The Education of a Teacher by Susan Van Kirk

I think this book falls into the category about how a small town changes over the decades. The 1960’s were about rock music, Vietnam, and the sex revolution. Then came the 1980’s, with the crack epidemic, crime, teen pregnancy becoming less of a stigma, and some good things too, like computers. The dynamic is that this is in a small town, not a city.

In the early 1970’s, Susan Van Kirk is young, green, and living in Monmouth, Illinois, a time and place where teaching is considered “woman’s work.” The very worst thing for her is “fighting” between farm boys, nothing more. But in the 1980’s, a student comes to her for help because her foster parent is coming into her room at night and “taking liberties.” In the 1970’s, a teen would not have been likely to tell a teacher about this, and would probably have been advised to keep it hushed.  I guess there was one good thing about the 1980’s, in that we were moving away from victim-blaming.

One poignant story in this book is about a black student, a true “minority” in a dominantly white town, torn between sports and academics.  He opens up about how he actually dislikes football; it’s the macho coaches pushing him into it, but his real talent is in computers. Here we see the transition towards technology in American life, and the stigma that was attached to it. In the 1980’s the computer scientist was the pencil-necked geek with 50’s glasses and a pocket protector, not the stylishly dressed hippy with torn jeans and lots of tattoos, making big money on the internet. But a “tough” black boy teaching himself advanced programming, now that’s a minority within a minority.

What’s missing from the book is the physical change of the town.  She admits early in the story that it became a college town after decades of farming. But how did it effect the kids? There must have been some transition as well from the factories. Did they close? Did the town lose jobs? She makes it clear in the intro, this is not going to be “Dangerous Minds” or “Freedom Writers.” It’s a small town, not a blighted city. But it couldn’t have all been good.

Van Kirk dislikes the NCLB law. She left before it came about, and transitioned to teaching at a local college. There used to be more expected from teachers, and they were trusted more. Now the teaching is towards the tests, and the teacher can’t make things fun. I also suspect that in a small town it’s easier to get a part-time job for a teenager, like the chapter “Mister Detroit.” The boy husks corn for money, a job you won’t see in New York City. But I promise you, my worst students would’ve loved that job.

Perhaps when you have sports and work, the kids have a better focus for their energy?

Religion, Food, and Eating in North America

Let’s begin by saying that every kid in the USA has learned the Thanksgiving story. Do they know that the Pilgrims came here because of religion? Maybe not, but they all know the menu they served, and they’ll all associate pumpkins, turkey, and cornbread with Thanksgiving.

It seems, according to this book, that religious people put more “soul” into the food. Jewish Shabbat lunches, Muslim Iftars, and traditional Christmas foods (each country has its own custom) all reflect this theory. In the USA, Protestants have always been at the forefront of the health crazes. If you need proof, look at the Kellog brothers, devout Seventh Day Adventists who ran the Battle Creek Sanitarium, and tried to invent new foods to replace the less healthy cooked breakfasts that Americans ate. There’s also the Hallelujah Acres, an evangelical ministry, that encourages raw food diets.

The chapter “Dreydel Salad” is not entirely accurate. Traditional Jewish foods in the USA are all Ashkenazi from Lithuania and Poland. KTAV, cited as the dominant supplier of Jewish cookbooks, stressed how Jewish people could impress the nation on how they could be the perfect American minority. It promoted typically dull American ingredients, like canned pineapple and coconut, typical 1950’s chintzy stuff.  Non-European Jewish foods, like tagine, shish kebab, and couscous, I imagine would have led to stares, sniggers, and xenophobia if they’d been served in the Eisenhower-Kennedy era. Israeli foods would’ve gotten the same reaction, because until the 1970’s most Jewish Americans had never visited Israel. Typical Ashkenazi fare, like blintzes, kuggel, and latkes, were considered “traditional” until the 1980’s. Today a lot of Jews won’t eat kuggel.

More chapters follow, with the same ethnic-religious connection to food. The movie Annie Hall is an example, where the wasp versus Jew dinner scene highlights the cultural difference. By the 1950’s, Yom Kippur was no longer a fast day to non-religious Jews, but a feast day! Borscht Belt hotels celebrated the “high holidays” with huge dinners and comedians. Orthodox Jews would blanch at the idea of feasting and comedy on Yom Kippur, but the likely humorous anecdotes are missing from this book. Most of the material is from second hand sources. Beef was abundant in the USA in the early days, so there was plenty of opportunity for Jewish, Irish, and southern cuisines had the chance to bulk up.

Children Living in Transition

There’s a scene in this book where a parent tries the “do you want another whupping” approach to a misbehaving 9 year old, in trouble both in and out of the classroom. They’re living in transitional housing, and the mother hates it when the social worker tells her not to use the traditional “smack in the behind.” But as you can guess, neither way  works, because the parent is fed up with the kid’s misbehavior, yet she’s too angry to take advice.

This book blames the problems on bad parenting more than on being homeless. Research shows that depressed mothers are more likely to use corporal punishment, and race can be a factor. Though poor white parents are just as likely to use slaps to discipline their children, angry black parents may see it as a “me versus them” issue when advised not to use hitting.

There’s a chapter on working with families to change the parenting styles, but some more case studies would be in order. Earlier book have covered these topic; I remember seeing similar problems discussed in Jonothan Kozol’s book Rachel and Her Children back in the early 1990’s, so you can see how things haven’t really changed in 25 years. Lack of mobility is a problem, and if you have no family to depend on for mutual support, that makes things a lot worse.