Appalachian Teaching Styles in the 1930's
I've been thinking about my father lately. Today marks one week since his death. He had some great stories. This is not shocking since my family is all about telling stories when we get together.
He told one that is totally foreign to modern sensibilities. However, it does make sense for Appalachian Kentucky is the early 1930's. As a school kid, he had a teacher in a one room schoolhouse that was an abusive alcoholic. One day when he was fooling around in class, the teacher came up behind him and pulled him out of his chair by his hair and threw him into the corner. An older kid who liked my dad jumped up and began brawling with the teacher. The teacher got the upper hand and threw the kid out an open window where he landed on the sandy bank of a creek that ran behind the school. The kid promptly got up, ran back into the school, and threw the teacher out the window. School was dismissed early that day. Much as dad hated the teacher, he hated going home worse. First of all, he did not get to go to school much because his father was always looking for a reason to keep him home and put him to work. Secondly, his younger sister always reported on what he did wrong that day, and he got a whipping for any transgressions.
In 1945, my father got out of the army, and went back home. He freely admitted he was an Army trained killer with combat fatigue and a very short fuse. He thinks he would have had post traumatic stress syndrome except that it hadn't been invented yet. At that point he had waded ashore on Normandy beach, and fought his way across Europe seeing action in the hedgerows of France, the Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, and finally the bridgehead across the Rhine.
He decided to look up that vile teacher for the simple joy of kicking his besotted ass. He asked his aunt where to find the useless reprobate. She told him that he was dead. Sixty years later, it still made dad irate that that useless, drunken teacher had escaped the beating that he so richly deserved by dying.
He told one that is totally foreign to modern sensibilities. However, it does make sense for Appalachian Kentucky is the early 1930's. As a school kid, he had a teacher in a one room schoolhouse that was an abusive alcoholic. One day when he was fooling around in class, the teacher came up behind him and pulled him out of his chair by his hair and threw him into the corner. An older kid who liked my dad jumped up and began brawling with the teacher. The teacher got the upper hand and threw the kid out an open window where he landed on the sandy bank of a creek that ran behind the school. The kid promptly got up, ran back into the school, and threw the teacher out the window. School was dismissed early that day. Much as dad hated the teacher, he hated going home worse. First of all, he did not get to go to school much because his father was always looking for a reason to keep him home and put him to work. Secondly, his younger sister always reported on what he did wrong that day, and he got a whipping for any transgressions.
In 1945, my father got out of the army, and went back home. He freely admitted he was an Army trained killer with combat fatigue and a very short fuse. He thinks he would have had post traumatic stress syndrome except that it hadn't been invented yet. At that point he had waded ashore on Normandy beach, and fought his way across Europe seeing action in the hedgerows of France, the Hurtgen Forest, the Battle of the Bulge, and finally the bridgehead across the Rhine.
He decided to look up that vile teacher for the simple joy of kicking his besotted ass. He asked his aunt where to find the useless reprobate. She told him that he was dead. Sixty years later, it still made dad irate that that useless, drunken teacher had escaped the beating that he so richly deserved by dying.
posted by Greg the woodworker | 9:03 AM
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