It was in the 1980s, when we were told to throw out the grammar books and stop teaching from them. I blame this on the self esteem movement—a blunder equal to the invasion of Iraq or the Vietnam War or Anzio in World War II or Richard Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate cover-up or John F. Kennedy allowing the Bay of Pigs Invasion that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis or Ronald Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair or Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky.
“Throw out the books”, they said—and Hitler lit his match. But on the sly, we defied Sauron and Grendel. Most English teachers hid sets of Warriner’s English Grammar and Composition.
Every Friday, thirty minutes before class let out, I took out Warriner’s and went over the lesson for homework that weekend. It was always short and on Monday, the answers were posted on the board so the kids could check their work during roll before turning it in.
I thought I was being clever and had no idea that a storm was brewing.
His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.
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TheWhole Language approach to teaching English was another magic bullet in public education that misfired. California’s educational system suffered horribly from this blunder. The theory was that the more a child reads on their own, the more the child learns.
However, children watch – on average – several hours of TV daily, and more than forty percent are latch-key children. Most of these soda-drinking sugar heads would not read even with a loaded gun to their heads. But for the Whole Language program to work, the children had to read at last thirty minutes every night on their own.
Grendel’s boss was Sauron from Mordor (Grendel and Sauron are anonymous names that represent real administrators). This latest magic bullet—The Whole Language approach to teaching English—probably came from him since most magic bullets for public education come from micro-managers like him. You’ll hear more about Sauron in a few other posts. He even appears in my memoir as Mr. Insert.
Anyway, Grendel ordered the English teachers to stop teaching grammar, mechanics, vocabulary and spelling, and this led to some of us teaching stealth grammar until Grendel recruited students as spies to catch us.
Sauron lived up to the nom de plume I’ve given him. Anyone that worked in Rowland Unified School District at that time probably knows who I’m talking about. He may even have had a Palantir, one of the seeing stones from The Lord of the Rings, to keep an eye on his administrators and teachers making sure they were doing things the way he wanted. During my thirty years of teaching in that school district, I often heard from staff that nothing was done without Sauron’s approval. The principals probably had to ask permission to visit a bathroom.
Now here’s the thing—teachers are blamed for every alleged failure in public education, and many of these so-called failures are manufactured. They are based on lies and fraud. For instance, teachers are lazy, teachers are incompetent and so one. But how could the failure of Whole Language be blamed on the teachers? Teachers protested. They knew it wouldn’t work. They knew that teachers had to keep teaching grammar. A decade later, Whole Language was quietly dropped, and teachers were told to start teaching grammar again but most of the textbooks had been recycled against the common sense and warnings of teachers–who are seldom if ever listened to by those at the top who know it all.
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Lloyd Lofthouse is a former U.S. Marine and Vietnam Veteran,
who taught in the public schools for thirty years (1975 – 2005).
Honorable Mention in Biography/Autobiography at 2014 Southern California Book Festival
His third book is Crazy is Normal, a classroom exposé, a memoir. “Lofthouse presents us with grungy classrooms, kids who don’t want to be in school, and the consequences of growing up in a hardscrabble world. While some parents support his efforts, many sabotage them—and isolated administrators make the work of Lofthouse and his peers even more difficult.” – Bruce Reeves
Lofthouse’s first novel was the award winning historical fiction My Splendid Concubine [3rd edition]. His second novel was the award winning thriller Running with the Enemy. His short story A Night at the “Well of Purity” was named a finalist of the 2007 Chicago Literary Awards. His wife is Anchee Min, the international, best-selling, award winning author of Red Azalea, a New York Times Notable Book of the Year (1992).
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At the end of the school year, the principal asked why half the kids I was teaching were failing. Easy answer. They didn’t work. Half the boys were hyperactive. James was either spinning like a top or picking fights. Hardly any of the kids did homework. Most the boys failed miserably and everyone was below reading level except a few of the girls.
I suspect that the word hyperactive is one of those words that political correctness disapproves of. Calling a kid hyperactive was replaced with ADHD, because it doesn’t sound as negative. Boosting self-esteem means changing words even if they mean the same thing. I never did agree with the self-esteem movement.
The principal said a fifty-percent fail rate was unacceptable. I refused to lower my standards so kids that hadn’t worked would be given passing grades. The principal wrote in my annual evaluation that he was not recommending me for a full-time position, because I hadn’t learned to be a team member.
USO Show, Chu Lai, Vietnam - 1966
I wouldn’t see Marshall Kahan for several years. The next time we met, I would be teaching at Alvarado Intermediate with Grendel as the principal. Marshall had transferred from Romier looking for a school without razor wire and bullet holes in the doors.
I took a step away from James’s father and moved behind the desk. While keeping an eye on him, I started looking for objects I could use as a weapon.
Lloyd Lofthouse at least ten feet underground in the comm bunker (Chu Lai, Vietnam - 1966).
The reading specialist appeared along with Marshall. They’d heard the yelling. After stopping the father’s tirade, the reading specialist explained that I was not responsible for assigning the book to James.
The specialist then took James’s father to his office. There was no apology for the outburst and the insults. I had discovered where James’s anger came from. He’d inherited or learned it from his explosive father.
I wondered where the father had been for most of the semester. I’d called the house a number of times and left messages. He had not attended parent conferences. In fact, I contacted all the parents when homework wasn’t turned in. I spent hours on the phone running into dead-ends and hearing empty promises from lousy parents.
In 1976-77, Romier elementary had razor wire on the roofs to keep vandals off. On Mondays, it was common to find fresh bullet holes in the doors. Once, we arrived to find the doorknobs had been beaten off. On another Monday, we couldn’t park our cars in the parking lot because all the lights had been shot out, and the lot was littered with shards of glass.
First Tank Battalion, First Marine Division, Chu Lai, Vietnam
That year, I made a friend with another teacher. The union rep for the school was Marshal Kahan. Soon after I was hired as a long-term sub, he came to the classroom and offered support and advice. During our conversation, I learned he was also a former United States Marine.
We stayed friends for thirty years and hiked the San Gabriel Mountains together for more than a decade before Marshall was diagnosed with leukemia. He died eight years after the diagnoses. I still miss the loss of his friendship.
The other incident is when James’s father came to shout at me, because his son’s reading score had not improved. I was alone the afternoon the father walked in unexpectedly. He cursed and accused me of being incompetent. He threw the reading book on the floor and said I’d put his son in a book that was too difficult. I shifted my body stance so one side faced him. I’d been taught hand-to-hand combat in the Marines and fought in Vietnam. If he was going to attack, I wanted to be ready.
His latest novel is Running with the Enemy. Blamed for a crime he did not commit while serving in Vietnam, his country considers him a traitor. Ethan Card is a loyal U.S. Marine desperate to prove his innocence or he will never go home again.
And the woman he loves and wants to save was trained to hate and kill Americans.
To follow this Blog via E-mail see upper right-hand column and click on “Sign me up!”
The first bully that attacked me was at a Catholic grade school during recess. For no reason, the fire-plug shaped, freckle-faced, red haired six-year old decided to hit me in the face and knock me down. Then he was getting ready to kick me when a hero stepped forward looking like a young, light haired six-year old Tom Cruise and stopped him. I haven’t forgotten the hero’s first name. It was James. I’ve liked anyone named James ever since.
The next incident was in fifth grade. I had a coin of some kind my grandmother gave me that was dated from the 19th century. I brought it to school to show to friends, and the bully saw it and wanted it. When I refused to hand it over, he started to move forward to take it from me.
I closed my eyes and morphed into a windmill with flying fists. I’d already read a comic book about Cervantes‘Don Quixote, and I was the windmill but the bully was no Don Quixote.The bully walked into my fist, and I regret that didn’t see it give him a bloody nose. He left me alone after that, and I kept the coin.
“What would you do if we jumped you, Mr. Lofthouse?”
My response was always the same. I’d say, “I wasn’t trained to fight. The Marines trained me to kill and that’s what I did in Vietnam. So, I will do my best to kill anyone who attacks me. If you or anyone else wants to jump me, do your best to put me out of action as fast as possible, because I’m going to do everything I can to kill the first person inside my reach.”
“You can’t do that,” was the common response. As if the rules or laws in this “politically correct” country were on the side of the criminal, bully or gang banger. Although the death penalty is another topic, it seems that those politically correct and properly anointed people that go out of the way protecting the rights of hard-core violent criminals should be boiled in oil. After thirty minutes naked in boiling oil from toes to chin, if they live, we do what they want.
What bothered me the most was that I couldn’t carry a weapon. In Vietnam, I carried several weapons and grenades. Several times, I had a grenade launcher.
I know how important education is to the Chinese. I’ve been to China many times.
When Chinese mothers gather, they usually don’t talk of American Idol, fashion or the latest Hollywood gossip.
Chinese mothers talk about their children and how they are doing in school and recommend the best schools.
Most Chinese parents start saving for college when the child is still in the womb. The sacrifice the average Chinese parent makes for their children’s future education is mind-boggling.
My wife is Chinese and our daughter came home and did homework without the TV on. She earned straight “A’s” since third grade and graduated with a 4.65 GPA due to the AP and honors classes she took.
If she had not earned those grades … her mother would figuratively break her legs.
Anyway, back to Grendel.
After that staff meeting with Grendel, he left the room followed by a cloud of tobacco smoke.
The rest of the teaching staff sat stunned.
Soon, we were on our way home to correct papers and plan the next day’s lesson.
For the rest of that school year, true to his word, Grendel stayed behind closed doors—most of the time—while the teachers struggled to provide a liberal education.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
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Grendel was right about too many of the parents—at least some that I met while teaching at Alvarado. They were a brutally bizarre bunch from another world. They must have been Republicans.
I’ve heard the parents around Alvarado have changed since the 80s. The Chinese moved in and the wasps with the stingers fled.
Anyone who knows Asian cultures like India, China, South Korea, the Philippians and Japan, knows that the parents tend to respect and support teachers and most of the kids are great to work with. We can thank Confucius for that.
Most Asian-American students pay attention, read, ask questions, seek help and turn in homework.
They even study for tests. None of the usual excuses such as “my dad used my book report for toilet paper and flushed it and now he’s in South America on business”.
Asian students also earn high scores on standardized tests no matter who teaches them.
Those facts are ignored by neo-conservatives and Christian Evangelicals who want a voucher system to replace the public schools so waspish parents can control what their children learn like all good Nazis—no more liberal education.
If vouchers arrive, education will be a form of tunnel vision.
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
During one of those Soviet rotations at Alvarado Intermediate, a new principal arrived, who I will call Grendel. In a few years, half the teachers at Alvarado quit or requested transfers to other schools.
On Grendel’s first day at Alvarado, we had a staff meeting after school to meet the beast.
Grendel stood there like a thin dragon with yellow teeth without reptilian skin. Tobacco breath had a raspy Marlboro voice.
Grendel had a flip chart. As the pages flapped like bat wings, I saw words and crude drawings (memory is vague but I do remember Grendel flipping page after page).
Grendel’s voice rasped, “If your students fail, it is your fault. It is your job to motivate and teach them.”
Each time he spoke, it was a blow to the solar plexus and a pain in the gluteus maximus.
Grendel said, “If your students misbehave, it is your fault. It is your job to control them. If you have problems with a student or a parent, my door is closed. Don’t come to me for help. The white-collar parents that live in this neighborhood are difficult, and I don’t need that stress.”
Lloyd Lofthouse is the award-winning author of the concubine saga, My Splendid Concubine & Our Hart. When you love a Chinese woman, you marry her family and culture too.
To subscribe to “Crazy Normal”, there is a “Subscribe” button at the top of the screen in the menu bar.
Crazy Normal - the Classroom Exposé 