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Schools are different
Last Saturday, while waiting to make my brilliant and inspiring talk to a group of teachers at the Vigor High School in Mobile County. I had a little spare time on my hands so I used to explore the vast building that must cover three or four acres. Actually, I was trying to find the bathroom and the exploration trip was more or less secondary. Filled Once a Year The huge auditorium, with a balcony, accommodated about a thousand people, I was told. The only time it is ever filled is when they have graduation exercises. To digress for just a moment, I have always wondered why so many people turn out for graduation programs. Here in our town 40 graduating seniors can fill our auditorium and crowd the halls outside. Everybody turns out and they bring their crying babies and everybody talks all the time the program is going on. The poor speaker doesn't have a chance, but he isn't saying anything new anyway so it really doesn't matter. After the program is over, nobody leaves. They mill around and they congratulate the graduates and brag on how nice they look and the first thing you know the seniors begin to wonder how the world has been getting along without them all those years. They sure have a lot to learn. This school, though, I was talking about , is really something. They didn't leave a thing out, and got to thinking about the old dilapidated building where I went to school. In our school, every room had a water cooler, which the janitor filled each morning from the campus well. There were no electric lights in the building and on dark and cloudy days, we had to squint powerfully hard to see what the teacher was writing on the blackboard. The desks were cut up and mighty rough. Every desk I ever had had been cut to show that "J G LOVES B D" and I sure hope old J G and B D finally got married, whoever they were. There was a difference This Vigor school was well lighted, the desks were bright and un-marred with knife marks and there were drinking founts accessible to all the students. I finally found the room I was looking for and there were no chalk drawings on the walls and the place was spotlessly clean. It's hard for me to believe that children are meaner than they were 40 years ago. You people who have a different opinion should have seen the room we used. It was set well apart from the main building - about a hundred yards as I recollect - and right on the edge of a gully, which made it mighty easy to push over. Every year, right after Halloween, the principal had to hire a mule team to pull it back to an upright position. Too, the walls were well autographed by hundreds of students who had long since passed out of those halls of learnings, and some of them must have had a sort of poetic twist. JG's love for BD was also prominently announced on the walls. He was certainly a romantic soul.
If Johnny can't read, it's certainly Johnny's fault and we can't blame those who planned and built our fine modern schools. It seems to me that a child couldn't help learning something in a building like the one we went through Saturday, even if it is only through absorption. In fact, I learned something myself, just in the few minutes I walked around. I learned where the bathroom was.
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