Dogs in Space, Chain-Smoking, and Democratic Principles

Abstract

ONCE I attended a very important meeting. I knew it was important because there were more black suits in the audience than I'd ever seen in one place. One speaker explained that the Fifties were the Golden Age of Education. Back then, in the good ole days, teachers taught and students learned. Homes were not broken, and children were well behaved, nonviolent, and sober. I'd like to see the statistical evidence supporting that claim. It actually may have been golden where he went to school. Others of us had different experiences. Our schools were segregated. And Brown v. Board of Education did little to change anything. Native American children were routinely taken from their families and sent to boarding schools. At my own school, twice weekly we walked in nice straight lines to the Baptist church across the street, where the minister taught us religion. Back at school, we practiced crouching under our desks to save ourselves from the atomic bomb. We knew the Reds were just waiting to catch us unprepared. If we weren't vigilant, they would surely drop the big one. After all, they had put a dog into space. If they could do that, they could do anything. Many people said American students were not as smart as our Russian counterparts. Though some thought Elvis was to blame, most blamed the schools. Schools, they claimed, had failed to educate scientists who could propel anything into space, let alone something with a dog inside. (Maybe that was because in the good ole days girls were enrolled in home economics and typing classes instead of calculus and physics.) I don't remember learning much in the Golden Age. But I did have a terrific civics class. teacher, Mr. Slone (or Blinky), was a big man, well over six feet tall with the broad shoulders and muscular arms of a man who had grown up digging coal deep under the Eastern Kentucky mountains. That was before he answered the call to fight the Super Race. I imagined he had been a brave soldier who would have proudly died for America. Everyone knew about his war injury. A hand grenade exploded near him. Shrapnel flew everywhere, killing some and badly wounding others. Mr. Slone's face and neck were covered with what seemed to be hundreds of small scars, and his eyes had been badly damaged. He wore thick glasses and blinked constantly. Thus the nickname I have come to regret so deeply. After the war, he went to school on the GI bill, moved to Ohio, and became my sixth-period civics teacher. My classmates and I loved civics class. Not because Mr. Slone was a good teacher. Precisely because he wasn't. His style was perfectly matched to our purposes. Each day he took attendance and gave a five-minute, desert-dry lecture. Then he pointed to the chalkboard, where he had written our daily reading assignment along with several questions. He also reminded us that we lagged far behind the second-period class. He said they always did their work and studied for tests, too. Why would they do that? we wondered. There was no reward, unless you counted grades, which we didn't. Having thus motivated us, he headed to the boiler room, where he and other male teachers chain-smoked and swapped stories. He returned five minutes before the end of class, just in time to admonish us once more before the bell rang and we escaped out the door. It is true. Our class was made up of rascals, scalawags, and ne'er-do- wells. Not studious, but quite creative, we devised endless ways to use the 40 minutes he spent smoking. Everyone participated in our mischief and mayhem. Even the jocks and hoods, normally mortal enemies, worked together in a democratic fashion appropriate to a civics class. It was the early and The Sixties would soon arrive. British music had invaded and brought with it a serious cultural and moral challenge -- boys began to grow their hair long. …