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 |    Not for the faint of art. |
I want to say I respect all of my former teachers.   PROMPT November 24th In a previous prompt, I asked you to write about your best, or favorite teacher. Tonight write about your darkest teacher. I want to say I respect all my former teachers, but I can't. I know I've spoken before about a 7th or 8th grade science teacher who was absolutely certain that it is rotation that causes gravity; that if the Earth weren't spinning, nothing would stay stuck to it. (This is a different issue from if the Earth were to suddenly stop spinning, which would be Bad for other reasons). But okay, everyone is wrong about something, and most of us refuse to consider corrections. In this particular case, I could have forgiven it if it had been, say, an English teacher. But science? No. Just to be clear, it's mass that produces gravity, not spin. I'm pretty sure she got confused from reading science fiction stories that featured spinning spaceships or whatever, which generate something akin to gravity on the inside as a result of their rotaion. Still, apart from that blind spot, I don't think she was a terrible teacher. In the same school, though, I once had a Nazi for a teacher for a whole year. Now, keep in mind that this was a very long time ago (though not quite so long ago as WWII), so I don't remember a lot of details. It's mostly just the impression that I'm left with at this much later date. She was pretty old then, so I doubt she's still around, but just in case, I'm going to call her Fraulein Braun instead of whatever her real name was. Most years, through elementary and middle school, teachers would be eager for the class to learn about something other than mainstream US Protestantism (the majority representation in a public school in rural Virginia), so anyone from a different culture was always encouraged to enlighten the class about their traditions. Like, they'd make me go up to the board and talk about Hanukkah every damn December. I got pretty good at drawing menorahs and dreidels with chalk. Anyway, other people talked about their experiences too. One guy was a Native American. Occasionally we'd have exchange students and such, from other countries. Not F. Braun, though. Such things were suppressed. The other thing I remember clearly is going to the principal's office far more often than usual that year. Which was remarkable, as the principal already had a special chair with my name on it; it just got a lot more use that year. She wasn't too overt about it, though. Couldn't be, I suppose, or she'd have been fired. It was a more subtle attitude, though it was obvious that the white kids got more of her help. I don't know if she fudged grades or anything; I didn't care as long as I didn't fail. I also can't recall a thing about what we learned that year. I think I was too busy trying to keep the teacher from remembering I existed. It's not like I hadn't already figured out that bigotry existed, by that time, so F. Braun didn't destroy my innocence or anything of that sort. It's just unfortunate that such people had positions of authority over a diverse group of students. |
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