It was a pamphlet – four pages front, back and two middles – the most critical and important paper of my first grade year. In it were prayers: prayers that I had to memorize and fully ingest before I could receive my First Holy Communion. The world that I live in today has no very good equivalent for FIRST HOLY COMMUNION as it existed in 1959. I am at a loss to convey the magnitude of what it meant to a 7 year old to kneel at the Communion rail and have the altar boy put his gold plate at my throat followed immediately by Monsignor Leopold placing a small white wafer on my tongue. There was no way for me to imagine what would happen next. How would it taste? What if I accidentally ate it! Crunched it with my teeth… What will swallowing it be like? Scary and wonderful all mixed together.
So for many months I memorized. Each evening my mom would hold the little pamphlet and I struggled to give her the phrases that she hoped I could remember. No pressure. Just be the only kid in the first grade class that had to sit out the Big Day. It did not come easy for me. I dreaded those sessions. Words swirling around and I had no idea what they meant for the most part. Holy Marys and Our Fathers and angels and everybody needed to be prayed to in perfect language. I was only 6 years old and I already knew how to super stress myself out. Misery. May came and I had my victory over the pamphlet and my union with my God celebrated with a huge Mexican family get together – Cake & $$$.
And then came 7 more years of Baltimore Catechism! The Mother of all memorization. Who made you? God made me. Why did God make you? To love, honor and serve Him. Everything that I needed for Catholic indoctrination was imparted in that way. Memorized my way to salvation…
And thus began endless days of rote learning. It was all the fashion in the late 50’s and 60’s. Stuff it in and regurgitate it out. No need to know what you are saying or have any real understanding of its relevance to your little kid life. To be fair, the nuns who taught me had their own share of burdens and overwhelm. The average classroom size could be a minimum of 40 students and maybe lots more… My girlfriend in Philly reports that in first or second grade she was called upon to help teach other students as they set up shop in the gymnasium topping out sometimes at 100 little children! (Kind of a good news/bad news thing – the good news: lots of Catholic kids. The bad news: labor shortage…). You simply can’t get all touchy feely and make eye contact with that many eyes! It never crossed anybody’s mind to consider that us kids would be so much happier if we had even the slightest idea why or how what was being unloaded on us for 8hrs/5 days a week made even a little bit of sense or caught our imagination in any way. In third grade I performed from my desk a perfect hoola hoop dance as I recited my multiplication tables. 1×9 = 9, 2×9 = 18, 3×9 = 27… and my hips were keeping time. Sadly, I had no concept of what groups of nine were all about. Good Girl – just blurt it out and sit down. Fourth grade had geography books. Pictures of farm animals and mining caves in Virginia and the Grand Canyon and so on. We were learning about each and every one of the United States. Quick! What’s the capital of Mississippi? What do they grow in Idaho? Which state exports copper? It was fun to look at in books but trying to memorize ALL the capitals and every state’s resources was BORING!!! Why Why Why would I want to know all that? And let’s face it, the majority of my classmates had never been outside the Great State of Texas…(I had two glamorous trips to Mexican border towns under my belt and a sojourn to the neighboring state of New Mexico and I’m pretty sure I never understood I was no longer in my home state of Tejas). I wanted to know what my girlfriends were doing, what was the most new and exciting show on tv, can we go on family vacation this year? (and see the real Carlsbad Cavern). They were filling to the brim and I was overflowing with answers to questions I had never asked. My tiny brain could not take it all in and resisted mightily. By seventh grade I began to catch on. I got that it was a game. Don’t try and understand – just memorize and get at least a ‘B’ on the exam. I kept that up right through college. And got better and better at it.
Right along side of us ROTE learners were the smart kids who apparently caught on from their first day in grade one. They sat in a circle in the front of the class and were labeled THE FIRST READING GROUP. I would land in GROUP TWO and happy to be there and not in THE THIRD READING GROUP. It was simple – geniuses in the first reading circle. And the rest of us took our place in the hierarchy. I wasn’t just a little bit envious I recognized that this was determining the rest of my academic life. Smart kids, middle kids and those on the bottom. The caste system in India must have been the inspiration. By fourth grade the education in the nation had become enlightened with the TRACKING system. Fast learners and not so fast learners… Nothing like knowing your place. Again, I’m certain that this was all well intentioned and designed to help overworked teachers. But labels are labels. I was mesmerized by the smart ones. Did they really understand what all that gobble gook meant? Did they deeply appreciate the info being poured into them? Did it all make sense and seem ever so satisfying to them? How I wanted to be one of those kids – school was so easy and no big deal – just do it and make A’s .
By the time my brood of three were in grade school the stakes were even higher. First Reading Group was nothing to crow about. GTO’s (gifted and talented offspring ) were seated on that throne. The cream of the cream, the anointed, the royalty of the elementary school. I pictured a 7 year old who could do calculus AND was a dynamite tap dancer for his talent… This group was so elite you could only be admitted IF your IQ met the metric. And if it did, you were in! Some exceptions were made for the truly talented and gifted artists and musicians. I don’t know who was happier about this new club – the GT’s or the parents. Once your child was admitted you were home free. You could declare yourself a perfect parent. Your kid was sure to make it to Harvard (or at the very least, Stanford). YOUR JOB WAS DONE! I always marveled that these were the kids that were taken to New York for Broadway musicals and to the best museums and all kinds of amazing field trips. Were they really the students who would benefit the most? Seems to me if the kids left behind (no pun intended) had been given those opportunities they might have been catapulted up to performing as well at the GT’s. Maybe? Truth be told, all kids were doing better than my generation. ROTE was going out of fashion and being replaced with deeper conceptual and relevant approaches even for kindergarteners. Kids got used to life making more sense. They demanded that what they were learning had to some how connect to their life outside the classroom. Yes!
I have a little too much ROTE left over in me. It’s like a bad habit. More than I’d like to admit I spout off something that sounds impressive to me – then I look a bit closer and see that it is ROTE nonsense. I don’t really have a true and complete understanding of what I long to know and express to others. It’s most obvious when I open up about my politics – it can devolve into liberal dogma and silly proclamations. A whole lot of the things I say that reveal my values or are intended to bolster a personal image of myself are rife with unexamined shallow and past their due date cliche and worn out packaged words. It helps me to see that in writing and I smile. I can laugh at myself. Being a ROTE is simply efficient and satisfies the lazy in me. No biggie.
On a rare occasion I do KNOW and feel that I have landed the deep truth that matters most. Not a ROTE interpretation of God, or a memorized sentence stating my purpose here on earth, or some trite statement declaring the workings of the Universe but a simple from the heart KNOWING. I KNOW that Life gets better and better. I KNOW that Love and Compassion are all that I am seeking. I KNOW that how well I love, how well each of us love – is the ultimate answer to any question – AND NO ROTES ALLOWED…
My World My Words 