![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
My earlier post about Delia's letter to the President, and the comments to it, appreciating what she said, abruptly made an old memory of mine surface this morning.
When I was in third grade, I suffered through the experience of being taught by Mrs. Nasitur [sp?]. Children may like and dislike teachers for their own reasons, but even as a young child, I understood that something about Mrs. Nasitur was not quite right, that she was not really suited to be an elementary school teacher. She was pregnant that year, and perhaps that made her moods more difficult to manage, but she had a very hot temper, and periodically would yell at us, I mean scream like a harpie, in a truly alarming way. I distinctly remember her out in the hallway one morning giving a tongue-lashing to the principal of the school. She could also be bitterly sarcastic, making a comment that would blister a student if she didn't like something said.
What I remembered this morning was that she gave us an assignment to write an essay explaining what each of us would do if we were the President of the United States (this was in 1968). I don’t really remember what I wrote in my assignment, but I completed it.
I remember how shocked I was, several days later, when she announced to the class that she had read the essays, but she hadn’t bothered to correct them, because they were "all garbage." She wasn’t going to even bother returning them to us, but had instead thrown them all away. "Just about everyone said that they would end the war in Vietnam," she said witheringly. "The only one worth reading was Patti’s; Patti’s was different."
There are times when a child knows without a shadow of a doubt that an adult is dead wrong. I remember thinking, distinctly, that Mrs. Nasitur was wrong to throw our essays away. They were our words, and we had ownership of them, not her. And just because a child says something that others also have said does not mean that the child should be ignored.
I wondered then, as I wonder now: What was so contemptible about saying that a war should be ended? Was she an ardent conservative, and that was why she didn’t want to read our opinions, our implied criticism of the government in power? Or were we just so callow in other ways that she just couldn’t stand it? Did she think we were just parroting our parents’ opinions and not thinking for ourselves? Or was it something else?
I still wish I could read that essay I wrote way back then.
And I wish she had treated our thoughts with more respect.
When I was in third grade, I suffered through the experience of being taught by Mrs. Nasitur [sp?]. Children may like and dislike teachers for their own reasons, but even as a young child, I understood that something about Mrs. Nasitur was not quite right, that she was not really suited to be an elementary school teacher. She was pregnant that year, and perhaps that made her moods more difficult to manage, but she had a very hot temper, and periodically would yell at us, I mean scream like a harpie, in a truly alarming way. I distinctly remember her out in the hallway one morning giving a tongue-lashing to the principal of the school. She could also be bitterly sarcastic, making a comment that would blister a student if she didn't like something said.
What I remembered this morning was that she gave us an assignment to write an essay explaining what each of us would do if we were the President of the United States (this was in 1968). I don’t really remember what I wrote in my assignment, but I completed it.
I remember how shocked I was, several days later, when she announced to the class that she had read the essays, but she hadn’t bothered to correct them, because they were "all garbage." She wasn’t going to even bother returning them to us, but had instead thrown them all away. "Just about everyone said that they would end the war in Vietnam," she said witheringly. "The only one worth reading was Patti’s; Patti’s was different."
There are times when a child knows without a shadow of a doubt that an adult is dead wrong. I remember thinking, distinctly, that Mrs. Nasitur was wrong to throw our essays away. They were our words, and we had ownership of them, not her. And just because a child says something that others also have said does not mean that the child should be ignored.
I wondered then, as I wonder now: What was so contemptible about saying that a war should be ended? Was she an ardent conservative, and that was why she didn’t want to read our opinions, our implied criticism of the government in power? Or were we just so callow in other ways that she just couldn’t stand it? Did she think we were just parroting our parents’ opinions and not thinking for ourselves? Or was it something else?
I still wish I could read that essay I wrote way back then.
And I wish she had treated our thoughts with more respect.
