The first teacher I can remember is a stern woman whose name I forgot, but I'll never forget her face or her voice -- sugary, patronizing and quick to turn into a bellowing rage if anything didn't go her way. I was excited about getting to go to school. Before I went, I'd read books, had some idea what it was like, knew that my father was a college teacher and education was important. Not only that, but that being smart would tend to make it possible to really excel at it. NOT.
My dad was a brilliant teacher. He taught me to read at age two just by reading me bedtime stories and playing The Word Game. This consisted of his pointing at a word for me to guess it or read it before he went ahead and did it. He was a brilliant dramatic reader, good at doing voices and animal sounds for characters, with a rich rolling voice like a Shakespearian actor.
I didn't think anything of learning to read at that age, though I cried when I'd gotten through an entire book reading every word aloud to him because I thought he would never read to me again. He consoled me and suggested that since I could read now, we could trade off who read the bedtime stories. It was cool and he kept that up for many years.
So off I went to kindergarten expecting intellectual stimulation, learning things I'd never heard of, was wide open to everything and had new school supplies that were pretty cool stuff -- crayons, paper, colored paper, this whole stash of cool toys that I didn't get very often in what seemed at that age like large quantities.
The morning went fine with a few disappointments, like not getting the drum or xylophone but just the stupid triangle when we got musical instruments. Then it was time for Pre-Reading Exercises.
I put up my hand as I'd been taught and asked to be excused from Pre-Reading Exercises because I could read and had been reading for years. I wanted to go off to the side and read a book. All morning I'd been tempted by that bookcase with a good hundred or so books most of which I'd never seen before. I was starved for new books and stories.
The teacher told me to my face that I was lying, first in that sugary sweet moralistic way with a little homily about why lying was wrong. I explained I wasn't lying and offered to prove it by reading any book she picked from the shelf. She insisted I was lying.
This went around a couple of times and I picked up a book to show her, explaining I'd never seen it before.
She snatched it out of my hand because "You'll rip it" even though I had years of my dad teaching me never to dogear or harm a book. Books were my friends. I was outraged, she crumpled a page ripping it out of my hands.
She kept at me for a good two hours before I finally gave in and said what she wanted me to say and added that I would get my dad in to sort this out. I was mortified at being forced to lie in front of the entire class. So much for ideas about right and wrong.
My dad went in the next day, outraged over this as much as I was. He sorted it out with her. After that I did get to go off to the side and read during Pre-Reading Exercises... with a snarky sort of nasty "some people are different" snottiness about it.
That teacher never apologized to me for forcing me to lie to the whole class or admitted that she was wrong.
That teacher broke my trust in authority so deep that she changed my life. I never trusted adults again. It came as no surprise when doctors lied to me or priests did or nuns did, it was more of a surprise years later when I refused to become Catholic that a priest didn't try to force me to go through the ceremony and desecrate it by lying in it. I told him that was why I wouldn't do it.
He chose to believe I might change my mind someday, but didn't push it -- and that showed individual persons in authority can sometimes be trusted, because he stood up for me on that when my parents pushed me on the confirmation issue. My dad even tried to talk me into lying about it just for the sake of society and the family's reputation whether I believed or not, but I held out and believed I would be wrong to lie on something like that. I had respect for religions I didn't belong to, knew that was something more individual.
It took many years for me to understand his point of view on churches and religion. Even once I did, it never became part of my own view on life.
I've had a streak of truthfulness all along, it was there before that day the teacher proved authority couldn't be trusted and just held when tested.
Teachers need to be aware with little kids that their example is far more important than their sermons. That little kids believe passionately in right and wrong and care about it -- and when they demonstrate that power means getting to abuse authority that'll create a bigger problem than their apparently losing some dignity. She would not have lost her authority by apologizing, she would have regained it.
That never happened and it was a big part of why I became who I am -- in ways that I'm sure that long-dead teacher would never have approved of.
INTEL CONTRIBUTOR
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