122 The Character Of A Village: The
Underground History of American Education by John Taylor Gatto from archive.org
Chapter Ten
The Character of a Village
Each person in a village has a face
and a name, even a nickname. Anonymity is
impossible, for the villagers are
not a mass... a village has its own language, its customs,
its rhythms... its life is
interior.... a village
cannot be global.
— Robert Vachon
The Character Of A Village
Before I went to first grade I could
add, subtract, and multiply in my head. I knew my
anything was easy when you felt like
it. My father taught me that, not any school.
When I went to first grade I could
read fluently. I loved to read grown-up books I
selected from the three-level
glass-enclosed bookcase behind the front door in Swissvale.
It held hundreds. I knew if I kept
reading, things would eventually come. Mother taught
me that and she was right. I
remember taking down The Decameron time after time, only
to find its deceptively simple
language concealing meanings I couldn't fathom. Each time
I put the book back I made a mental
note to try again next month. And sure enough, one
month it happened. I was ten.
My father was a cookie salesman.
Mother called him that anyway when she was angry,
which was often. He had gone to work
as a teenager to help support my widowed
grandmother and to help brother
Frank, the smart one, through the University of
Pittsburgh. Dad never got to
college, but he was a genius just the same. Mother went for
one year, she was a genius, too.
They were the kind of people who expose the malice of
bell curves and rankings for what it
is. I miss them both and think of them often with love
and gratitude.
Mother I called "Bootie"
most of the time because that's what I heard her own mother
say. Bootie read fairy tales to me
in the cradle, she recited poems, she filled my ears and
eyes with language even though she
had little else in the way of things to give. One day
she bought a set of encyclopedias
from a door-to-door salesman that cost more than we
could afford. I know because she and
dad fought when he got home. From then on
mother read from the encyclopedia
every day. We read all the newspapers, too. In those
days they only cost a couple of
cents. I liked the Hearst Sun-Telegraph best because it
used violent layouts, and on the
upper corner of the Sunday edition, a little boy called
Puck, dressed like a fop, said in a
speech balloon, "What fools these mortals be." I didn't
know what that meant, but I said the
words out loud often to punctuate adult conversation
and always got a smile when I did.
As far as I can figure, any success
I had as a schoolteacher came from what my mother,
my father, my sister, my family,
friends, and town taught, not from a single thing I
remember about Cornell and Columbia,
my two colleges, not from any findings of
institutes of child study or
directives from departments of education. If I'm correct, then
this insight is more significant
than it may appear. The immense edifice of teacher
instruction and schooling in general
rests on the shaky hypothesis that expert intervention
in childhood produces better people
than might otherwise occur. I've come to doubt that.
A gigantic social investment rides
on this hypothesis, one that might otherwise be spent
on reducing stress on family life
which interferes with happiness and the growth of
intelligence. Had the small fortune
spent on my own schooling been invested instead in
my people and my place directly, I
have a hunch I would have turned out better.
Whatever the truth of this complex
proposition, as long as you've spent your money and
time to hear what I have to say, you
have a right to know something about the
fountainhead of my school-teaching
practice, my growing up time on the green river
Monongahela.
I feel grateful for the luck to have
been born in a tiny city with the character of a village
on the river Monongahela in western
Pennsylvania. People cared for each other there.
Even the town wastrels had a
history. But we minded our own business in Mon City, too.
Both are important. Everyone seemed
to understand that within broad limits there is no
one best way to grow up. Rich or
poor doesn't matter much if you know what's
important. Poverty can 't make you
miserable; only a bad character and a weak spirit can
do that.
In Monongahela, people seemed to
know that children have a remarkable power to
survive unfavorable environments as
long as they have a part in a vital community. In the
years I grew up, in the place I grew
up, tales of social workers breaking up families "in
the best interests of the
child" weren't common, although on several occasions I heard
Uncle Bud threaten to punch out this
man's lights or that one's if the person didn't start
treating his wife better. Or his
kids. Bud was always punching someone in the interest of
justice.
Over the years any number of
students found a way to tell me that what they appreciated
most about my classes was that I
didn't waste their time. I think I learned how not to do
that through a bit of good luck —
being born in Monongahela during the Depression when
money was tight and people were
forced to continue older traditions of making their own
meanings instead of buying them. And
they learned how many very different ways there
were to grow strong. What the vast
industry of professional child-rearing has told you
about the right way to grow up
matters less than you've been led to believe. Until you
know that, you remain caught like a
fly in the web of the great therapeutic community of
modern life. That will make you sick
quicker than anything.
Singing And Fishing Were Free
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