“Poor Elijah’s Almanack” is written by Peter Berger of Mount Holly, who taught English and history for 30 years.
Back when chalk was considered high-tech and we were younger men, Poor Elijah and I attended a conference for English teachers. The highlight was the imported keynote speaker. He captivated us — or more accurately held us captive — while he shared his allegedly student-appropriate techniques to “Stimulate Your Imagination.”
How about covering half your television with a paper bag so you’re watching only half the program? Maybe you’d prefer keeping your thumb on the channel surf button and rolling nonstop through disconnected video snippets for an hour. Or try reading a book backwards — with or without a partner — or reading every other page or every other line.
Of course, you can always pretend to read a newspaper in a language you don’t know. Or if you’d rather stick with English, instead of reading an article one column at a time until you finish it, just read straight across the page from column to column and article to article. Also a good time to write is when you have a headache or a high fever.
I’m not kidding. He stopped just short of “Go home and bang your head against the wall. Then write a composition about your summer vacation.”
I wasn’t sure what worried me more, the Looking Glass Land things the guy was saying, or the observable fact that more than half the audience appeared to be taking verbatim notes.
That morning produced two long-term results. First, Poor Elijah never let me forget that attending the conference had been my idea. Second, that hour of insanity became a benchmark against which he measured all in-service presentations, reform initiatives and PowerPoint homilies.
“That was as crazy as the fever guy,” he’d tell me. Other times he’d pass me a note while the traveling expert shuffled her overhead transparencies: “Meets or exceeds Fever Guy.”
Our after-lunch discussion that day imposed a familiar ground rule. Comments had to be positive. For example, you were allowed to say that something was a good idea if you knew a place where it had worked. You weren’t, however, allowed to say something was a bad idea if you knew a place where it hadn’t worked. That was called “being negative.”
If educators ran highway departments, “No Parking” signs would all read, “You may park somewhere else.”
The first commandment we discussed was that teachers should “tell all students daily they can be whatever they desire!” When it comes to children’s dreams and ambitions, Poor Elijah is a mild guy. If a student tells him he wants to be a pro basketball player or a veterinarian, Poor Elijah wishes him well, no matter who he is. After all, people do overcome obstacles. Glenn Cunningham became an Olympic miler, even though his legs bore the scars of bone-deep, third-degree burns. Old Tom Edison told us genius was more perspiration than inspiration, although the other hard-working people in Edison’s factories didn’t get where he got, despite their perspiration.
Sometimes, to relieve the pressure on career-anxious 12-year-olds, Poor Elijah would joke about all the jobs he’d once thought he wanted, from selling cars to practicing medicine, and all the ways he’d actually earned a living before he landed in a classroom, from unloading trucks to building houses.
But what do you honestly say to an eighth-grader who can’t read but wants to be a veterinarian? Keeping in mind these tender realities, Poor Elijah didn’t feel it was wise or honest or kind to deliberately tell all children every day that they can be “whatever they desire.”
He said, “I disagree.” Unfortunately, this wasn’t deemed a positive comment. Someone offered to reword it for him.
As the afternoon wore on, and wore on us, that day’s 20th-century reformers announced their intention to outlaw comprehensive subject grades. Instead, they touted a prototype of today’s 21st-century proficiencies they called “skill levels” that would group students according to the specific academic objective they were working on. Somehow, though, this wouldn’t group them according to ability, which was fortunate, since skill-levels enthusiasts also planned to outlaw grouping students according to ability.
Advocates made it crystal clear that students would have to master a skill before they could advance to the next level. They also made it crystal clear that no students would ever be retained.
Poor Elijah asked what would happen when someone didn’t master one of the skills, addition of two-digit numbers, for example.
Some skill-level boosters assured him this would never happen, apparently believing that students would miraculously be able to do all the things they hadn’t been able to do once we started calling them skill levels.
Others assured him those students wouldn’t move on, but that this definitely wasn’t the same as retaining them.
A compromise answer carried the day. “We’ll just give them a calculator and move them to the next level.”
Because, you see, under their proposed scheme, nobody failed. In fact, the word “failure” was officially replaced by the phrase “making progress.”
Poor Elijah pointed out that “failure” and “making progress” didn’t mean the same thing. He tried to explain that people in the real world, including many teachers and parents, didn’t think that being able to add meant the same as not being able to add.
Someone said he needed to change the way he looked at things.
I don’t think so.
And not just at school.
Not when politics drives whether we give our children medicine.
Not when politicians would rather win than govern.
Not when lies and rumors masquerade as truth.
Each of us now and then crosses the benchmark line into crazy. So does every classroom and every country. The peril lies in how often we cross the line and how long we stay. The more we stray to the crazy side, the more likely we are to wind up living there.
That’s why we need to keep the Fever Guy at a safe distance.
He doesn’t know he’s crazy.
But you and I should.
