The Tilapia Choice in 2016: Donald J. Trump

For starters, you may be asking: What does Donald J. Trump have in common with delicious fish?

First a disclaimer. My father, the most honest man I ever met, ran a business with honor. He didn’t stick our name in giant letters on any buildings; but he was proud of what he and his father built.

There are plenty of good people running businesses.

Still, I’m not blind. I know government is often better at protecting the interests of ordinary citizens. 

A Trump property in Chicago.

For starters, let’s talk fish.

In 2013 scientists (the same people who warn climate change is real) decided to do DNA testing on fish sold in markets and restaurants. It turns out not all business people are fit to serve flounder.

How often were people selling fish pulling what one writer called a “bait and switch?” In New York City a study found 39% of sellers, wholesale and restaurant, were dishing up tilapia that wasn’t—and 100% of sushi restaurants would have served an old shoe if they thought they could get away with it.

As a liberal, I understand why Trump supporters are sore. If they feel Big Business has been screwing them, they’re correct. But the argument the GOP loves—a bizarre variation of which Mr. Trump peddles himself—that he’s suited to run America because he ran a business—flies in the face of logic.

Let’s talk food again; let’s talk Trump steaks. 

I am not about to claim Donald Trump is selling weasel meat and calling it premium beef. 

I am saying the fact he once sold beef doesn’t qualify him to be president. If it did, some future White House dinner would feature meat from the Rancho Feeding Corporation, a California slaughterhouse. According to federal agents, Rancho made a habit of butchering cattle no one else wanted, for the simple reason those cattle had cancer.

In fact, government isn’t always the problem, as Ronald Reagan once claimed. Government is the main reason you are not currently gobbling down cancerous beef. 

And if you’ve ever been to Yosemite you know government does a magnificent job creating national parks.

A gorgeous Yosemite stream. Don't let British Petroleum within a thousand miles.

By comparison, we all remember what the business geniuses at British Petroleum managed to do. In 2010, eleven workers were killed when BP cut safety corners and the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded. Before the damage could be contained, 4.2 million barrels of oil had fouled the waters and shorelines of the Gulf of Mexico.

In fact, history is chock full of examples of business people you would definitely not want running the country. Instead, government must check the abuses of crazed men and women in pursuit of a buck. Today the child pornography business is a $3 billion annual industry in the United States.

You can’t go lower than that.

Still, no list of greedy rats would be complete without Henry’s Turkey Service. For decades the company held dozens of special needs workers in a condition akin to slavery. The men were abused and paid, on average, 41¢ per hour. In 2013 an Iowa jury awarded thirty-two victims $240 million in damages.

Remember Bernie Madoff? He stole $20 billion.

Remember Enron? Ken Lay and Jeffrey Skilling rigged company books, jacked up stock prices to $90 and walked away with millions. When their scheme unraveled investor losses exceeded $63 billion.

Remember the Ford Pinto? In the “good old days” when safety regulations didn’t “strangle” job creators, Ford engineers decided to cut safety corners and save a few dollars. In rear end crash tests, conducted by the company, the Pinto kept failing, even at speeds as low as 20 mph. Ford sold the car anyway and, all across America, Pintos began exploding in giant fireballs. At least 180 drivers and passengers were incinerated.

Remember Joe Camel? In 1994 the first big lawsuit was filed against R. J. Reynolds and Big Tobacco. During hearings before Congress, executives insisted their products were perfectly safe. Why, babies could smoke cigarettes! The courts disagreed; state and federal agencies won $246 billion in damages.

Okay, those executives lied. According to the Center for Disease Control smoking results in the premature death of 480,000 Americans yearly.

How about business skunks like Martin Shkreli, of Valeant Pharmaceuticals. He made a name for himself recently after his company bought the rights to Daraprim, a drug used to treat life-threatening parasitic diseases affecting newborns and promptly raised the price from $13.50 per pill to $750. Yep: an increase of 5,500%.

How about the men and women who run Johnson & Johnson. For years the pharmaceutical giant provided expensive perks to doctors who agreed to prescribe Risperdel for creative uses. This included sedating elementary-age school children with behavioral issues. Presto! No more behavior issues! 

Also: tidy profits! 

Who cared if 1,200 kids suffered from serious side effects? Who cared if thirty-one died, including a 9-year-old who suffered a stroke days after beginning treatment? An Arkansas judge cared. 

He fined Johnson & Johnson $1.2 billion.

(We might also mention Pfizer, Amgen, Merck & Co., Eli Lilly, Abbott Laboratories and other big drug companies all successfully sued for hundreds of millions for illicit practices. The biggest fine of all, however, $3.3 billion went to GlaxoSmithKline, in large part for making false and misleading claims about the safety of their products.) 

Drug cartels: Not to be confused with pharmaceutical giants already mentioned! Then again, money is money is money. 

Speaking of which, HSBC, one of the world’s largest banks, helped Mexican drug cartels launder $400 billion. In one email an HSBC executive lamented the fact the bank could lose $2.6 billion in fees if the lucrative pipeline was sealed.

Also: It turns out playing football is hard on the brain. For years, the NFL denied it was. “Here,” they said to players who suffered concussions, “take these pain killers and get back on that field. No! Wait! You’re heading for the stands. That way.” In a recent out-of-court settlement the league agreed to pay former players $765 million in damages.

How about that cesspool we know and love, Big Time College Sports! Top coaches earn millions even as players graduate with useless degrees. Or no degree at all. 

In an effort to keep athletes eligible, for example, the University of North Carolina came up with a novel plan. The school paid a professor to create dozens of classes that…how do we say this...never met at all 

Grades were good though!

Speaking of education, consider the whole for-profit college industry. (We will give Trump a pass, for now, until the matter of Trump University is litigated.) Not long ago Corinthian College paid five top executives $22 million for a year’s worth of effort, while simultaneously employing a variety of illegal sales tactics (including recruiting homeless individuals). Then they saddled students with high-interest loans. Eventually, Corinthian went bankrupt. Thousands of young people were still stuck paying off crappy loans.

And let’s not forget the University of Phoenix, once the biggest cash cow in the for-profit education game. The school came up with $67.5 million in court to pay for defrauding students—kicked in another $11 million for legal fees—all while spending $892 per pupil annually to…um …educate them.

Business people have been doing a fantastic job running various charter schools into the ground too. Consider General Chappie James Leadership Academy, a Dayton, Ohio charter. In 2015 the Academy was billing the state for each of 459 students enrolled. An audit revealed that Chappie James was missing a few bodies. 

Total students in attendance…oh, thirty.

And if you haven’t read about the scam that was Trump Institute—not to be confused with Trump University, but an entirely different scheme—you should. Glowingly endorsed by Good Businessman Trump, the institute was piloted by a couple who fled Texas, fled Florida, and fled Vermont to stay ahead of the law.

In fact, Susan G. Parker, who worked for Trump Institute and helped compile curriculum material (much of which has since turned out to have been plagiarized), came away from one training seminar appalled. “It was like I was in sleaze America,” she says, “It was all smoke and mirrors.”

I know. This is depressing.

So, perhaps a little levity might bring this post to an end. According to the Good Housekeeping Institute, when business people are on the loose, the consumer—and, in 2016, the voter—has reason to worry.

In various tests, Good Housekeeping uncovered more than bogus tilapia. It turned out a moisturizing cream sold by Olay for $22 outperformed a competing salon product that cost $350.

Another test of seven shampoos advertised to reduce split ends, involving magnification under microscopes to 700X, found none did.

Could it be: Is Trump using the wrong shampoo?

Well, the money-making shenanigans only continue! The New York State Attorney General recently accused GNC, Target and other retailers of fraud related to sales of herbal supplements advertised for health benefits to the unhealthy consumer. Walgreen was selling ginseng pills said to promote “physical endurance and vitality.” Turns out the pills contained nothing except powdered garlic and rice. 

In the same way, Walmart was offering ginko biloba pills, supposedly filled with a Chinese plant product touted to enhance memory. Sadly, someone making the pills forgot to include ginko biloba. The suspect pills contained powdered radish, powdered wheat and powdered houseplants.

In other words, the argument that we can trust business people to run the entire world has more than a few gaping holes in it.

Consider, for example, the coal and oil barons who pay for bogus climate denial “science” today. 

Consider the Oklahoma fracking companies, where earthquakes have been one unwelcome side effect. 

Throw in the trawling vessels which drag nets along ocean floors, nets which have scraped bare twenty million square miles of continental shelf. You know: the guys looking for tilapia to harvest—the guys not worried if they devastate an area equal to the land mass of Brazil, Canada, China, Russia and the United States.

In fact, when it comes right down to it, I would argue that Donald Trump is to government what fake ginko biloba pills are to healthful living.

Trump is political “tilapia” for the unwitting restaurant patron.

Maybe it's tilapia. Maybe it's Trump.

A Baker's Dozen of My Favorite Posts

If you liked my post on attendance here are a few of my other favorite posts. I will say, I saved my best stories for my book, Two Legs Suffice: Lessons Learned by Teaching.

My book is now available on Amazon.com. 

1) Sham Standards: Governor Kasich and the Standardized Testing Fetish: I first started this blog in 2011, concerned that standardized testing was doing real harm in education. 

In this post we consider what happens when Loveland Middle School brings in fourteen veterans from five different wars and lets them talk to 700 students? 

It’s not standardized education but it’s learning that truly matters. Joe Whitt talks about his experiences at Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Ace Gilbert, a decorated Vietnam veteran, makes listeners cry, and Seth Judy talks about ten surgeries he endured after being wounded in Iraq in 2003.

(This selection is expanded into an entire chapter in my book, Two Legs Suffice: Lessons Learned by Teaching.)

***

2) How Many Reformers Does It Really Take to Fix a School? After almost fifteen years, why hasn’t school reform worked? “Perhaps we need to look at schools like automobiles to grasp why it is we’re not speeding down the intellectual Interstate like the reformers say we must. Imagine that there are three autos, all broken down alongside I-10, in the Arizona desert. The drivers are three real teachers. Each has been carrying five passengers, five students. One car is a new Lexus LX 570. The second is a 2006 Honda Civic. The third is a battered 1972 Chevrolet Impala.” 

What ideas will the reformers come up with to help real teachers and real students? Hint: none of them will actually help.

***

3) NFL Adopts Common Core Playbook—Copying Education Reforms: In an effort to fix failing franchises, the NFL decides to copy education reform. In a stunning news conference, Commissioner Roger Goodell explains to reporters: “We believe a Common Core Playbook will save our struggling teams. Beginning with the 2013 season every coach and every team will use the same playbook.”

What could possibly go wrong?

***

4) Why Teaching Matters—Part II: You can have an effect on students in many ways and may not know for years exactly what that effect was, or whether you did any good. Joey once racked up 38 zeroes in a row in my class. So we sat down and talked. 

A series of eight similar posts can be found by clicking on the year 2011 (December) and 2012 (January).

***

4) Sample Reviews for Two Legs Suffice: I’m proud to say, readers of my book have called it “inspirational” and said it “should be required reading for all teachers, students, administrators and citizens.” One reader had this to say: “Near the end I was in tears over one sad story about a boy and then a half hour later I was laughing so hard at the ending paragraph that I was in tears again. I think every parent of school age children should read this book.”

***

5) The Essence of Corporate Education: It turns out many corporations, both at the K-12 level and in higher education are in business to make money, whether students learn or not. When all is said and done, it turns out “‘corporate’ is to ‘education’ as ‘cigarette manufacturer’ is to ‘public health and well-being.’”

***

 6) Are Poor Public Schools Killing the U. S. Economy? When U. S. students finish fifteenth in reading (out of 65 countries tested), tied for thirty-first in math, and twenty-third in science, critics claim public schools are killing the economy.

Oddly enough, jobs are lost to Bangladesh, a nation not even rated, with an illiteracy rate of almost 50%, and Mexico, which finished #48 in reading and #50 in math and science.

***

 7) Does Arne Duncan Realize that Teachers and Students Are Dying? In one terrible week, Colleen Ritzer, a Massachusetts high school teacher, is raped and murdered by a 14-year-old student in a bathroom at her school. Two days later Michael Lansberry, a Nevada middle school teacher, is shot and killed by a 12-year-old as he tries to stop the boy from shooting classmates.

Meanwhile, Secretary of Education Arne Duncan insists kids drop out of high school mainly because teachers make it too easy.

***

8) Confessions of a Bad Teacher: I Loved Teaching like an Addict Loves Crack: “My name is John and I have a problem. For thirty-three years I was a bad teacher. And I thought was good.” 

I finally face up to reality after hearing all the school reformers say America’s teachers are no good.

***

9) The Scores Are In: School Reformers Earn F’s: “Test results from the National Assessment of Educational Progress, often called ‘the Nation’s Report Card,’ are out again this month. And now we know. Now we know what happens when arrogant reformers set out to improve the nation’s schools, contributing only hot air—their opinions—their plans—their pontificating—but not deeds. (These people don’t teach. They talk. They talk and talk and talk.)”

It turns out that despite billions spent on standardized testing seniors’ scores for NAEP reading are down five points and math scores are up three. It makes you wonder if our leaders know what they’re doing at all.

***

10) ExxonMobil Announces Commitment to Fixing U. S. Education: ExxonMobil runs a slick commercial, explaining how it hopes to get involved with fixing America’s schools. “I know if you’re like me, your first reaction is probably, ‘Who better to understand the needs of children than oil executives?’” 

***

11) America’s Teachers: We’re Dumb and We Suck! This was my first really successful post, in which I apply the same kind of statistics used to prove America’s teachers are failing to prove that America’s doctors and nurses are failing even worse! 

***

THIS ONE IS A LITTLE DIFFERENT...A POLITICAL POST FROM 2012

12) Why is Being a Liberal so Hard: Romney and Ryan Bring Back the Fun: This was a political post, but it clearly resonated with tens of thousands of readers. “Sometimes,” I wrote, “it’s tough being a liberal. Rush and his legions of Dittoheads call you a ‘libertard’ and pretend they’re better Americans than you. As a liberal, you think this country and the world could be better and want to help make those twin ideals come true. Conservatives warn that you’re a communist and insist you and your type want to wipe your feet (or worse) on the U. S. Constitution.”

“”

‘’

The Limited Efficacy of "School Reform:" Absenteeism

As a veteran classroom teacher, I often find myself thinking that “school reform” fails for the most basic of reasons. 

That is: school isn’t the place where many problems in school begin. Consider the question of student attendance.

(And remember: teachers lack telepathic powers; they cannot educate a child who is not present for class.)

Over the years, as a teacher dealing with struggling seventh or eighth grade students, I often found it was my first task to convince them to stop making excuses. All too often, that also meant dealing with parents who were purveyors of the same kinds of excuses. As a teacher, then, I came to believe in many cases my job was to force people, young and old, to give up on all their alibis. No student (or parent) was going to make progress if they kept evading responsibility.

On my end, I tried to make sure no student willing to work would ever fail my class. If a young man failed a test, I told him to study again, come in after school and take the test again. If he got an “A” the second time around, I gave him the “A” and wiped out the “F.” I always wanted kids to succeed. As for missing homework, if a girl needed a second, third, fourth or fifth chance, I gave it. If a child fell behind, I offered ten chances if ten were required. I gave out my home phone number if students or parents needed to call and ask for help. I called home, too, when kids fell behind—my record for one student, fourteen calls during a year. And what I found was this: a student might have a good excuse for one missed assignment—or two—or even five—but eventually the stack of excuses grew too tall and tipped over with a crash.

Then most teens would look in the mirror.

Unfortunately, parents were often the problem—and in many cases “school reform” had a very hollow ring.

I was a team leader for more than a decade, and I remember one occasion when our team of teachers proved incapable of knocking over a mother’s giant pile of excuse. Nicole, a seventh grade girl, was missing entirely too much school. Repeated absences were killing her grades.

I called mom—more than once—and finally convinced her in April to come in for a morning meeting to talk. 

Of course, as teachers, you have to guard against your own tendency to make excuse. So I began with this: Maybe the problem was our team. Maybe Nicole was unhappy with how we were treating her. Maybe attendance had never been an issue before. Maybe the problem was us.

In fact, it might be me! Perhaps I had offended Nicole and now she shut down. So I checked her records for clues. 

It turned out Nicole missed 45 days in fifth grade, when her family lived in a different district. 

Records for sixth grade records were incomplete; but in three quarters of the year, after moving to Loveland, she missed another 42 days. 

Okay.

It wasn’t just me or my team. 

In our meeting with mom, a few days later, it was readily apparent Nicole’s mother had an excuse for every situation. Nicole was unlucky, she claimed. That’s why the girl missed so much school. Nicole was a “carrier for strep.” Members of our team put on a polite façade. Behind that façade, however, I was wondering: What about the previous week, when Nicole missed an entire day for a dental appointment?

Michelle Miranda, a dynamic young teacher on our team, tried to pin mom down. It was like mud-wrestling with eels and mom wriggled away. Steve Ball, a veteran and a great educator, tried next. Nicole, he explained, was on target to miss forty or fifty days of class during the current year. Absenteeism was killing her academically, making it hard to keep up in math, where concepts built one upon another. Nicole’s mother squirmed out of danger again, making another excuse, this time in her own defense. Mom wasn’t failing in her duties. Nope. “Nicole doesn’t like all the snobby kids in Loveland,” she explained. “That’s why she stays home.”

In other words: mom was innocent. She wasn’t failing as a mom. It was all those other snobby kids!

I explained to mom that Nicole could always come in and complete makeup work for my class. Honestly, my door was always open.

I had already explained this in calls home several times before.

Mr. Ball and others on our team made the same kind of offers—but Nicole had to come to school to get help.

By now, time was running short and first bell classes were about to begin. Always obsessive about missing time for instruction, I motioned my team to get going to first period. Steve hung back a moment and the three of us, mom included, walked out in the hall, where I tried one last shot. I told mom we liked Nicole and said Nicole had plenty of talent. But mom had to get her to school. 

Mom replied, “I just didn’t realize she had missed so many days.”

I saw a shadow of resignation cross Mr. Ball’s face. He thanked her politely for coming, pivoted, and headed for class.

I had first period conference. So I talked to mom a few more minutes, gave her my home phone number once more, and assured her I’d be happy to stay in at lunch or stay after school anytime Nicole wanted help.

To be honest, however, the only excuse I could think of for a mother like this, who allowed her daughter to miss more than 120 days of instruction in just three years, was that perhaps no one had taught her how to count. 

That meeting was on a Monday.

I stayed after school three afternoons that week and let students who had fallen behind come in and catch up on work. I offered the same option every day during lunch and even offered to come in early every morning before school.

Nicole missed two more days of class that same week and never bothered to try to stay and catch up.

Yeah: not a question of school reform.

***

I saved my best stories for my book.

I cover this topic at greater length in my book, Two Legs Suffice (Chapter 15: The Poison Ivy Dilemma) now available at Amazon.com.

For sample reviews of my book, check out this post.

***

For a recent look at this problem, nationwide, read: More Than Six Million Students Nationwide Are “Chronically Absent.”

A chart I once prepared for our school board,
showing students with serious attendance issues.
Mary, an eighth grader, was pregnant. Karen had a drug addiction.

"Snowballs" Fly in History Class and Other Mistakes

I said when I wrote a book about teaching that my focus was on what worked in an ordinary classroom, with an ordinary teacher, in an ordinary American school. I wanted to focus on what real teachers do and why what they do can be infernally hard. I wanted to focus on how to improve what happens in any classroom.

So I skipped over most of my mistakes. 

Naturally, I made plenty, as all human beings do.

In my class, I’m sure former students would admit, we did all kinds of skits. Eventually, I realized how good they could be at performing what I called “plays without scripts” and we set skits up to last for entire periods. 

Early in my career I set up a role-playing activity based on the Boston Massacre, which seemed like a good idea at the time. 

I expected it to last ten minutes—and since snowballs were thrown at British guards in the winter of 1770—I decided we needed “snowballs” to enhance the show. Part of my plan, involved members of the audience throwing a few paper wads.

I was young then; but I should have known!

Once you allowed teens to throw a few snowballs, their enthusiasm for history knew no bounds. (If you remember the Christmastime incident in Philadelphia, years back, where drunken Eagles fans pelted Santa Claus at halftime of  an NFL game, you have some idea.) The snowballs were a mistake from the start; but the debacle was complete when the student in the role of commander of the redcoat guard decided to wave his sword—my blackboard pointer—at the leader of the rebellious colonists. Before I could warn him to be careful, he brought down his weapon squarely on the head of one “dirty rebel,” a student named Darryl.

The blow split his scalp neatly and Darryl did what any dirty rebel might do.

He bled profusely.

(Perhaps it is needless to say we never tried that skit again.)

Before I ever set foot in a classroom I spent two years with the United States Marines. Like my drill instructor at Parris Island and several basketball or football coaches I had admired, I felt there was a place for ass-chewing when it came to motivating people and considered ass-chewing a kind of art. So I worked in the medium whenever I thought it would help; and by “help” I mean help get students going or cut off the kinds of misbehavior that led to far more serious troubles in the end. (I explain this all in my book.)

On at least one occasion, however, ass chewing backfired and that meant it was a mistake. (Some educators might argue it always is. I leave that for wiser heads to debate.)

In the case of F. G., a student in one of my gifted classes, it was definitely a mistake. Like many gifted children, he appeared unmotivated at first glance, at second, and at third. He and I talked repeatedly about getting his work done. I liked F. G., too, but the work he did turn in was incredibly sloppy and incomplete. At some point I questioned him sternly about lack of effort. 

I found out later he took offense. 

Not realizing, I soon got on him again. Finally, I called home. His step mother answered. She liked the boy, she said (he was mild-mannered and capable of hysterical comments at any time), but she couldn’t believe how disorganized he was. His room was “filthy,” “just unbelievable,” she explained. “It looks like he’s a barbarian or something.” 

The boy’s father had blown up repeatedly, she continued. You couldn’t see the furniture in the room under heaps of dirty clothes and toys and junk. Finally, they took away his bed and dresser and chair till he agreed to clean up his room. 

He didn’t clean up, though. Passive aggression was more his style. 

He slept in a sleeping bag and kept piling up junk. 

I realized then that chewing him out wasn’t doing any good. In fact, this approach was exacerbating the problem. In later years, as I became more adept in the subtleties of working with teens, I might have recognized the problem earlier and adopted a fresh approach.

Again: I was young.

Still, in working with a 150 kids ever year, you can’t avoid making mistakes. A third example—this one near the end of my career—involved a project turned in by one of my better students. (I mean “better” in terms of work. I liked or loved all but half a dozen of the 5,000 teens I taught. In fact, I think that’s the only mindset a teacher should have. I think you have to work on it; I think you have to try to like all the kids.) 

The project in this case, a game of some sort, was terrible. Even a brief perusal made it clear the work was rushed and the results incredibly sloppy. I took the young man gently aside and told him he’d have to fix it or start over. 

This questioning of the quality was not my mistake. The project was terrible. But the next day, after he told me he planned to start over, and thinking no one would know whose work it was, I showed his game to a class later in the day, as an example of what not to do. As always, my message was simple. We must all work hard to produce quality work. 

The project, in my mind, was a prop, to make my point to this particular class. I knew it was going into the garbage, regardless. So I bent it double and stuck it in the trash. 

It turned out some of game maker’s friends were seated before me and had seen his project on the bus to school. They knew whose it was and told him about the fate of his work on the ride home that day. The game-maker was humiliated. 

I had held his project up as an example of what not to do.

The boy’s mother contacted me as soon as she found out and told me, perhaps more politely than I really deserved, that I had made a mistake. She could have chewed my butt. I knew at once that she was correct.

I offered to apologize in front of her son’s class. 

I offered to apologize in front of his class and the class where I trashed the game. 

I said I’d be happy to apologize directly to him. 

I offered to apologize to all of my classes. 

Mom felt this might compound the boy’s embarrassment. And she said he would be angry if he knew she called me to intercede. 

I told her I’d say I heard about the problem from one of his friends and promised to take him aside the next day and apologize in that way. 

And I did.

A fourth example of the kind of blunders I committed—and I think it’s safe to say all teachers make their own brand of mistakes—should suffice. Generally speaking, I got huge mileage out of a humorous approach in the classroom. This included using comical essays when it came to minor matters of discipline (also explained in my book). I also used to tease students, particularly ones I liked, and especially those who could give it right back.

I never once meant to offend.

I don’t believe a teacher ever has a right to insult a child. I don’t believe sarcasm directed at students has any place in a classroom. So, if I teased a kid I liked, I was watchful for any expression or hint my jokes struck the wrong spot. 

One year, I fell into the habit of teasing Kate whenever the subject of women’s rights came up. Kate was one of my most talented students, possessor of a superior intellect, \a thoroughly likeable young lady in ever respect.

So I used her as an example—employing what I thought was obvious sarcasm, in regard to the historical mistreatment of women. Talking about the endless battles Susan B. Anthony fought to win the right to vote for women, I might say in effect: “Oh course, Kate, you realize women do belong in the kitchen.”

I suspected Kate was going to end up in medical school—and had no doubt she could do whatever she set heart and hand to do in the future.

I thought the juxtaposition of ideas—the absurdity that women should have been limited in any way—that Kate, herself, was so talented—was clear. Certainly, Kate never complained. 

Her manners were probably too good. 

At the end of the year, however, when she filled out an anonymous survey I always used, she let me know how she truly felt. I wanted teens to answer questions about my class honestly, to tell me what they thought, and set it up, as best I could, so I wouldn’t know whose answers were whose. But seated at my desk, trying not to look over anyone’s shoulder or see their responses, I noticed Kate was using a green marker and writing on a yellow legal pad when she marked down A, B, C or D answers.

Students were allowed to add any comments they might care at the end. So Kate wrote a paragraph, saying her feelings had been hurt.

How did I know it was her?

Only one sheet of yellow legal paper with green responses was turned in that year.

My inclination was to apologize as soon as I read her comments, after her class went to lunch. I would have hunted her up and apologized on the spot.

Still, I always encouraged students to be honest about my class and promised never to question anyone who complained.

I was afraid she might feel I was putting her on the spot.

I gave the survey as close as possible to the end of the year. So, for the next two or three days, before summer vacation, I gave her the space I thought she might need; and I can only say I made damn sure in years to follow I was careful in discussing women’s rights.

Finally, after Kate had gone on to high school, I wrote her a note of apology—which was the least I could do.

If she’s not a doctor today or using her impressive talents in some challenging career, I’d be very much surprised.

Kate: again, I apologize to you.

In the "good old days" this kind of statement could actually fly.
In my mind it was always ludicrous that this was true.