Anyone for a “Scab sandwich”?

Ooooooo … Dave passed along the text of his father’s wonderful poem “Scab sandwich” which he shared at the banned book reading last week!
Not for those with faint dispositions…

Scab sandwich
Pus on top
Monkey vomit
…

I don’t remember any specific connections to Gabler, but based on their web site they certainly reminded me of way too many people, and I could certainly imagine that they influenced many of the people that worked to drain all thought from the life in our school system.

The dictionary story is not all bad, though. The woman who was in charge of English and Social Studies for the school district (and who told us this awful tale) managed to (under the table) save a substantial number of the dictionaries and distribute them to students from poorer families.

In many ways that sums up my experience in the Wichita Falls, Texas, schools. There were many people of good will who were really trying to realize some vision of education as a tool to open doors and enable students. They were, unfortunately, embedded in and constantly fighting a system and culture who’s primary trends were to impede original thought and discourage true learning and growth.

My best friend in high school was Pang Chen, whose family had come to the U.S. from Taiwan when he was 13, and who spoke precious little English when they did. Five years later he graduated second in his high school class, and it was so clear that he should have been first that the school system changed their GPA calculation rules specifically to prevent that from happening again. He’s an extremely talented mathematician, and lead our high school math team to tromp pretty much all opposition in the state. But while the football team travelled in air conditioned buses and were treated to steak dinners, we typically travelled in the cars of a couple of teachers who gave up a huge amount to make our success possible and paid our own meals at diners. Pang was named outstanding math student of the year by the state association of math teachers, and went on to get a double major at CalTech and then a PhD at Stanford under Knuth, blah, blah, blah.

The year after he graduated (which was my senior year), the District Superintendent had to gall to hold Pang up as one of the success stories of the District the previous year! Given that we’d never perceived any meaningful support from any part of the school above the teachers that coached us and travelled with us, for the higher ups to then claim any sort of credit for what people like Pang accomplished just frosted me mightly (and obviously still does).

So huge thanks to those great teachers (I should blog about you someday), but a big rasberry for the system that, if we were lucky, just stayed out of the way.

Hmph.

Texas book banning always makes me think of Mel Gabler. There was a scary old man, who may have been behind the dictionary banning.