As a former math amd physics prof, I should be ashamed at a "black hole" metaphor for educational "defects". Yet I shamelessly wish to shock --. The "hole" is in the CURRICULUM. But the EDUCATIONAL STRUCTURE is a "sieve" of DISCRIMINATION and SEGREGATION and NEGLECT of students! I've a unique background on this subject. I tell my story (with supporting records) to reveal the Truth.

MY WHOLE LIFE HAS BEEN A SEARCH FOR AN EDUCATION! Still looking, but I've CONNECTED here and there. And know REAL from PHONY.

At birth, my father was a minister of the Southern Methodist Church. I spent much of my first two years in Church. Allegedly, I started talking at 6 months and never stopped. Hee-Haws in back of the Church would incite me to PREACHING A COUNTER-SERMON against Dad's at the pulpit. During the next two years, on my (paternal) grandmother's farm, I preached to the chickens. In our Church, a preacher is a teacher. So this was an early start.

After Grandmother's death, Dad returned to his real love, gardening, working in the parks. Apparently, I learned the alphabet from BURPEE'S SEED CATALOGUES. My greatest motivation sprang from DISCRIMINATION and SEGREGAATION I encountered in Tulsa, OK, when five years old.

In the hospital for removal of tonsils and adenoids, I was hurt at the Nurse calling me a "charity case". Complaining to a neighboring boy, he warned me of more DISCRIMINATION and SEGREGATION "ahead". Tulsa Elementary Schools started First Graders in separate rooms. Those best on tests were in 1B1; next best, in 1B2; the rest, SEGREGATED in 1B3. For, as the boy told me, "Since your mother and father are working folks, they'll put you in 1B3 with 'the dummies' -- no matter what. You won't get a Primer for 6 months.".

"Can't I can do anything about it?" "Maybe, if you can read and write and calculate before you start school."

So I sat, daily, on the front fence, book in hand, trying to parse out words. Stopping passersby for help.

As predicted, I was SEGREGATED in 1B3 at Kendall School. But demonstration of proficiency got me special testing, and I escaped to 1B1 after a week.

The next "escape" started in the Public Library. Almost daily, after school and on Saturdays, I took the streetcar downtown to shop for my dressmaker mother -- buying thread, material, elastic, snaps, hooks-and-eyes, etc. And I'd visit the Library. Any child book-reporting to a Librarian after reading ten books got a Special Certificate. I was just about to receive my twelfth Certificate when the Chief Librarian heard of it, and snatched it away. "You don't need an incentive!"

So I became a read-a-holic. And comprehensive reading kept me ahead of THE CURRICULUM.

And preparing for the next "escape". The era of "standardized testing" had started. Living in the middle of the country, Testers considered us kids a "representative sample", so sent our teachers test after test to try out -- five or six of them each year. I discovered a faciliity for knowing-or-guessing the word-&-number "games" on these tests. At close of 1st Grade, I was recommended to skip to Third Grade. But Mother wouldn't allow it. Why? Because, among older children, I'd learn too soon about sssssexxxxxxxxxx!

At close of 2nd Grade, I was recommended to skip two grades, but again ---. Same after Third Grade.

I'm telling this only to explain why I've such low opinions of "standardized tests". If I'd done poorly, you'd blame my complaints on "sour grapes". But since I got the highest scores --. From what I now know, I think that genetic endowment and my experience prepared me to perform as a better TAPE RECORDER than those I competed with.

We moved to Springfield, MO, where adapting slowed me down. But, in the Sixth Grade, something unique happened.

In the first half (6B), I scored such high grades on the Standardized Tests that I was recommended to skip to Eighth Grade. Again, Mother demurred -- creating a problem for the School.

6A was taught by Mrs. Waddell, the Principal, with an Assistant to free Mrs. Waddell for adminstrative duties. On the first day in 6A, Mrs. Waddell said, "You shouldn't be here, Sonny. I wish your mother had let you go on to Junior High." "Okay", I said. "I'll stay home." "No", she retorted. "The Law says you have to come to school each day. But I won't bother you with the studies. You can read books from our Library."

Soon, I'd read everything I wanted to read and was in a lot of trouble -- including imitations of Mrs. Waddell behind her back. Summoned to her office, I bluffed with a counter-proposal. "Your Assistant is new at this and could use some help. I know how these kids think and what they need. Let me help her." Surprisingly, Mrs. Wadell said she'd think about it.

She was studying for a Master's Degree in Education at State Teacher's College in Springfield. She told her Advisor about this 6th Grade trouble-maker, and this gave her Advisor an idea -- related to educational problems stemming from World War I. In Britain and France, so many young men were killed in the War that there was a great shortage of teachers. Older boys taught younger boys. One British project was known as "The Lancaster System", for its region of origin. The advisor suggested that Mrs. Waddell write her Master's Thesis on "The Lancaster System", using me as "student teacher", in a kind of "laboratory" experiment.

So, at 11, in the Sixth Grade, I became a Teacher. And Mrs. Waddell received her Master's Degree.

No more Standardized Test until the Eighth Grade -- when I was recommended to skip to the 11th Grade. But again --. This infuriated Ida Bell #*3@$%. (In corkscrew curls and glasses, she looked like Dennis the Menace's neighbor, Ol' Margaret, confronting puberty.) Ida Bell stomped my feet with her mary-janes and shrieked: "I hate you, Sonny Hays! You're just poor white trash! Your mother's a dressmaker and your father's a day-laborer -- while my father's a college professor. How dare you get higher scores than I?" STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!

By now, I was so bored with school that I began coasting -- a "B" average because the teachers were annoyed at my lack of effort. WRONG! I'd forgotten the meaning of the advice, long ago, of my 5-year-old neighbor. The only thing shielding a "working-class kid" from DISCRIMINATION and SEGREGATION -- especially among the Southern prejudices of Springfield -- was high grades. When I gave up this "cloak of invisibility", I became like a deer in the headlights.

In High School, because I was "working class", hence, "not college-bound", I was denied math or science courses and was yanked from French Class and put in Typing, although I'd typed on Dad's portable since I was six. (My crooked "double-jointed" fingers made handwriting difficult.) I cite this because of consequences in my Army Career and later in the University.

Near the end of my 11th School Year, we moved back to Tulsa, hoping for work for Dad in the Parks. I idled in school until I made a great discovery at the beginning of the last semester of my Senior Year. It was An Intellectural and Cultural History of the Western World, by Harry Elmer Barnes -- more than 1200 pages and dozens of illustrations. But school interfered with my study of this tome. Starting in February, I'd "go off to school" each day. Actually, to the banks of the Arkansas River where I read Barnes. In April, Mother received notice I'd been expelled for non-attendance.

Mother said that schools were the invention of the Devil. But that the Government -- also the invention of the Devil -- fixed it so you couldn't get "a decent job" without a high school diploma. So, for the first time in my life, Mom went to school to represent me.

Happily, our Senior Class advisor, Miss Lulu Beckington, was my confidant and persuaded the Faculty to give me a second chance -- with much extra work. (Most mornings, I still whisper, "Thank you, Miss Beckington, for giving me a start.") Mom bought me ("on time") a portable typewriter at Sears. I'd sit with a pot of coffee, typing all night on reports for one or more of my six Subjects, take a bus to School, turn them in. Home, sleep a little and start in again.

I'd a great incentive. Any student completing graduate requirements two weeks before graduation got time off and MOVIE TICKETS TO ALL THE MOVIE THEATERS IN TOWN. That's why I graduated. But it completed my disillusionment with the School Systen!

After graduation, I worked at a few jobs. Believing that War was coming, I enlisted in January, 1941, in the Army Air Corps and became a Weather Observer and Weather Forecaster. Among my duties: teaching "algebra", trigonometry, meteorology to "In-Station Trainees". So, by the time I completed 8 years at universities and began as a formal teacher, I'd already logged hundreds of hours as a teacher.

My 5 Service years earned me the maximum for education under "The G. I. Bill". But tuition jumps depleted it. It paid for four years completing a Batchelor's Degree in Physics at Columbia University. And the first year toward a Master's Degree in Mathematics at New York University. But, now married several years with wife working, I worked by day for an Insurance Brokerage and went to Class at night to pay the tuition.

Physics was not my choice for a major. Columbia University then and now has the best Journalism School in the country. I wanted to start as an English major and go into the Journalism School when possible. I hoped to become a science writer, an ambition I'd had since 16, from reading the writings of H. G. Wells.

But the supervisor at the Veterans Adminstration (who had to sign my papers for Government Support) said I must follow up on my Service experience as a meteorological major. However, Columbia no longer had this major (put in during the War). The nearest place where I could be accepted for this major was Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. After arguments and delay, the supervisor agreed that I should not have to move to go to college. But picked physics as "next best".

So I was SEGREGATED in Physics at Columbia, a major for which I lacked the entry requirements. And the Registrar compounded the "felony". In particular I'd had no formal math training since my Segregation after 9th Grade "Algebra". My advisor, an English Instructor, put me in "College Algebra' and "First Semester Calculus", although I'd no formal training in trigonometry or analytic geometry: specified requirements for the "Calculus". I floundered, but survived.

Another problem. No one could enter Columbia College at 25 years of age or older. Since the average Veteran was too old at the end of the War, a night school -- The School of General Studies -- was made a Degree School to "get GI money". So, in effect, the Columbia University directors SEGREGATED ALL APPLYING VETERANS IN A MAKE-SHIFT COLLEGE.

We had to take First Year courses designed only for SGS, then we were dumped in with Columbia College students in the second year. BUT THEY HAD HAD A DIFFERENT PREPARATION!!! In particular -- and relevant to my title subject -- they had "Calculus with Vectors", but we SGS students DID NOT. Needing VECTORS in the "Mechanics" and "Electricity and Magnetism" Courses, we of SGS had to teach ourselves "Calculus with Vectors" to keep up. Result: three-fourths of us failed the First Semester of these Courses, and had to repeat.

During four years, I never had an advisor in my Major field. Rather, an English Instructor; then a Professor Chemical Engineering; then an Astronomy Professor. Ill-advised, left to my own devices, I got in a lot of trouble.

We had no resident President. The month I entered, President Dwight Eisenhower went A.W.O.L. to Europe to head up NATO, leaving Columbia to be run by a "junta" of EDUCRATS. Worse, SGS had no resident Dean during the four years I was there. Most of our SGS professors and instructors had no offices. We conferred with them on campus park benches. (When, years later, Columbia students rioted, I was saddened, but not surprised. The story of this Riot was told in The Strawberry Statement by James S. Kuhnen. The book's film had a score with songs by Crosby, Stills, and Nash.)

Later, in four years at NYU, I never had an Curricular advisor. The advisor for my Master's Thesis left me stranded. I did it all in Puerto Rico, where I was teaching -- without benefit of counsel or a decent library.

After 106 credit hours in mathematics, I ended up ABD. My dear wife, Esther -- a survivor of polio in infancy -- broke her leg three times while I was trying to finish. I lost time and couldn't pay tuition on time. In those days, there was no student loan unless you took a full program, which I couldn't do while working and helping Esther with our two children.

So, I've been there. Done that. And seen a lot. No student should have been suffered the DISCRIMINATION and SEGREGATION and NEGLECT I encountered in public school and in the university.

I'm telling this, with records to back me up, to show what happened to many students and is still happening.

Associated files discuss ORGANIZATIONAL and CURRICULAR defects.