I believe myself capable of rational thought. It is that irrational and over-emotional conclusion that leads me to write a self-reflective post full of over-blown thinking about thinking like this one.
The little Midwestern town of Rowan, Iowa, the place where I grew up, is probably the center of my soul and biggest reason for why I am who I am.
I was a public school teacher for 31 years. It really seems more like 131 years for all the kids I got to know and lessons I got to teach. I have lots and lots of experience on which to draw for the drawing of conclusions about education. Here is a conclusion I drew (literally);
All kids are good kids.
I can hear the debate from the teachers’ lounge already. “What kind of an idiot thinks something as stupid as that?” “It’s true that there are a lot of good kids, but what about Psycho Melvin or Rebel Maria?” “Some kids are stupid. I have test data to prove it.”
But I not only believe all kids are good, I think all people are good, even the bad ones. I have large numbers of memories filed away of times I got to the bottom of problems with kids acting out in class. Invariably the reasons for their bad behaviors would either make me laugh, or make me cry. Edwin rammed the drinking fountain with his head because he was socially inept and starved for attention from the other kids. El Goofy could make his whole head turn bright purple on command because it made the girls squeal and laugh and he had learned to manipulate facial muscles to make it happen because he liked the result. Lucy yelled at me in front of the whole class because she was thinking about committing suicide like her mother had before her, and she needed me to stop her. (I don’t use these kids’ real names for some very good reasons, but rest assured, Lucy made it to adulthood.) (Sorry, I had to stop at this point and cry for 15 minutes again.) My experiences as a teacher have basically taught me that all people need love, and all people are worthy of love. Someone even loved Adolf Hitler.
There are really two kinds of teachers. There is the kind who teaches because they love kids and will literally sacrifice anything to benefit them. The Sandy Hook incident proved that those teachers exist in every school. There is also the kind who hate kids with a passion and believe themselves to be experts at classroom discipline. Don’t get me wrong, teachers like that mold young people into upstanding citizens or championship-winning football or basketball players on a regular basis. But they do it by polishing out the flaws in kids through punishment and rigorous efforts to remove every flaw because they actually detest the flaws in themselves that they see mirrored in students. I could never be that kind of teacher myself, but I know they are just as necessary as the other kind. After all, all people are good people, even the bad ones.
Doctor Doom really doesn’t like to be around me. Still, he’s a good person too, even though he’s fictional.
After more than 500 words worth of this nonsense, and I realize I still have a lot more to say about this goofy topic, I must draw to a close. And I know I haven’t convinced anyone of anything yet. But let me threaten you with the prospect that I will pursue this topic again sooner than you would like. I just can’t seem to stop thinking about why I think what I think, and why I am always thinking.
Betsy De Vos and the Golliwogs of Education
I have often said that I don’t really approve of insult humor. I don’t think calling someone names really adds to the discussion in any useful way, and the real point of humor is to reveal the truth in a way that is palatable because it is surprising enough to make you laugh. Revealed truth is much funnier than calling someone names. So when I call Donald Trump the king of rotten cantaloupe rinds, I am really being no more clever than he is talking about Lyin’ Ted or Crooked Hillary.
Three of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse, (from left to right) Famine, Cinnamon Hitler, and the Pale Rider, Death.
So, what in the heck am I doing talking about Golliwogs in this post?
A Golliwog is a Raggedy Ann-type rag doll from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. They were a common doll type for typical little white girls in typical little middle class families. My Aunt Jean, my father’s sister, had one as a child. A female one with a red dress with black spots. You could flip that doll over and underneath her skirt was a different doll, a yellow-haired white girl in a blue and black dress. The image has become poison in modern culture because the blackface-minstrel roots of the character is now deemed racist and offensive. The Golliwogs in the children’s books of Florence Upton and Grid Blyton, though, were actually quite heroic, good-hearted and kind.
As much as we vilify people for having them nowadays, there are many people who secretly adore them and wish to collect and preserve them. I have long been enthralled by the brilliant 1920’s newspaper cartoon, Little Nemo in Slumberland by Windsor McKay. But there are many who would lecture me sternly about that because there is at least one Golliwog character in the cartoon strip, and it is even debatable that the main character of Flip, the “bad kid”, is just another kind of Golliwog.
Now, the point of this article is to make relentless fun of Betsy De Vos, the harpy that Donald Trump has put in charge of the implosion of the Department of Education. There are a number of very bad things about this wicked witch and her policies. Diane Ravitch does an excellent job of explaining what’s wrong with De Vos and her wicked witch plans in Ravitch’s education blog, linked here. You should read all about it so you know why I am regressing into vacant-headed teacher burblings about her, and resorting to the kind of insult humor you find me committing in this blog post.
Betsy De Vos looks at public school children and sees Golliwogs. She is suspicious of their pedigree and basically doesn’t like them. Remember, we are talking about public school children, not the children in upper class, rich private schools, the only kind De Vos actually touts. She wants to give Golliwogs only the minimums absolutely necessary, the spoiled and the spilled milk. The cream belongs to rich kids. And she’s not prejudiced or racist, oh, no. She sees poor white kids as just as golliwoggie as poor black kids, and she would have no problem pandering to Ben Carson’s kids. Ben has lots of money. He can be Sleepy McBoing-boing as much as he wants, and take off after phantom luggage whenever he wants, because money keeps you from being the detestable Golliwog.
But the secret… the revealed truth is… Golliwogs are worth loving and educating. Diversity and the resilience learned from hardship and poverty are priceless things, resources too rarely put to good use. Most of the kids I truly loved as a teacher were Golliwogs. Not just the chocolate-flavored ones, though those were very precious and precocious children, but also the vanilla-flavored ones, the caramel-flavored ones, the blueberry-flavored ones and the grape-flavored ones. (Okay, maybe they were only blue and purple in my crazy old head. And maybe I shouldn’t be making metaphors that suggest I am promoting eating school children. That was Jonathan Swift’s thing.) But Betsy De Vos and her boss, Donald Trump, will never understand that, and never see the true value in them. If we are ever again going to have a fair and just system of education, we have to give value to the Golliwogs.
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Filed under angry rant, commentary, compassion, doll collecting, education, humor, kids, Liberal ideas, teaching
Tagged as Betsy DeVos, Donald Trump, education, golliwogs