Jack reflects on how difficult his first years of teaching were, on some summer of 2006 readings, and on a train trip from Southern California.

The awakened ‘state’ is humility.” Krishnamurti




Moments of Awakening : Chapter Four




The first couple days of my summer time off, I re-read Philip Wylie’s Generation of the Vipers. I first read it some time after we opened the Triv. in the summer of fifty-nine. It seems to me that I re-read it during the summer of ninety-six when I picked up this discard from the library. And, though I disagree with many of his views, especially his misunderstanding of non-violence and esoteric Christianity, I agree with his basic premise that we have to know ourselves to be free men.

I also agree with his belief that our whole system is malfunctioning and corrupt. I’d love to see what he would have thought about Bush’s war in Iraq. I know as I look at government, big business, the military, agriculture, the mass media, the computer industry, and the educational system I see the same greed and ignorance that Wylie saw in 1942.

What’s wrong with our educational system? Having spent some thirty plus years on the front lines as a middle school teacher, I can tell you for sure that our schools are a failure from top to bottom. Like everyone else we educators are filled with greed, corruption and lack of self-knowledge. Not one in a million has ever practiced self-observation, and the evaluations that we receive from our administers and peers are a joke.

To a large extent, our educational system is responsible for the conditioning that locks us in the prison of habitual response. Our whole society is conditioned by the laws, rules, and axioms that we learn first from our parents and relatives and more thoroughly from our teachers. Conditioning begins at the cradle and continues through out our lives.

The natural love of learning that all children exhibit is completely extinguished in most children by the third grade. And isn’t it terrible to see thirty-four faces dulled with daily routine with not a spark of interest in their eyes yearning for class to be over.

The biggest flaw in our educational system is that we don’t address the whole student. We attempt to educate only one faculty of the student, the thinking center. Of course, we do the same thing in every part of our society. We only address the faculty that supports the material aspect of life. There is little if any energy left over to seek the spiritual even in our religious systems.

Isn’t there more to man than his intellectual technological side? What is a human being? What is the purpose of life? Is there more to life than money, possessions, and power? How does our “human machine” work? We must take a serious look at these questions. Our public school system from pre-school to graduate school should spend at least as much time studying the being of man as it spends on preparing one to earn a living. If our school system doesn’t educate the being of man then who or what does? Does life experience? And what happens to a society whose people have no knowledge of their being? Read the daily newspaper.

We cannot educate just one part of a child and create fully developed human beings. Of course we have to educate the rational part of our children. A man must read and write and be computer literate. Acquiring language is important and meaningful. Children know this and respond with pleasure when they are learning something meaningful. Visit a kindergarten room, or a first or second grade and you will see happy faces, excitement, enthusiasm. You will see children quietly writing their letters, raising hands to proudly show off their efforts. Don’t they proudly bring home their drawings, their copied ABC’s, their names in bold letters? Don’t we hang these gifts on the frig.? When was the last time you hung your sixth or seventh graders work on the frig.?

Krishnamurti said, “But to admit to not knowing is to take away the mechanical progress of knowing.” And I found at the very start with my first teaching job at Sycamore in 1967 that I would be working with people who pretended to know.

I didn’t want to become a teacher. That was the last thing in my mind especially to become, as Sage called me, an elementary school marm. I took a long detour through the system. Instead of going into the credential program like most graduate students knew to do, I decide to pick up a Master’s in History and teach at a junior college. Or, maybe get lucky, finish my notes on Homeward Bound and make my living as a writer.

When I was awarded teaching fellowship through U.C. Berkeley, I didn’t take the secondary position where a job was guaranteed. I took the Junior College option where I had to find my own position in order to stay in the program. There were about fifty students in the program competing with maybe a thousand would be professors who already had their PhD’s for maybe fifty available jobs. I went on a dozen or so interviews before I caught on that each department had a certain number of interviews to conduct even though the job was already promised.

The placement office at Cal-State wouldn’t even send me out to look for jobs. They told me that there was no way I could be hired to teach if I didn’t have a teaching credential. I had to go to a professional employment agency in San Francisco that found me a job up in Willows one week before school started.

Mr. Limpkey the first principal I ever worked with was surely a man full of mechanical knowledge. During our first interview he let it be known that he was a little concerned that I was a graduate of Cal-State Hayward. He had interviewed a candidate from Hayward a year or so ago. The prospective teacher was dress in jeans and T-shirt, had hair down to his shoulders, was against the war in Viet Nam, and believed that it was good to have controversy in the classroom. I had done enough interviews by then to tell Mr. Limpkey that, “Yea, well that guy doesn’t represent most of the graduates of Cal-State, Hayward.” My employment advisor had warned me to get a haircut, and wear a sports jacket, white shirt and tie. When I promised the district superintendent that I would stay for at least two years, I was hired in spite of the principal’s concern.

At Cal-State, there was talk about doing away with grading, about giving students a say in the curriculum, and most professors encouraged students to be active in politics, to speak out against the war, racism, and corruption in big business, and politics. The Robber Barons, and The Politicos were required reading. I was aware of the need for change in education and society in general, and turning on to Dylan, Simon and Garfunkle, and other folk rock protest. I went to Willows eager to make changes in the classroom. I wanted to liberate the students from their chains.

When you walk into a room with thirty plus eighth graders who haven’t the least interest in learning, who are reading three or four levels below grade level, who have nothing on their minds but sex, football, and getting the new teacher it is hard to set them free. I tried class discussions, but the war, Bobby Kennedy, and Eugene McCarthy, the ghetto riots, the Black Panther movement, the Peace and Freedom Ticket had no place in their point of reference. And to graduate from eighth grade, these kids had to memorize the Preamble to the Constitution and be able to pass an objective test on the Constitution. It didn’t matter if they had not learned one iota about the genocide that the Europeans committed against the native Americans, not one word about the rape and degradation committed against the African slave, nothing about the greed and corruption of the Carnegies and Rockefellers, and their partners in the White House. None of the history of our country mattered. As long as they could pass the Constitution test they went on to higher learning.

And why didn’t we new teachers rebel against the narrow curriculum? Mostly because the students were so conditioned to read and answer the questions at the end of the chapter that they fought against any efforts at change. My students refused to read the newspapers or watch the evening news. They refused to listen to even brief lectures, falling to sleep, talking among themselves, shooting spit wads. Every five minutes or so I had to stop, yell at a kid to turn around and pay attention, write names and checks on the board, and argue with the little darlings about their misconduct. “This is so boring.” “What time is class over?” “Can I go to the bathroom?” They’d cry not interested in a word I was saying. Mike, a second year teacher, got so angry with his students that he told them that he was not going to put up with their disrespect any longer and he sat at his desk with arms folded refusing to teach for a whole week thinking the kids would give in. He finally gave in and began to force them to study the Constitution by reminding them that they’d have to repeat eighth grade if they failed it. Herb, a veteran teacher who had taught all through Africa was teaching seventh grade history. He had the native costume from every country in the seventh grade curriculum. When he taught Ancient Greece history, he would wear the costume of Ancient Greece. When he taught the history of Mesopotamia, he would wear the costume of Mesopotamia. The kids laughed so loud and were so disruptive that he had to discontinue wearing the costumes.

The parents were not supportive of anything new either. I remember one kid, Greg, who was really bright but a holy terror. “How many years did you say you’ve been teaching, Mr. Daley?” he’d say just as I was about to lose the class. “I think I been in eighth grade longer than you been teaching,” he’d laugh and the whole class would howl in response.

“O.K. Greg, that’s thirty minutes after school,” I told him after one out burst. By the last few months of my first year I had finally learn to put some consequence to the checks that I wrote next to a disruptive student’s name. When Greg didn’t show up for his detention, I let the other kids out a few minutes early and paid a visit to his house. His mother answered the door. I
explained that Greg had disrupted the class and had failed to show up for his assigned detention. “He’s really a bright student, but he needs to be a little more respectful,” I told her.

She assured me that he would show up after school tomorrow, and closed the door. When Greg did come to his detention the next day, he told me that his mother had thought that it was very rude of me to come to their house without calling first. Another student, Paul who was reading several grades below the eighth grade told me that his father said, “Why bother to learn to read. I quit school in the sixth grade and I make more money farming in one year than your teacher will make in a life time.”

Because of my tiny efforts to try to put some life into the curriculum, at the start of my second year Mr. Limpkey took away my history classes and replaced them with a reading class and a health class. He did this even though I was the only teacher on the staff with a Master’s in History. During the first week’s faculty meeting he instructed us that he didn’t want any attempts to force Black History into the curriculum. He explained that black activists like Martin Luther King were being investigated by the F.B. I. and were a threat to national security.

“Did you know that Dr. King was recently awarded the Noble Peace Prize for his practice of nonviolent civil disobedience?” I asked.

“That may be true , but that whole Noble Peace Committee is working hand and hand with the Communist Party,” Limpkey replied.

At one point in my new health class, I had to teach first aid. Since one of the old time sixth grade teachers had a first aid certificate, I arranged to teach his fourth period social studies class for two weeks while he did the first aid for me. Mr. Gannon let me know that his was an A class and not very bright. The classes at Sycamore were ability grouped from sixth grade on. The brightest kids were in the D sections and thought they already knew all there was to learn. The lowest kids were grouped in the A classes and called themselves “the dummies.” “I don’t allow no talking in my class. If a kid gets out of line have him take a lap around the field and leave me his name,” Gannon told me.

My first day in his class, I watched the students silently turn the pages of the chapter that they were assigned. After a half hour or so when I figured most of the kids had read the assignment, I tried to get a little discussion going asking questions about what they had read. No one could answer a single question. I discovered that they couldn’t read the sixth grade history text and had been conditioned to just sit in the classroom and turn the pages.

“At least we can teach them to read,” I told the other new teachers and explained how the Sullivan Reading Program that I saw at the Job Corps Center last summer started a student at his reading level and took him up grade by grade in a very short time. After looking at the program, four of the new teachers and myself agreed to give up our prep. periods to teach the program to the non-reading D level students. I presented our proposal to Mr. Limpkey. He looked at it and in a couple days let us know that there wasn’t money in the budget to pay for the materials.

When my two years were up I resigned and went back to the Bay Area where I drove cab and substituted for two years before finding another teaching job. Herb found another job in Porterville. Mike went into the army as a medic. Jimmy went to Appalachia to serve with the Domestic Peace Corps. Judy went to Germany to teach military dependents. And the old timers breathe a sigh of relief at our departure.

There were several really good students at Sycamore School. And, I thought I had made a favorable impression on them. One of the best students in my eighth grade English class wrote a book of poems and gave me a copy. I read it quickly and told her how great I thought it was. However, I didn’t really see how I appeared in her eyes until I re-read the poems years later and found that one was addressed specifically to me.

English Class

I walk into the room with lead in my feet.
I unhappily chose my English class seat.
The teacher did stare with accusing black eyes.
He’d bite off our head if you’d ask one small “why?”
The whip in the corner did frighten us all.
It would lash out at us whether tiny or tall.
These are the perils we go through each week
In the tortuous class of Mr. Daley the meek.

Hard as I tried, the pressure from administration, student apathy, and lack of parent support caused me to be a disciplinarian almost as strict as the older teachers. And, it isn’t until right now some thirty plus years later that I realize that the biggest thing that kept me from teaching in the way I knew I should is fear. All of us were scared to death to try something new, something that wasn’t supported by the experienced educators from whom we were to learn. And I realize that over the years that the only time I do real teaching is when I overcome my fears and teach as honestly and as consciously as I can. Doesn’t it make sense? The fear that I have that my students will rebel with disrespect and abuses permeates the classroom, and the students react to it with laughter, and projections of their own fear. When I am honest and unafraid, most students lose their fear and will take time to listen, if I carefully bring them to the point where they have trust in me.

During my second week of time off, I reread Castaneda’s Tales of Power. One of the concepts that don Juan emphasizes in the tales is that of impeccability. Don Juan maintains that the warrior must be impeccable in his daily life, that he must leave nothing to chance. In order to reach a different level of consciousness, one must be impeccable. He also states that you must work a hundred times harder than you ever did in achieving your worldly goals.

In my own daily life I have discovered how difficult this is. Even so simple a thing as planning a train trip to Southern California presents a real challenge. My granddaughter, Halo, emails me and asks if I would come down to L.A. where she is staying with high school friends for a week and meet her so we could ride the train back to Modesto together. Simple, right? I get on the Internet, look up Amtrak, and check the schedule from Modesto to Union Station in L.A. If I get the 8:05 in Modesto, I would arrive in L.A. at 2:35. The L.A. train for Modesto, which actually is a bus that connects with the train in Bakersfield, leaves at 3:00. Great, I tell myself that gives us twenty-five minutes to make connections.

I call reservations to book the train and discover that there has to be at least an hour lap between arrival and departure to make a reservation. So, there is no way I can make the round trip without staying over night. I tell Anne I’ll just have to drive down and pick Halo up. “No,” Anne tells me, “Halo was looking forward to the train ride. You can rent a car and drive down, take Bella with you, drop off the car, and the three of you can take the train back.”

O.k. So, I call up Hertz. The agent in Modesto does not know where I can drop off the car in L.A. He tells me to call the eight hundred number. After seven minutes on hold, the receptionist tells me that there are seven drop offs in L.A. She doesn’t know which drop off is nearest to Union Station. I write down the addresses and look them up on map quest. The nearest drop off is about eleven miles and twenty-three minutes from Union Station. O.K. I tell myself It’s about six hours to L.A. If I leave here at seven, I can be at the drop off by one. Drop off the car, meet Halo, get a cab to the train station and be there by one thirty two at the latest.

I email Halo and ask her if her friend’s parents can drop her off at Union Station around one P.M. She tells me that her friend’s parents will be at work and she’ll have to take a train. Then, I discover that Halo is no longer in Riverside, but is staying with another friend in Thousand Oaks. When I look Thousand Oaks up on mapquest, I discover that it is north of L.A. Still, I figure it will be easier if she gets a train to Union Station so we will have plenty of time to catch the bus that takes us to Bakersfield. Great! I tell myself and call to book the Hertz car. The eight hundred operator tells me that there’s a Hertz rental both at Union station, however, I discover that they don’t have a drop off there.

Back to the map I discover that at Oxnard, I can get a bus that gets to the Bakersfield train. Oxnard is less than a half hour from Thousand Oaks where Halo is staying. So, I can rent the car, pick Halo up at Thousand Oaks, and drive to Oxnard with plenty of time to spare. Impeccable warrior that I am, I set out to do it….

I pick up the rental car the night before so we can leave at Six A.M. Bella is up and ready when I pull around the corner to her house. I decide to take the back way. Though I’m not positive that we’re going in the right direction, I really get off on the vast open farmland that we pass on the way to Highway Five. The bad side of Modesto with tire shops, warehouse auto supplies, junkyards, and gang graffiti flits by our closed windows and then we hit the open country. Miles of farmland stretch in every direction to the inner coastal mountain range. I can’t believe how large the farms are and how mighty and vast the valley stretches under a rising summer sun.

When I reach highway Five, I find happily that there is very light traffic, I can cruise at eighty without switching lanes and get a little into the vast open ranges that line both sides of he freeway. We stop for a quick breakfast snack at a fast food place and get right back into the flow. I stop for gas, just in case, right on this side of the grapevine, and realize that it’s the same station that we gassed at on our trip to Phoenix last summer. Up the grapevine, traffic gets L.A. bad, and I have to keep watching the map. Then Bella wakes from her second nap, and begins reading directions. We reach Thousand Oaks a half hour ahead of schedule.

It’s a short hop down the Freeway to Oxnard though I’m afraid that we’re driving the wrong direction until I recognize a turnoff sign from the map. Impeccaible me had studied the map the night before we took off.

Hertz rips me off for the extra gas that I put in, just in case, but gives us a free ride to the bus station where I tip the guy a couple bucks after telling him that I too was a cabbie a few years ago. Picking up the tickets that I had reserved on the Internet was no problem, and we have two hours to spare. Halo and Bella find the most expensive restaurant in Oxnard an upscale Mexican place. But, the food is great, and the lunch crowd is mostly finishing up and getting back to work, so we have the place almost to ourselves. While the girls autograph the paper tablecloth that sits over the linen cloth, I take in the quiet and the paintings of Mexican Artists that line the walls.

When I use my credit card to pay for our lunch we still have over an hour to kill. We stroll from the restaurant to the downtown section. Oxnard is a very Spanish California town that looks like the Spanish have been here since its inception. We pass several Mexican restaurants that are housed in adobe buildings that were built in the early forties. Most stores along the way have signs that are written in Spanish. There are several young Mexicans gathered outside a cheap looking video store. I wonder if the girls are safe. One of the guys walks up to me and offers a piece of sale’s lit. I tell him no thanks and we continue to walk past a movie theater and a pool hall. I’m reminded of the vision I had of a California town before I moved here in the sixties. It must have been from a movie, I tell myself.

On the way back to the bus station we pass through a residential section of recently built duplexes. There are heavy green cactus and bright flowers growing in the tiny front yards. The sun beats down and warms our way past several more businesses housed in 1940’s architecture.

On the bus ride out to Bakersfield, I really get into the lemon orchards that stretch both sides of the freeway. It’s a much different view than the one we had from Highway Five. Aside from the vast farmland, mostly orchards and vegetable tracts, we see the shacks and family stores, pool halls and bars that the farm workers live in. At one red light, I see a road sign saying twelve miles to Ojai, where Krishnamurti lived. I can’t believe I am this close and didn’t shot over there for lunch. Impeccable me.

The train ride is unbelievable. We sit on the upper deck of a forward coach and have the whole thing most to ourselves. Halo and Bella sit on opposite sides of a table in cushion seats. I have my own separate booth. Miles and miles of farmland, orchards, vegetable tracts, ranchland with grazing cattle, and an occasional business strip or small farming town. The freedom to look out the window without steering the engine, and to be able to get up and walk downstairs to the restroom or back to the snack bar for another cup makes the ride special.

Luckily, we are in no hurry and call Grandma’s cell phone to let her know that we’re running an hour and a half behind schedule. And it doesn’t bother us that we have to pull to a siding to let the freights go by all along the route. Though I can’t believe that the freights have right of way. And all the stops at all the little towns along the way, Delano, Tulare, Hanford, Selma, Fresno, Madera, Merced, Turlock, only give us a better picture of this grand valley…. And, at each town tiny or big the gates go down and the cars patently wait while royal train goes clickity clacking down the steel rails its whistle booming.

I’m sitting at a table in the front of an up scale restaurant. As I look over the menu, Alex and several professional looking people enter and walk to a table at the rear of the restaurant. I think that maybe I should join them. But, tell myself, That wouldn’t be proper, and besides Alex is still pissed at me. As I look over the menu, Krishnamurti enters and walks to the rear. I’m thinking that he sat down at Alex’s table, but I can’t be sure. Again I think that I should go back and join them. You might get a chance to speak with Krishnamurti, I tell myself. But, I stay at my own table.

When I finish eating, I walk to the back to use the restroom. Alex is sitting a little apart from the others looking very down. I walk to his table and ask, “Hey, what’s happening?”

“Not, much,” Alex replies.

“Did you see Krishnamurti come in a little while ago?”

“No, I didn’t see him.”

“I thought he might be sitting at your table.”

“No, I didn’t see him.”