There Was one profession to which I never gave serious thought during that preemployment period when I digested the Want Ads along with my breakfast coffee. That was school teaching. In fact, to insure myself permanently against such a fate, I had carefully avoided in college all courses labeled "Education." The one symbol of achievement that I didn't aim to hang in my study, alongside my deer antlers, was a teacher's certificate. Also, after the advice handed me so vehemently during my first job, interview, I regarded it as providential that I had never aspired to a career of wielding the ruler.
But I stumbled into teaching when my husband was asked to take over the headmaster's position at Norton, a boarding and day school for small boys, in the country just outside Claremont, California. I am not sure just how capable I was as a teacher. I've never had a chance to make a survey of the adult spelling and punctuation of my charges, but I do know. in spite of that harsh warning I had, I didn't leave the landscape littered with little twisted minds.
The only twisting that was done was by the boys. They twisted me around their little fingers. I'm always a fool for a handsome man, and I discovered I was a complete pushover for the particular brand of charm peddled by males between the ages of eight and fourteen. Even with a toad in grubby hand and a snake crawling out of a corduroy pocket, any little disheveled ten-year-old could sell me an ice concession in Greenland.
I am convinced that the most delightful method of being driven crazy is by a horde of small boys. Their consistent clatter and vocalizing proved even more musical to my ears than my formerly top-tune favorite -the roar of presses.
It wasn't the teaching itself that I liked so much-- it put an awful tax on my spelling--or the salary, which was negligible. It was just that I met so many interesting people and it was all so broadening and educational. I learned to associate in a manner quite cozy with snakes, and in pure self-defense, I developed a fancy for crawling things and white mice. I was taught to spin a top and shoot a fair game of marbles. I learned to speak fluent Pig Latin and Op, a much more erudite language. I also learned that a face like a Botticelli angel was a thing of beauty but not necessarily a joy forever. A head that would have looked perfectly natural with a halo cocked over it, could, I discovered, contrive most delightful and devilish mischief.
This idyllic job had the slight disadvantage of requiring duty approximately twenty-five hours a day, and it also necessitated, for purposes of noble example, consumption of vast quantities of oatmeal and other healthy, uninteresting delicacies. But the life was too active to encourage fat, and I was too entranced to be wearied by my long hours.
Such was my enthusiasm for this kind of punishment that I insisted upon being flailed in the summertime too. I pooled my strength with that of two masters and ran a camp for boys at Lake Arrowhead--Camp Robin Hood--complete with lethal weapons, bows and arrows.
I have s friend, only very slightly handicapped by infantile paralysis, who is a magnificent teacher. She didn't choose teaching as a profession because, like so many girls, nothing more imaginative occurred to her. She decided to teach because it was the one thing she wanted most to do. That rare attitude of mind, I am convinced, should have influenced every school board in the country to barter for her services. She is now a successful instructor in a large metropolitan system where she has thoroughly proved her merit. But she had a long and discouraging struggle getting a job--for no reason except a slight weakness in her knees. A childhood illness resulted in disability and disfigurement that was so slight as to be negligible. A twenty-four-legged muscular centipede, miraculously endowed with the mind of a genius, couldn't give more lavish gifts to children. But for a number of years, it looked as if she'd never have a chance to distribute her gifts. There is a tendency to scream for normalcy in the public school systems. Handicapped teachers are more likely to be found in the more resilient private school organizations.
I am, of course, not in a position to argue against this prejudice by presenting statistically reliable evidence. All I can say is that the young boys I taught took my handicap in their stride. They gave it little if any thought. Similarly they took in their stride the handicap of another member of our teaching staff.
The most thoroughly beloved and most successful master we had. was a young and vigorous man who had one crippled foot. victimized by polio. The boys admired, with the typical enthusiasm of their age group, the strong-legged athletic young men who supervised their play hours, but they loved the master who carried the physical handicap and who also carried a much more damaging handicap to popularity--the school master's weightiest burden, the teaching of Latin.
It was not perverted sympathy either, that prompted their devotion. The master was completely worthy in every respect to be top favorite with his students. The lameness had no bearing one way or another on his position in the hearts of the boys. His attractiveness of personality, his rich understanding, and his skill and discipline in the classroom, would have made him a fine teacher, without his handicap; they made him an equally fine teacher with his handicap. In fact, his disability may even have enhanced his value as a teacher in a subtle way that perhaps was neither recognized by himself nor his pupils. I feel sure that the children in their natural experience of identifying themselves with this thoroughly beloved teacher achieved an understanding attitude toward the handicapped person in general that no amount of instruction or moralizing would have implanted.
Also, should it happen that any of these boys in later life suffered some disability themselves, there is no doubt that their mental recovery and acceptance would be more rapid and complete because of the fortification of the memory of this welladjusted, happy, useful man.
To me, the following incident significantly demonstrates a schoolboy's attitude toward a handicapped teacher. Recently I happened to run onto one of our old Norton students, now grown into quite impressive manhood. Our conversation inevitably led to this favorite master.
"I hear he's married now." the boy said, "and has a bunch of kids. I bet he's a swell father. I've never had a teacher who held a candle to him."
"He was remarkably active for a man with a handicap. too," I added, with the cold-blooded intention of prodding for an opinion on this subject.
"Why, that's right--" The boy looked quizzical. "He was lame. wasn't he?"
I certainly do not follow this idea through with the recommendation that all handicapped people promptly start plugging for school-teaching jobs. I merely subscribe to the theory that, granted the qualifications of personality and training which make a normal person a good teacher, a physically handicapped person is at no disadvantage. This point of view may be applied to any other profession as well.
Paradoxically, if a handicapped person is not basically warmhearted and likable, his physical abnormality may prove an insurmountable mountain to him in the field of teaching. Children are likely to choose an obvious peg on which to hang their scorn. I once knew a teacher in my own early school years, who behind her back was referred to as "Old Droopy Eye." Even I, as a one-legged little girl who should have had more natural compassion for a handicapped person, called her that without any consciousness of irony.
She had an injured muscle in her right eyelid that gave her a permanent semi-wink, but her personality was such that she never for a moment misled anyone into thinking her merely flirtatious. She was a veritable tartar, with not a modicum of softness in her nature. She shouldn't have been a teacher. She probably knew her grammar book by heart, and I don't doubt she could spell every word in Webster's Unabridged, but she didn't like children. I think it would have given her the greatest pleasure to hang her entire class by their thumbs. We pupils felt this and returned the sentiment with enthusiasm. Since we subconsciously wanted to identify the source of our hatred, we hooked it on her defect and called her "Old Droopy Eye."
A psychologist friend of mine tells me that this is a fairly common tendency in children and is called "mechanism projection." If the hate had not been present anyway for some more valid reason, the defect would not have awakened it.
Of course, my schoolboys took a certain amount of interest in my crutches--an interest identical with that displayed in my childhood by my contemporary play-mates. It was the inevitable young enthusiasm for anything that remotely resembled a vehicle on which to ride. The taller boys walked with my crutches and the smaller boys stood on chairs, leaned their weight in the saddles and swung off into space-quite an exciting sport. All sizes and varieties of boys tried to imitate my use of the crutches--as stilts.
They were not beyond playing tricks on me either-- a sort of harmless clipping of my wings. It was regarded as something of a clever maneuver to kidnap my crutches without my knowing it. This was no small accomplishment since I am inclined to have them at my side constantly, and my mind if not my hand usually rests on them most of the time. The boys played this little game merely out of mischief--not meanness. as proved by the fact that they always posted a benevolent guard on me to be sure that I didn't need the crutches during the abduction. I contend that the very fact that they invented this nonsense at all was a healthy sign. They didn't hold my crutches in any awe or undue reverence. If they had, they would have ignored them completely with the most contrived and thoroughly false disinterest.
The boys took some pride in my accomplishments, demanding that I demonstrate my one-legged physical feats to new boarders. In this spirit, one of the more memorable athletic contests staged at Norton was a crutch race that had all the fanfare of an Olympic competition.
We had a physical education coach who ran the 440 and the 880 for the Los Angeles Athletic Club. He banged up an ankle and was temporarily out-fitted with a pair of my crutches, on which he was exceptionally adept for a temporary time-server. It occurred to one of the boys that under the circumstances, a race between this damaged Mercury and me would be a fair and amenable contest-- his skill as a track man pitted against my skill on crutches.
The bounds were laid out-- a one-hundred-yard dash. With a good deal of solemn officialism, the boys set us off with a blank pistol shot. Our four crutches and two feet pranced down the course. It wasn't really a fair contest. A lifetime of two-footed running isn't good preparation for a one-legged sprint. I won, but just by the front freckle on my nose. I don't think I ever felt more of a genuine heroine, however. I know how a laurel wreath must feel on a noble brow.
"Jeepers!" one small spectator remarked with awe. "She beat him, and he's a state champ." The little boy had apparently put out of his mind completely the rather unusual aspects of my victory.