“Stupid Atheist” Meets Truly Stupid Christian

06 Monday Oct 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, Christianity, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Religion, Youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

Acting, Activism, AP American History, AP US History, Arrogance, Atheism, Atheists, Christianity, Contradictions, Doing, Evangelical Christianity, Faith, Giving, Hope, Hypocrisy, Jay Sekulow, Mary Zini, Masturbation, Pat Robertson, Prayer in Schools, Stupidity, Teenage Angst, Teenagers, Televangelism, Televangelists, Trust, World History

Screenshot from HBO show The Leftovers title sequence, September 5, 2014. ( yU+co via http://news.creativecow.net). Qualifies as fair use under US copyright laws — low resolution and relevance to subject matter.

I’ve written about Mary Zini and our classroom incidents before, here and in Boy @ The Window. It’s been thirty years since she was my tenth-grade World History teacher. Yet most of what I remember from this class has little to do with Plato, NATO, or anything in between. It’s mostly Zini’s condescending personality, my new Christian arrogance, and that people’s personalities and actions are often walking and talking contradictions.

It was the beginning of October ’84 when we had our first incident. It occurred after what was the first of an endless cycle of fill-in-the-bubble Scan-Tron exams.

Honestly, I had no idea at that moment why I said what I said. I supposed that a summer of Jay Sekulow and the American Center for Law and Justice, all via Pat Robertson and The 700 Club had done the trick in making me a one-time prayer-in-public-schools advocate. I knew that Zini was raised a Catholic, so on some level, didn’t that make me a stupid Christian for calling her a stupid “atheist?”

That incident was also the beginning of seven months of starting to figure out how to be me and be a follower of Christ at the same time. I approached it the same way I approached how to be me in my first few months of seventh grade and Humanities at A.B. Davis Middle School in the fall of ’81. With the naiveté of a child, the hubris of a teenager, and the callousness of a human with alien superpowers.

Jay Sekulow lecturing, Regent University, December 15, 2006. (Juda Engelmayer via Wikipedia). Released to public domain via GFDL.

It was evident in my outward actions. I packed my red-pleather-covered King James Bible every day. For school. For Subway trips down into Midtown Manhattan when me and my older brother Darren worked for our father Jimme. For when we washed clothes every Saturday or Sunday at the laundromat on the Mount Vernon-Pelham border (it’s a yoga studio now). The Bible was my constant companion, my shield protecting me from this mad world of almost bottomless sin.

In the process, I read everything from Genesis to Revelations at least twice. (some books, like the Gospels, as many as four times). I learned a lot from reading all sixty-six books of the Old and New Testaments. That the Israelite God Yahweh was stern and pretty unforgiving. That Jesus was a radical, not just spiritually, but politically as well. And that Paul was not exactly the most enlightened of the apostles when it came to women, children and slaves.

Mostly what I learned was that readings and understanding The Bible wasn’t like living out my beliefs at all. I was still a teenager, a fifteen-year-old living in the midst of welfare poverty, at 616 with an abusive womanizer, a wounded mother and a gaggle of siblings between the ages of eight months and five-and-a-half years. Not to mention my alcoholic cuss-factory of a father that I had to hunt down for money nearly every weekend. What all that meant was feeling lust for a young woman one minute, hate toward my idiot stepfather Maurice the next, and imitating Jimme’s slurred language and mannerisms the minute after that.

This new walk was very confusing, so much so that I often hid my emotions in much the same way I’d already been doing to protect myself from yet another abuse episode with Maurice. My emotions couldn’t stay bottled up, though. I frequently humped my way to sleep once our living room at 616 had become my bedroom during and after the months in which Balkis Makeda had lived with us.

By the spring of ’85, when Zini granted me her full support in getting me into AP US History for eleventh grade (this despite my 84 average in her class at the time), I was flabbergasted. I couldn’t stand being in the same room with Zini much of the time. Yet she did for me what few in my life had done — she opened up a door for me to walk through, albeit a relatively small one.

Hands of God & Adam, fingers about to touch, Sistine Chapel ceiling, Vatican, Michelangelo, 1508-1512 (via Wikipedia). In public domain.

What did it all mean? That devoutness is meaningless without action, without giving and receiving, without trust, without taking risks. That even supposed atheists can act and give in ways that should shame many arrogant Christians. That Christianity isn’t a transactional relationship or process, but a journey with many pitfalls and lots of contradictions along the way. That who I/we say God is, well, at best an infinitesimal guess, because God and this universe is so much more that I as a human male living in the context of Western culture can only begin to understand.

Most of all, I had just begun to learn that spiritual liberation wasn’t supposed to be a yoke, but an opening to see the world and myself stripped bare of narrative and pretense. A strict adherence to the principles of Pat Robertson would bring me no closer to enlightenment and no further out of poverty than wishing on a star or avoiding cracks on Mount Vernon’s blue-slate sidewalks. Work, trust, opportunities, and not just Romans 8:28, was the beginning of the key for me.

AP US History Exam Day & Harold Meltzer

13 Tuesday May 2014

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, eclectic music, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, music, Politics, Pop Culture, race, Youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

AP, AP American History, AP US History, AP US History Exam, Appreciation, College Board, Coping Strategies, ETS, Exam Day, Harold Meltzer, Kaplan, Mentoring, Photographic Memory, Princeton Review, Privilege, Self-Discovery, Teaching and Learning

AP Day (cropped), May 9, 2014. (Tim Needles/http://artroom161.blogspot.com/).

Twenty-eight years ago on this day/date, I was on my way to Mount Vernon High School, listening to Mr. Mister, Simple Minds, Sting and Whitney along the way. I was a few minutes away from a three-hour exam that could change my future. It wasn’t exactly the sunniest or warmest of days, though. That second Tuesday in May ’86 was brisk and heavy with clouds, a high of only 52°F. Still, with the way I felt that morning, May 13th might as well have been sunny with a high of seventy-two.

I’ve written about my AP US History exam experience and Harold Meltzer ad nauseum here in this blog, as well as in Boy @ The Window. How I felt in the months and weeks before the exam. My expectations for a “5” and what that meant in comparison to taking something much less representative of the college experience, like the SAT. My perspective on my AP classmates and the general sense of obnoxious whining that permeated our classroom in throughout March and April ’86, and in whispers the following year. The keys to my academic success, and me being conscious of those keys, for the very first time. And, of course, the mentoring and tutelage of the late Harold Meltzer, the only teacher after elementary school who took a genuine interest in my development as a human being, not just in my grades or in my intellectual abilities.

I was a high school junior whom, at sixteen years old, had more wisdom about what would leave me well prepared for college than most parents, teachers and so-called education reformers possessed in ’86 or in 2014. Taking Algebra in eighth grade, AP courses in eleventh and twelfth grade, accelerated math and science classes all through high school. I knew even then that the APUSH exam was far more representative of my academic preparation than any SAT score would indicate, no matter how high.

AP US History For Dummies cover (2008), May 13, 2014. (http://bookoutlet.com/).

Yet I’ve found myself in debates with folks in recent months over an issue that’s been well settled in the education world for more than a decade. Over a single four-digit score that many thought should be the difference between going to an elite school and attending a no-name local technical institute. These folks refused to recognize what even the College Board and ETS recognize. That social class and racial privilege have been infused in the SAT process for years, with so many students taking SAT-prep courses at Princeton Review and Kaplan being all the prima facie evidence I need.

Now, this doesn’t mean that Advanced Placement (or International Baccalaureate, for that matter) is much better. But in terms of the actual amount of time spent in direct preparation, with the right teacher, even an impoverished Black kid like I was could attend a public school with a magnet program and earn a “5” — without spending $1,500 on Kaplan or Princeton Review.

Enough on that. Today, I can truly say that AP US History Exam ’86 Day was a fundamentally important milestone for me. It sealed the deal I made for myself in the midst of the summer of abuse, to get out of 616, out of Mount Vernon, and into college. Thanks Humanities. Thanks, Mr. Meltzer. Thanks, classmates. And, thank God!

No Good Teaching Deed Goes Unpunished

13 Friday May 2011

Posted by decollins1969 in 1, Academia, Boy @ The Window, culture, Eclectic, Mount Vernon High School, Politics, race, Youth

≈ Leave a comment

Tags

AP American History, AP US History, AP US History Exam, Blue Ribbon Schools, Burnout, Harold Meltzer, Mount Vernon High School, Mount Vernon New York, Politics of Education, Richard Capozzola, Student Achievement, Teacher Effectiveness, Teachers Unions, William Prattella

It’s never really been much of a surprise to me how much we don’t appreciate good teachers. I should know. A few semesters ago, a student of mine filed a complaint against me because she couldn’t see my lecture notes well enough due to some issue with the LCD projector for my classroom. Mind you, she admitted that she didn’t have her glasses that day. When I didn’t allow her to interrupt me in the middle of class over the issue, she stormed out, yelled a couple of obscenities at me, and slammed the classroom door shut.

I know, it’s much worse on the K-12 level, between incorrigible students and insolent parents, school and district administration. Not to mention the pressures of NCLB, initiatives like Race to the Top (or bottom, really) and private foundations with their own agendas. Add to that article after article blaming teachers unions for being on the wrong side of corporatized education reform that emphasizes math and science and test scores over humanities and social science and critical thinking.

Former NYC DOE Chancellor Joel Klein’s now among them, in his lengthy (really, too long) piece on “The Failure of American Schools” in this month’s Atlantic Monthly, laid much of the blame on teachers and teachers unions. Not our nation’s economic woes, an overemphasis on math and science, or a system that was created not to teach academic excellence, but to weed out the so-called weak-minded. It’s no wonder that the average career of a teacher is five years!

A quarter-century ago on this date, my former teacher Harold Meltzer’s good deeds came to fruition through our AP US History class and our AP exam that year. We learned in September ’86 — the beginning of our senior year — that three of us (including yours truly) all scored 5’s on the AP American History exam on this date. That meant that three of us had earned six college credits a year before enrolling in any university. There were at least four others who scored a 4, guaranteeing them three college credits. Another five scored a 3, considered a passing score by colleges and the College Board.

It was the best an MVHS AP class had ever done on any AP exam up to that point in the high school’s history, and should’ve been a crowning achievement for Meltzer and the school. Yet instead of praise or at least a “Congratulations,” Meltzer was treated as if he’d shown up MVHS by his boss, Social Studies Department Chair Larry Smith, a red-headed man who looked like a character from Dune. He snickered at me every time he saw me with Meltzer. Neither Superintendent William Prattella nor Richard Capozzola saw fit to honor Meltzer or our class for our achievements. It was ironic, because MVHS won a Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence award from the US Department of Education a few months later, off of the work of teachers like Meltzer, as well as Humanities students.

There were rumors that some of the White parents were unhappy with Meltzer’s methods of teaching, which typically involved us interpreting history rather than answering straightforward history trivia questions. More than rumors, actually, as I walked in on a meeting between Meltzer and a parent my senior year. That mother demanded an A for her daughter in Meltzer’s AP US History class. What wasn’t exactly a rumor, either was that Smith was looking for any excuse to take AP US History away from Meltzer. Especially since it was so shocking that both White and Black students did equally well on the exam that year. Of course, there were other, more deeply personal issues between the two men that likely involved jealousy and other not-so-secret secrets.

For our part, our cohort stopped talking to Meltzer altogether. Sure he was eccentric, even a bit strange and unorthodox as a teacher, but at least he cared. And by the way our scores turned out, he didn’t deserve the cold shoulders he received from most of my classmates our senior year. It bothered me when I’d see Meltzer saying “Hello” to one of us as we passed his Room 275, only for one of us to walk by as if Meltzer had phased out of our space-time continuum.

I was sure that some of it was related to Meltzer being a “confirmed bachelor.” But mostly, I thought that despite Meltzer’s lack of a normal teaching style, that my classmates were total assholes toward him. Meltzer spent the week before the AP exam after school with us going over every conceivable fact of American history for the more anal of us. It was above and beyond, and also unnecessary. Because Meltzer had taught us enough about egalitarianism, critical and independent thinking, and “coming to the point at once” in the first months of his class for all of us to do well.

Meltzer died from a number of ailments at the age of sixty-six in early January ’03. But one thing I was sure of that hastened his decline was the bitter and broken heart he had from the way he’d been treated in his last years as a teacher. I just hope that I brought a little bit of laughter to the man in his final months and weeks. Or at least, something to smile about.