What can you learn in a school without computers, the core curriculum, and an anti-bullying policy?

What can someone learn in a school without computers, the core curriculum and an anti-bullying policy?

Plenty.

At least that was my conclusion as I considered the question recently. 2016 marks the fiftieth

anniversary of my high school graduation.

Really.

I can't believe it either.

The old gang is meeting on a monthly basis to prepare for a big 50th party this summer. So remembrances of our country school those five decades ago are being dragged out of memory mothballs, shaken out, and hung up to laugh about.

Our alma mater, Scott School, in the country hollow called Montdale was a one story,  rectangular building with a single hallway down its center, spilling off into classrooms on either side. In 1953 the class of '66 started kindergarten at one end of the building, and each year we worked our way up the hallway, classroom to classroom, until thirteen years later when we reached the other end of the building where an exit door marked the way into the great beyond.

We should have been overcome with fear and intimidation on June 6, 1966, when we left our school for the last time. After all, President Kennedy had been assassinated when we were in ninth grade. The Vietnam War broiled and escalated daily, and within a year or two a lottery draft would call more boys across the world. The South rumbled with civil rights marches, and in two years Dr. King would be shot. The '60s seethed anxiety, cultural change, and social upheaval, and we were stepping right into the thick of it. But in June, 1966, we were eighteen, cocooned, and clueless.

Scott High School, Class of 1966, 36 Graduates
Principal William Gilvary at the podium.
Chairman of the school board, John Ychkowski, awarding diplomas.

In the midst of a complex world of national and international turmoil,  our school was simple:

• We didn't have computers, cell phones, printers, or video games. I guess most hadn't been invented. Our valued possession in '66 might have been our transistor radios. If you needed to call home, you had to ask Francis, the school secretary, to use the office phone. 

•  We didn't have a cafeteria or a library. We took bag lunches every day and ate at our desks. The locker room was in the basement, and one classroom also hid in the scary down-under, accessible over boards laid on the basement's dirt floor.

• We didn't have football, soccer, track, or cross country.

• We didn't have well-paid teachers. When I started teaching in 1970, my starting salary was $7,000, so who knows what our teachers were paid in the '50s-60s.

• We didn't have a science lab, but Miss Santacroce and Mr. Vail did their best with a few beakers and a flip chart of plants.

• We didn't have new textbooks. In fact, the list of users on the inside front covers of our books extended back a decade or so. 

• We didn't have creative teaching supplies and resources, like posters. 

• What we lacked makes a dismal and negative list, but that's just part of the story. Despite the frugality and the "it was different in my day" attitude, none of the "didn't have's," none of the world tension, seemed to bother my classmates. In fact, the thirty-six of us were a happy bunch. After all ...

• We had Donnie. A victim of polio, the scrourge of childhood in the '50s, Donnie had a large

  

  Donnie

  hump on his back that prevented him from standing straight. In fact, he couldn't stand on his own at all. He used crutches throughout our school years, dragging his deformed foot that was far beyond normal size. But he kept up with us in every activity, even our five day trip to Washington DC. He smiled continuously. The boys included him in every event, even as a stat keeper at basketball games. In all our school years I don't remember any teacher lecturing us on how to treat Donnie or reprimanding us for bullying him. He was our friend. The whole class showed up at the funeral when Donnie died the year after graduation, his entire life encompassed in that little country school. Donnie taught us that people in that big outside world would be different from us, but they were one with us.

• We had Rosemarie. A newcomer to the school in tenth grade, Rosemarie quickly became my

  

  Rosemarie

  best friend. Although my classmates had been together
  for many years, they immediately included the new girl with her marvelous sense of humor and happy disposition. A foster child at Stillmeadow, a home for many foster children, Rosemarie didn't tell us the story of  her family or how she came to foster care. But even at the age of fifteen, she showed us how to make the best of things. Rosemarie left Scott for Penn State, main campus. From her we learned how to laugh in the face of adversity and how to work hard to reverse our futures.

We had Patti with her syrupy Southern accent. Her parents moved to

Patti

Pennsylvania from North Carolina to work at a local Bible camp. Patti carried her Bible to school every day. Every one in the class came from a church-going family, the Catholics attending Corpus Christi and the Protestants attending Mt. Bethel in Justus or the United Methodist church in Montdale. But Patti's commitment to Jesus missed us. She wasn't just an attender. She would read her Bible in study halls or at lunch. It would be about ten years after high school when I would begin a personal relationship with Jesus, a relationship which eluded me in high school, despite my upbringing. No one ever ridiculed Patti. She was part of our group. She earned our respect through her diligent academic work and her faithful love for God. She was rewarded as class valedictorian. From Patti we learned about commitment to God and the courage to live it in front of other people.

• We had Evelyn and Billy. 

  

  Billy

  Their high school romance began early - about ninth grade. Neither

  

  Evelyn

  of them even looked at or dated any one else through school. Truly, their eyes were only for each other. A month after we graduated in July of '66, they were married. This summer they will celebrate both our 50th reunion and their 50th wedding anniversary. Many of us in the class faced divorce through the years, but Billy and Evelyn plodded on, fighting cancer, building a business, rearing three children. From Bill and Evelyn we learned the importance of faithfulness and commitment in relationships.

Our class produced company owners, a nurse practioner, several teachers, sales managers, leaders in large area companies, a pastor, several professors, an academic doctor, an airline stewardess, hairdressers, bankers, a massage therapist, a bevy of marvelous mothers and fathers, and an entire class of responsible, hard-working people of character who raised families, paid taxes, and helped to form the backbone of America.

In a recent letter Patti wrote to me, "Considering all the things we didn't have, I think we got a pretty good education. It surely isn't about how much money is spent or how much technology is available per student that determines the quality of education."

In hindsight and from the vantage point of a Christian, I can see God's fingerprints all over our thirteen years in the Scott School. God blessed us in our early, formative years with friendships, adults who loved us, and a safe environment. God's special blessing to the class of '66 of a protected place to grow and loving relationships gave us a bedrock start on life. None of us fell through the cracks. His watchcare has followed us these fifty years whether we choose to acknowledge it or not. And now we get to look back on those blessings and give thanks.

What can you learn in a school without computers, the core curriculum, and an anti-bullying policy?

Plenty, my friends. Plenty.