There are two great injustices of my middle school years, inflicted from adult to child, that to this day infuriate me: Mr. Tipton's and Mrs. Lumpkin's failure to do the reasonable and right thing in two very different circumstances.
The Great Letter Debacle
In sixth grade, I was madly in love with Greg; thing is, so was Linda. It's hard to remember the detail of teenage romantic machination, but in this case, I think Greg liked me for five minutes before moving on.
During the time I was "going with him" (which meant nothing other then him asking me to "go" with him, in spite of class being our only destination), Linda wrote him a letter. Greg passed it along to me and I was horrified to read what Linda would be happy to do with him if I wasn't interested. I can still see her penciled handwriting and the way she phrased it. I had never kissed a boy and I couldn't begin to wrap my mind around what she suggested; even in today's culture, this would shock your shoes and socks right off your feet and twist your toenails into corkscrew pasta.
I promptly turned it into my teacher who in turn gave it to our assistant principal.
The next day he called each of us separately into his office. His solution? All of us were disciplined by having to write lines. Mine? "I will not read letters not addressed to me," 500 times.
Let that sink in: I was punished for turning in a sexually explicit letter. Me. Punished.
I don't remember if my parents were called or even if I told them. This was shortly before or after my dad remarried and I'm sure I would've been too embarrassed to tell them (about the contents of the letter more so than getting in trouble).
In my opinion then and magnified a hundredfold now, Mr. Tipton mangled this situation. In 1975, Linda was a sixth grader crying out for help; I was too naive to process the words on the page; Greg probably simultaneously loved it and was rendered completely confused.
Linda and Greg laughed about their discipline; they never completed the lines they were required to write. I spent the weekend filling six pages of notebook paper with words that bruised my heart and over flowed a cup with fury.
I learned that grown ups could be cowards and incompetent and imperfect.
And, as I sit here thinking through that process, I wonder if that's where a spark was ignited…where I began to believe "there's no greater use of my words than to use them to give voice for those who have none."
Because once upon a time, I was a little girl without permission to speak.
I wonder….
I'll write my other "childhood story of injustice" later; for now it's your turn. When you were younger, were you ever subjected to an "unfair" grown up decision? Not just something that ticked you off because you didn't get your way, but through the filter of adult eyes, was truly an act of injustice?
ok heres my injustice. I too had to write sentences for punishment for no- reason. In Sixth grade I had social studies at the end of the day. Our teacher had other classes at the other part of the building so we were in class alone for the first 2-3 minutes of class. Well it made him very angry that we were talking after the bell rang so He kept warning us that he was going to punish us if we did not stop. Well I took him seriously. This day I was quiet and looking straight at him when he came in the door. My class however was not. So the whole class including me whom he saw not talking had to write 500 times. “i will not talk after the bell rings”. I went up to him and I said you know I wasnt talking you saw me when you came in. His responce was I have to make you write because you are part of the class. Needless to say I was upset and I still had to write the sentences.
Mine was in 5th grade… I was the newest kid on the block, having moved to the local school in 4th grade (well after the cliques had been formed in this highly class-aware cultural area) and was the easiest target to pick on. One day after school as I was walking across the kickball field to get to the closest exit home from school I was beat up by a small group of my “elite” classmates. I went home and reported to my parents, who called the principle, who called me into her office the next day and asked me “what did you do to provoke them?” and when I explained that I was only trying to walk home was informed that I was subordinate and exhibiting rude behavior and that I was to write letters of apology to each of the students involved for accusing them of doing such a thing, to my teacher for lying, and to the principle herself for wasting her time.
I was crushed, and I still feel like a social outcast in certain settings.
i was spanked in front of the class for turning around in my chair to answer a question from my friend who tapped me on the shoulder.
i was spanked in kindergarten for raising up off my matt to take off my shoes during nap time.
i wonder what injustices i’ve done to kids?
I do believe that would have ate at me to. That sucked.
I can’t think of any for myself right now but yours is enough for the both of us!
I may have been a slight perpetrator of injustice. A class of mine was performing in a concert. I warned them that while listening to the other performances their concert etiquette needed to be top notch and would be an indicator of their readiness for a planned field trip to a dinner theater. Sadly, a part of the class decided to whoop and holler like no man’s business. I, a first-year teacher, was mortified by their behavior. In that moment I decided to take away the much-anticipated field trip from the whole class. I knew not everyone had behavied wrongly, but since I couldn’t single out who was guilty (and no one came forward), that is how I chose to deal with it. Even now I am not sure what I would do differently, but that incident is the one I recall with the most shame and disappointment.
I went to a very strict Christian school in first grade. During recess, I had been helping the friend who sat in front of me. Kim was struggling with school and at that time, school came easily to me. I just wanted to help her do well.
One day we were taking a test. Kim and I had been working very hard to make sure she understood the material. I had finished my test and looked over Kim’s shoulder to see how she was doing. In my five-almost-six-year old innocence, I had no concept of what it meant to cheat…until Mrs. Rice accused me of stealing answers from Kim’s paper. Stealing from Kim? All three of us knew that of all the people in the room, Kim was the least likely person to possess answers any of us would steal (I certainly hope Kim doesn’t read your blog).
Still Mrs. Rice told me to go to the bathroom, kneel down, and ask God to forgive me for cheating. I went to the bathroom but all I did was wash my hands…more like Pilate than Lady Macbeth, I suppose. When I came back into the room, Mrs. Rice asked me if I’d asked God to forgive me. I didn’t want to lie, so I said I hadn’t. She sent me back to the bathroom to ask God to forgive me for cheating AND for disobeying. I went back to the bathroom, knelt down, and told God that He and I both knew that I didn’t steal anything from Kim but that I needed to tell Him something to get Mrs. Rice off my case, so would He forgive me for the lie I was getting ready to tell Mrs. Rice. Of course, I actually didn’t lie when I told Mrs. Rice I had indeed asked God to forgive me. I just didn’t ask Him to forgive me for what she thought needed forgiving.
I used to get in trouble for not telling on my twin sister when she was doing something crazy. My parents felt it was part of my responsibility to report her behavior and help keep her “safe.” I was frustrated, though, because my mom is an only child and never understood that when your sister asks you not to tell, you don’t tell. Of course as an adult, I see what my mom was thinking, but at the time I used to get so ticked for being punished for keeping my word!
My injustice was in 4th grade. I was, up until that year, a straight-A student. My first report card in fourth grade, I got a B+ in handwriting. I thought it was undeserved, as did my mom. The explanation? Sister Anne didn’t think anyone should get straight A’s so she just gave me a B.
AAARRRRRGGGGHHHHHHH!
Then she showed up as my sophomore history teacher, too…you can imagine how pleased I was.
I went to a two room school house in Leopolis, Wisconsin for the first few years of my education. I was in second grade when my aunt gave me a new top. “New” didn’t happen often in my house. It was a poncho with a tasseled rope as a belt. It had Holly Hobbey on the front. I was so proud to wear it to school. As all of us got ready for recess that day, the teacher lifted my shirt with a sneer and said something about the stlye. She lifted it ALL THE WAY UP with the end of a ruler!!!!! I was shocked, confused, and embarassed. Talk about unjust. Yet, it is one of the moments in memory I cherish. My dad, the one who did all the things to destroy a family, went to the school the next day. He told the teacher, after she looked down her nose one too many times, that if she were a man he would have already hit her. Justice! Daddy was a hero…I always knew it.
When I was a freshman in high school, I received a B instead of an A on my research paper for Western Civ. Our teacher had given the job of grading some of the papers to his student teacher, a college student finishing up her teaching degree with six months of practice in the classroom. The only thing she had taken points off for was that it didn’t seem to her that it could have been written in my own words. She didn’t come out and say that I had plagiarized, but she may as well have. She clearly thought I had copied sentences and even paragraphs from a book or that an adult had helped me write it. She didn’t know me. She had no knowledge of my skill (or lack thereof) as a writer. She didn’t even check my list of sources to see if she could find proof. She just *ass*umed.
The student teacher did say something to me when she gave me my paper back, and I told her I wrote every word myself. She didn’t believe me, and only restated her opinion that it didn’t sound like the way an average freshman student would write. I was not an average student.
I was crushed. And angry beyond belief. I never brought it up with my teacher, though. I was too shy–and too embarrassed that someone would think of me as a) unable to write my own paper and do it well and b) a cheater. The teacher probably didn’t even record the grade in the gradebook. If he had seen her comment, I feel certain he would have talked to me about it and changed my grade. He knew me and my abilities better than she did. I don’t think any of my regular teachers would have been surprised that I had written that paper–and the writing was not even that spectacular anyway.
I can’t believe how angry it makes me to think of this incident again after so many years! I guess I have a very low tolerance for injustice of any sort.
This is the worst injustice written here. It makes every injustice I’ve ever suffered seem pretty small indeed. I hope your parents stood up for you, that you did not have to carry out that punishment, and that instead your principal was reprimanded and somehow punished herself. Things like this really make my blood boil!
like, YEAH. and I’m still kind of peeved about it. maybe I’ll come back and tell all tomorrow. I’m about to turn into a pumpkin