Augustus Johnson

Week 7 / October 4 2015

English 1A – Section 73017

Professor Kirsten Ogden

Tracing my Identity   

      As a child, the first outside challenge I had to face was in the classroom. Just about everyone has to face the challenge of learning to read, write and add, and most importantly, the challenge was finding out who we were. How you approach these challenges, passively or aggressively, can help determine your sense of self. Growing up, I welcomed these challenges with a combative spirit. I gave my best no matter what the challenge. I had at stake my need to please, be it in the classroom or on the baseball diamond. I wanted to be the best. To me second place or ‘Bs’ on a spelling test were unacceptable and I have never understood why people were pleased to settle for less. It had never occurred to me to examine why I am so competitive until now, when I am asked to reflect upon origins of my identity through education. Education has helped shape my identity and define my authentic voice by helping me explore my past and giving me a reason to share my past.

     I grew up in the turbulent Sixties. The Civil rights movement, the war on poverty and the Vietnam war were daily front page news during the sixties. Elementary School, more or less insulated us from those concerns. The purpose of school then, was to teach us reading, writing and arithmetic. Current affairs at that time was limited to the 1968 Olympics. Sex education was the most controversial subject taught in school. This was the age of, as Tom Brokaw states “America’s Greatest Generation”.  Our presidents from, Dwight D. Eisenhower to Lyndon B. Johnson were all WWII veterans. Ozzie and Harriet and Leave it to Beaver were on TV and Roe V. Wade was a dream. As a result many Americans felt the teaching of sex education was the parent’s responsibility. School was where we learned to pledge the flag, to drop, duck and tuck and fear communism. Our sense of identity was defined by colored construction paper cutouts of pilgrim hats and turkeys and sugar cubed models of Californian missions. Elementary school education was sugarcoated to appease children and parents alike. Elementary school was an innocuous experience and had little to do with the growth of children as persons. Questions about race, Vietnam and poverty were taboo. That education was to be found at home.

     My education at home is where I gained a sense of the world and my place in it. It was where I learned that the reasons for drop, duck and tuck drills, the race to the moon and the battle for Olympic superiority in ’68. Home is where I was exposed to America’s blemishes and where I began to learn who I was. Through my parent’s stories about growing up black in the pre-sixties south I began to learn what America thought about me and my parents. To escape the racial abuses of the south, my father joined the Navy during World War II. For him being a cook in the Pacific was much better than being Black in South Texas. Being a WWII veteran, afforded my father one of the few opportunities available to blacks at the time, education and my father took full advantage of it by receiving a master’s degree in mathematics. As a result, hstressed the value of education to my siblings and me. Our home education began with lessons in current affairs. Through the media my father allowed us to witness the abuses of white Dixie-crats like George Wallace, Strom Thurman, Jesse Helms and Bull Conner toward people like me. He showed the horrors of World War II by letting us view of caskets of American soldiers during the Vietnam War. We were exposed to the rhetoric of Joe Payne and Lois Lomax, two talk show hosts who battled racism in the sixties. We watched 60 minutes and Ralph Story on Sundays. There was always a new Jet or Ebony magazine on the coffee table. We were encouraged to read and couldn’t wait for our weekly excursions to the Altadena or better yet Pasadena library. I was blessed, both my parents were educators who didn’t shy away from exposing us and including us in discussions about the controversies of the day. Elementary school on the other hand was a place where we memorized and regurgitated facts. I was as Paulo Freire says in his essay The “Banking” Concept of Education “, turned “into “containers” into “receptacles” to be “filled” by teachers”. (144). My education at home gave me a sense of self, how I  was viewed and my place in the world  through my parent’s history and their desire to expose me to the world.

     I think one of the reasons I am so competitive is because of my father constantly reminding me “You have to be twice as good as the white man to succeed in American”. In elementary school, I would cry if I got a B. I felt I let down my father and myself. I remember my main competition for grades in elementary school was a guy named Kenneth Coles. Definitely a genius. His parents, I believe worked at Cal Tech. He was a really cool, unassuming guy and I admired him. His intellect was in the stratosphere. His playground was where I wanted to be and I never stopped trying to get there. I wanted his glory. I think that’s the point. Mary Piper in here essay Growing Our Souls, states “Until we receive some kind of external validation of our writing, some of us find it hard to believe in ourselves.”  (62) This statement extends far beyond writing. It applies to everything we do. We are always looking for validation for acknowledgement that we exist and that we are important.

     I looked forward to junior high school where I could hopefully spread my wings. The experience of sports, band, separate rooms for separate classes and my own locker, I thought would be a sign of growth, responsibility, independence and freedom. I expected to be treated more like an adult. After all I had just witnessed the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy and the Watts riots during the previous year. I was ready for a mature discourse on these events of the day. Instead I endured less freedom and was initiated into the factory approach to education. Everything was standardized. The books, the lesson plans and the teachers. Events outside of the classroom were rarely discussed. The only event that was important, was the sound of the classroom bell. I was living in Ken Robinson’s world of factory lines, separate facilities and separate subjects, that he described in his oratory Changing Education Paradigms. It wasn’t until High School when I was allowed to voice my opinions and ideas. Our school offered African American History and Current Affairs classes. For the first time I was allowed to explore my history through books like Before the Mayflower by Lerone Bennett, Jr. and The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley. We openly and freely discussed Watergate, the Vietnam war and race relations in our Current Affairs class. The experience moved me from buying comic books to buying James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time and Eldridge Cleaver’s Soul on Ice. I was beginning to learn about who I was and I was finally allowed to use my voice. This brief period of enlightenment was brought to a halt prior to graduation. All graduating seniors were required to have an exit interview with our guidance counselors. My exit interview was with Mr. Smith who assured me he would supply me with a recommendation to LA Trade Tech. It was then I realized I was a victim of Chiamanda Ngozi Adichie’s, Danger of a Single Story. I had been stereotyped. Mr. Smith used the factory line view of education to determine my slot in life. Blacks and Latinos were to be shipped to trade schools, Asians were to be shipped to engineering school and whites were shipped to business school. Despite taking AP courses, my test scores and being interviewed by college admissions advisors in his office, Mr. Smith had already predetermined my life aspirations. I had no voice. It was as if “I could feel myself being erased.”  (76) as Sandra Cisneros says in her essay, Only Daughter. I wondered if he even looked at my transcripts. More importantly, I wondered if he even cared.

   Upon entering college, I realized that during my K-12 factory supplied education, I missed my turn at the literature and writing bucket. I know I took and passed English class in high school, but I have no recollection of it. I do remember writing for the school paper though.  Now I wonder, was that the extent of my preparation of college level English? Well my SAT scores certainly confirmed my lack of preparation for college education. I was required to take Subject A, remedial English instead of freshman English. The course consisted of spelling quizzes, grammar lessons and some writing. An easy pass. Was this what I was supposed to learn in high school? Freshman English was a different story. We were given a book on grammar and a guide to writing analysis, argumentative, cause and effect and compare and contrast essays. The TA, no professors taught freshman English, would assign a topic and the type of essay we were supposed to write and little else. It was obvious he was preoccupied with his own course of studies and we were an annoyance he was required to put up with. His review of my first essay, can be summarized by one word and one letter, Dull and F. No further explanation was given, so I collapsed into my shell and literally and figuratively withdrew from the course. I was a math major anyway, so connecting with my English TA wasn’t that important. I would get to it later. Fortunately, I had little difficulty with the remainder of my lower division classes. They didn’t require much thinking, just studying and completing the assignments. It wasn’t until I began taking upper division classes that I realized that the true purpose of college was not just to learn how to solve problems and take tests but more importantly, to learn how to think critically. There was more to it than as Paulo Freire states, “Four times four equals sixteen; the capital of Para is Belen.” (144) In abstract algebraic we learned four times four doesn’t always equal sixteen. I learn that the behavior of numbers relies on context, definitions and rules used within that system. I learned that the concepts of mathematics extend far beyond the realm of numbers, just as Freire states that the concept of education should extends beyond “Four times four equals sixteen and the capital of Para is Belem.” (144) Students need to learn the “meaning of four times four and significance of Belem being the capital of Para”.  (144) Learning how to accept different possibilities and to think critically about numbers has been an epiphany and this epiphany extends far beyond the boundaries of math. It’s a way of thinking that can be applied to all processes of learning.

     My identity through education is fluid. I am still learning how new ways of critical thinking, reading and writing and I hope that never changes. My next step is learning how to connect with others by expressing my thoughts and opinions with clarity. It’s kind of like what Mary Pipher says in What You Alone Can Say, “All individuality that is you properly understood and clearly presented, is a tremendous gift to the world.” (46) It is my job to leave this gift behind.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Works Cited

Adichie, Ciamanda Ngozi, The Danger of a Single Story

Cisneros, Sandra, “Only Daughter”: Readings for Revolutionary Writing (2013): 76

Bedford/ St. Martin’s

Goldberg, Natalie, “Original Detail”: Writing Down the Bones (2005): 45

Shambhala

Freire, Paulo, “The “Banking” Concept of Education”, Readings for Revolutionary Writing (2013): 144

Bedford/St. Martin’s

Pipher Mary, “Growing Our Souls”, Writing to Change the World (2007): 46, 62

Riverside Books

Robinson, Ken Sir, Changing Education Paradigms