MY WHOLE LIFE HAS BEEN A SEARCH FOR AN EDUCATION!

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.

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! MARY-JANES MARCHING!

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.) These restrictions had 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, by teaching myself the algebra and trigonometry and physics denied me in high school. Among my Service 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". The VA forced me to major in Physics at Columbia, a major for which I lacked the entry requirements. And the Registrar compounded the "felony". I survived. 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.

Years later, I learned the "philosophy" behind my SEGREGATION in Springfield High School. My wife took a course in "Education" at Southwestern State College in Springfield. The professor said that the educational philosophy in the South derived from English philosopher, John Locke (x-y), who said education was for the patrician class -- apparently leaving only "crumbs from the table" for non-patricians.

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