carried a yardstick with her. Many of these so called teachers did. It was used as sort of a cattle prod to keep kids moving or still, but always in line. At this particular time, Slack had us staged outside a classroom waiting to enter. While poking us around with the stick she snapped, as she often did, get back in line. Oliver then spoke out. It was the very last time I ever heard him speak in public.
Slack went totally insane. Her face went white, her nostrils flared out, her eyes opened large, and she began to snarl. There were no coherent words, only the snarl. She grasped Oliver's arm and began beating him with that yardstick as her face went from white to black. I doubt if she could see clearly. The range of her blows confirmed that. She hit him on the bare legs, the back, and the buttocks. Oliver was screaming and there was total terror among the kids who began to draw back. I could see white faces and horrified expressions all around me. I am sure none of us had ever seen a person go mad with rage before, nor had we ever seen a person being beaten with malice.
I was completely terrified with the rest of them. It was then that I did what was certainly the most courageous act I have ever managed in my entire life. Pure terror is what caused me to respond. I could not stand what was being done to Oliver. I was not the only one who was in stark terror. Every child in that line was reacting with horror. The difference is, none but me was in the right position and saw what needed to be done.
As she swung again and again, I raised my foot. My goal was to keep that stick from hitting Oliver again. The stick did not hit Oliver on the final blow. It hit the bottom of my shoe and broke. I felt very ill. I was sure I would then become the victim. I expected to get beaten viciously with a short broken stick. It never happened. I am not sure Slack even knew what had occurred.
When she saw the broken yardstick, Slack looked dazed for an instant. Then she came back to her normal dully aware self. She picked up the broken stick and took up business as usual. She got the kids in line and proceeded as though nothing at all had happened. Perhaps, for her, nothing did happen. Perhaps she was so disconnected by her madness that it was just a short blank spot in her memory. I can never know. I do know that was not the last time Slack victimized poor Oliver.
At the time of this incident, I was six or seven years old. Now I am 72, but I still remember it. This long after the incident, I am still convinced in my mind that Mrs. Slack fully intended to kill Oliver. What prevented her from doing that was a poor choice of weapon and my covert intervention. In no way do I claim I saved his life. I do not believe she could have killed him with that yardstick. I also really want to believe that someone would have intervened. There were several adults near enough to see what was going on.
A short time later, Oliver again became a victim of the vengeful Mrs. Slack. I wrote about this in "The Gaffer's Shorts", but it is worth repeating here.
Mrs. Slack was in theory an English teacher. I believe she did know a little about the structure of English. Unfortunately, she did not know crap about logic or usage. Because of that, and her shabby ego, she did something which I have always found unforgivable in a teacher. She ridiculed and humiliated poor Oliver. As a promotional stunt, the Affholter dairy company had provided our class with token helpings of ice cream, which we, of course, ate. Our assignment was to write a thank you note for the magnificent gift, which we did. I'll never forget what Oliver wrote.
"Dear Mr. Affholter:
"Thank you for the ice cream. It was very good and we ate it all down.
"Oliver T, third grade."
I believed then, and I still believe, that Oliver's logic was impeccable. Mrs. Slack did not take logic into account and kindly correction was not in her nature. She was purely mean of spirit. She made that poor lad stand in front of about 30 students while she read his note over and over again as a glaring example of bad grammar. She explained that he should have written up instead of down, mistaking the idiom for proper usage. In short, she made the same error Oliver had. Then she laughed at him.
It still strikes me that, mean as little kids can get, no one else laughed. To a person, we all felt awful for Oliver. Her behind was not the only area of slack in Slack. Her mind could have used a little tightening too. After a trauma like that, I can seriously doubt that Oliver ever learned to use English effectively.
Oliver, of course, never did well in school. I noticed him from time to time, trying his best. I was too busy with my own apparent failures to give him more than passing attention. After I left school, I never heard of Oliver again. I suspect this means he never did anything terribly good or terribly bad. At best he lead a life of mediocrity much like the rest of us. Isn't that a damn shame?
There were other forms of abuse that I noticed in elementary school. They were not particularly subtle. Here is just one. A favorite pose of teachers when I was a little person was to lean the head slightly back, with arms folded across the chest, and look sternly down a long nose at the little guy. Thus the giant deliberately and maliciously intimidates the midget. I suspect it is still done that way.
Holt points out that coercion, however it is done, must be
an integral part of education the way it is done now. It is the
only way we can force kids to do things they know are stupid.
I saw it when I was on the inside for too long as a victim. Now,
I am on the outside looking in, seeing the oppression second hand.
The information I get is usually only suggestive of the magnitude
of the problem. Holt was on the inside, looking out, as an oppressor.
Though he did not mean to do it he does acknowledge his culpability.
Inside, he acquired a true sense of the magnitude of the problem.
It is still to all appearances completely universal. No kids are
completely spared. I will continue with this theme next time.
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