Augustus Johnson

Week 7 / October 4 2015

English 1A – Section 73017

Professor Karen Ogden

Tracing my Identity

     I hated losing. The stage of competition didn’t matter. It could be a little league ball field or a fourth grade classroom. I hated losing. Second place and Bs were unacceptable. I couldn’t understand why people gladly accepted participation trophies or Cs on their spelling test. I’ve never really thought about why I am the way I am until now. I grew up in the turbulent Sixties when there were battles, that as a society, we couldn’t afford to lose. The fight for civil rights, against poverty, for peace, for winning the space race and for superiority in the 68 Olympics. I identified with America’s sense of competition and realized, education was my best chance to win my own war.

    Elementary School in the Sixties was the first place where I gained a sense of nationalism. From the pledge of allegiance to the drop, duck and tuck drills that were signaled monthly air raid sirens, I was infused with American pride and fear of communism. We learned the basics in school, reading, writing and math but it was through history lessons where we gained an understanding of us as Americans and Californians. We made turkeys and pilgrim hats out of colored construction paper to celebrate thanksgiving and the founding of America. We made sugar cube replicas California missions to commemorate the settling of the state.  Current affairs involved newspaper clippings about the space race and the 1968 Olympics. Current Affairs lessons were fun because they inspired us. I mean who didn’t want to walk on the moon or win Olympic gold. Elementary school was sugarcoated to appease children and parents alike. Left out were lessons about slavery, the march on Washington or the Cuban missile crisis. The teaching of sixth grade sex education was controversial issue of the day. Elementary school was an innocuous experience. It was at home where I learned the truth behind the drop, duck and tuck drills, why the space race was important and why sex education was being taught in school.

     Home is where I found out about the why, who, where and how of the world. I learned that the reason for drop, duck and tuck drills, the race to the moon and the battle for Olympic superiority was to defeat communism. At home I was exposed to America’s blemishes. My father escaped the racial abuses of the south by joining the Navy in World War II. Being a cook in the Pacific was much better than being Black in South Texas. Education was one of the few opportunities blacks had and my father took full advantage of that opportunity by receiving a master’s in mathematics after the war. He stressed the value of education and used America’s treatment of blacks as evidence. Through TV, my father allowed us to witness the abuses of white Dixie-crats like George Wallace, Strom Thurman, Jesse Helms and Bull Conner to people like me. He showed the horrors of World War II by letting us view images of caskets on the tarmac of American bases 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)

     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 from someone, just as I was looked for my father’s approval. 

     I looked forward to the transition between elementary and junior high school. 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 orally express it. 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 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