Open Thread Sunday 05-31-15
My Weird High School.
I attended High School from 1968-1972 in a small town (about 30,000) in northern Illinois. The Dennis Hastert incident brought this to mind as the school I went to is only about 40 or 50 miles from Yorkville.
The aforementioned High School had a mandatory military program and as I recall we were told back then that it was one of only 4 or 5 programs in the whole country that was not ROTC based. It was started after WWI and continued well into the 70's although I'm not sure if it is still offered as I lost track with the place.
It was mandatory for all male students to attend every Thursday for an hour class in our sophomore and junior years. There was an annual military parade at the end of each school year that if you didn't attend then you wouldn't pass that grade. We had to purchase full khaki military uniforms, monkey suits we called them, and were issued outdated and disabled rifles that we used to drill and become proficient with. We had to learn all the proper drilling and marching steps, commands and cadences. We were also indoctrinated in basic military history and strategy. The military parade at the end of the school year was the big affair that was performed in the gym in front of a large audience of teachers and parents, you had to attend this parade, no excuses, or you would not pass that grade. Non the less it was not a very popular program with us students although some guys were very gung ho and it spurred military careers for them. The program ceased to be mandatory a couple of years after I graduated, about 1974 or '75. I started my hippie inclinations when I turned 14 in 1968 in my freshman year, but those two years in the mandatory military program really cemented my anti-war sentiments, I became hardcore after that.
My High School also had a dress code which included no hair over a half an inch below the top of the ear, I was constantly in the superintendents office over that one. One time I pulled the "I can't afford the money for a haircut" ploy, but the bastid pulled the money out of his pocket and I had no choice, off I went to the barber in lieu of suspension. That requirement ended in 1970 after a student won a law suit in a near by town and I then proceeded to let my freak flag fly.
But the weirdest part of my High School experience was our swimming program. Our school had two indoor pools, one for the boys and one for the girls. In the winter months we'd have an hour class that was a substitute for gym, I can't remember exactly but the class lasted for a month or two every year. Not so weird? Well hang on. The girls got to wear swimming suits when they attended their classes, but for some reason that was never fully explained the boys had to swim au naturel, buck naked. It was embarrassing in the beginning but we got used to it after a while. Pretty freaking weird, no? On top of all this, and what brought this story to mind to begin with, the swimming instructor was also the wrestling coach. I don't know what it was about northern Illinois and wrestling coaches, but there it is, I shit you not. Again, a couple of years after I graduated, the boys were allowed to wear swimming trunks.
Got any weird school stories, 'fess up!
Comments
Life in small town America...
now you know why I am what I am.
was
your Cheese Cheek instructor Dennis Hastert, by any chance? Maybe his brother . . . .
A guy who lived down the street from me was ultimately expelled from high school because he wouldn't cut his hair or forsake his bell-bottoms. They broke him. A couple years later we succeeded in ridding the school of its dress code—which also included forcing the gals to kneel so some female version of Cheese Cheeks could measure how far skirts might rise above the knee—but it was too late for that guy. This was the mid-'70s. In California.
First time I ran for a school office the most talented artist in the place ran up full-color posters of fat pink pigs frolicking in a barbed-wire enclosure. These were removed. Previously there had been no school policy governing campaign posters; one was then put in place. I believe it was pre-sellout Jerry Rubin who was then advising that one should strive to engage in some behavior that would require the formation of some new rule. This we did.
I was once suspended for using the word "pissed," as in "pissed off."
I was scheduled to be the editor of the paper my senior year, but in the last week of junior year my piece on drug use by the football team was yanked pre-printer from the paper. We snuck into the place and put it back in. When it hit the campus, the principal had veins bulging all over his head; he heaved me off the paper. The amusing thing was that, unbeknownst to him, my primary (anonymous) source for the piece was his son, captain of the football team, who liked to load up on LSD and then run wild all over the field. So I went my senior high-school year to college instead.
No...
it wasn't Hastert, but oddly enough, I was on the wrestling team back then, Yorkville wasn't in our conference but we did wrestle them in the Sectionals. I'm not sure what years Hastert was a wrestling coach but it may have been that period of time. I may has crossed paths with him.
Underground newspapers were the rage amongst freaky folks back then, The Chicago Seed was the big one in our area. A group of freaks (we didn't call ourselves hippies, we were freaks) got together at our high school and put together an underground newspaper. We couldn't procure a press so we wrote them all out by hand and distributed them. That didn't make us too popular with the faculty to say the least. We were pretty scathing about them.
we
put out one issue of an underground high-school paper, using I think a mimeograph machine, at which time we were threatened with permanent expulsion if we produced another.
So we changed the name of the paper, and the names in the staff box, and claimed it was a general interest paper, and distributed it not on campus, but in the criminal hippie record stores. There was more vein-bulging in the principal's head, but the commie criminal lawyer convinced him he couldn't do anything about it.
A couple years later they passed the law in this state where you could get out of high school at age 16—which my younger brother took advantage of—but I had to hang in there the four full years, though both I and the school would have been happy to see me go two years early.
we
didn't have a problem with the faculty, except the troglodytes in the athletic department, and the robot math teacher. It was the administrators who were Abbott & Costello Do The Inquisition.
Some of the faculty members were more out of control than we were. Some of us students would occasionally be invited to parties at their homes; there, Manifold Evils were on full display. I remember this one female teacher who eagerly pressed upon us the book Open Marriage. Particularly since we were all minors at the time, today that woman would be boiled in oil.
Never had that happen...
but I do confess to having those thoughts cross my overcharged adolescent mind, back then, from time to time. I had this substitute English teacher one year that was fresh out of college. She had us write papers that we had to recite in front of the class. Mine was a volatile diatribe that I fashioned after one of my favorite reads, Revolution For the Hell of It. That raised a lot of my clueless classmate's eyebrows but I thought the teacher was going to raise a clenched fist in affirmation. I was one of her favorites after that, I think she was very much into the counterculture scene, she just couldn't let it be known.
yes,
the subs were generally the best criminals. We had a guy who subbed once for the robot math teacher, and he began by sunnily announcing, "pretty much everything you're learning in this class is wrong. You'll find that out when you get to higher math." He then reeled off a bunch of alternate answers he suggested we provide when confronted with various geometry theorems, asserting, correctly, that they were just as valid. Then he said, "they'll tell you that two parallel lines never meet, but they're wrong." Then he picked up the chalk and started drawing two lines on the blackboard. When he ran out of blackboard, he kept going on the wall. When he ran out of wall, he kept going on the next wall. All the while delightedly yammering that, yes, eventually, in Reality, the lines will meet.
When the robot returned, he was horrified, and told us we were to disregard everything the madman had said. But one of the things the madman had let loose was that he had learned, amused, that the robot had devised an insanely anal yearly "lesson plan" in which he taught the exact same thing, on the exact same day, every year. Every day, every year, was to be just, exactly, the same. We then determined to try everything in our power to get the robot off this schedule. He eventually fell into despair. He identified me as the ringleader of this Outrage, which I wasn't, really, but the parents of the other miscreants were wealthy, and mine weren't. He demanded I be removed from his class. My counselor cut a deal where I'd get a "C" from the robot, and then go elsewhere. By that time in the school year there were spots open in only two other classes: art, and journalism. I made a mistake, and chose journalism. And that's how I became a writing criminal. Rather than an art criminal.
That is freaky.....
I think your teachers were perverts. My biggest bitch about swim class was there wasn't enough time to dry and fix my hair before the next class. I had parents who gave me a whole lot of freedom, and I was born questioning and resisting limits and authority. My school thought we were "cute" and did a great job of tolerating our minor infractions. I pretty much skipped my first-hour class my entire senior year. There is no way in hell kids would be treated with the same understanding and tolerance today no matter the school or the cop.
"Religion is what keeps the poor from murdering the rich."--Napoleon
Agreed...
and believe me we questioned the practice but were never given a solid reason for it, it was just traditionally the way it was done. It wasn't just the teachers, it was the school's policy. We had one assistant instructor who liked to sneak up behind unsuspecting students in the pool and grab them from behind and dunk them, it was in fun but very freaking weird and yes, looking back on it, perverted. The instructors got to wear trunks.
the whole set-up policy of those swim classes
for the boys was clearly perverse and abusive. I am amazed that no parents revolted.
Indoctrination programs, that's what this is. I am very sorry you had to go through that school experience, JtC. When I came to the US with my then 11 year old son, I was told (that's in Washington DC) that I MUST put my son in a private school, because the public schools were "so bad". It confused the heck out of me (culture shock as if I hadn't enough of them already), but because his case was difficult due to too many language changes at early age, I started looking into private schools in the DC area. Well, there were the Catholic schools, the Jesuits schools, the military schools, the quaker's friends schools, the international schools, and some "famous" episcopalian schools. (My son got to know lots of famous people's kids...) We got to know four types of those. I avoided the military schools. Indoctrination wise I found all but the international and quaeker schools very imposing and manipulative. I was not aware of what the Quaker schools were all about (we don't have Quakers in Germany, at least not visibly to my knowledge), but I wouldn't have been able to pay for those anyhow.
I am so glad I avoided the military schools. Of course I would have never thought that 15 years later my son was so "lost" that he had chosen to go to the Air Force. That was February 2000. We had no idea who GW Bush was back then Oh well that of course didn't take long .... strange life.
Anyhow, as a parent I would have revolted against that. I revolted against my son being "used" as a possible football celebrity student at a Jesuit school.
I was considered a very, very bad mother. ... May be I was. Today I wouldn't even discuss the option at all. Later my son became a baskett ball celebrity high school student, and he understood what kind of "deal" the schools are making with students like him, using them, but not teaching them, especially if you are a needy student academically. A very fake, phony and destructive "deal" for most of the athletes, I think.
Oh well, memories, makes me mad to read your story. Glad you turned out a hippie and I would say, no wonder, who wouldn't rebel against that?
Heh...
don't be sorry for me going through those experiences, mimi. Hell, back then I and many of the peops I ran with were not adverse to going skinny dipping or butt naked at the drop of a dime, party or not. That was part of our culture back then, we lived it. The military classes molded me into the fervent peace loving individual I am now. As for those swimming classes being perverse and abusive see my post below, they were much more wide spread back then than even I realized, and I lived it. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger.
:-) - lucky you - I responded below why I get the
creepy anxiety attacks reading such stuff. As you can see in the Weimar Republic those cultural thingies didn't turn most of them in fervent peace loving individuals. I am glad that your culture must have been much more liberal. Glad you turned out the way you did.
Yikes!
I cannot believe JtC's story and why the parents were not alarmed at what was going on.
Any anecdote that I have is mild to compared to y'all. I was a good student and a pretty conventional kid all my life except when I led a lunchroom strike in sixth grade.
I do have a kind of funny story. I was very good in chemistry and so near the end of the year when our teacher, Mr. Fuller, who had the personality of a blank wall, was setting up the schedule for the following year's lab assistants, he was one lab assistant short. So he asked for volunteers. I immediately volunteered. But he hesitated because as he said, there had never been a female chemistry lab assistant in the entire history of our school. This was in 1964, back in the dark ages. I begged him to let me do it and it was difficult for him to turn me down since I had set the curve for all five classes that grading period (oxidation/reduction equations). So I became the first ever female chemistry lab assistant at my school.
The lab assistant stayed in the lab even when the class was not using it, so most of the time, being a chemistry lab assistant meant having a lot of time to study for other classes. But whenever the students were in the lab or if the lab assistants were assigned to do some prep work for an upcoming class, we were required to wear a lab coat. Mr. Fuller was a tall and heavy man, so all the lab coats were in his size. I was barely over 100 lbs at that point in my life so lab coat swallowed me up. I always looked like Dopey in the lab coat with the sleeves rolled way up.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy
We didn't...
think too much about it back then, it was just the way it was, everyone had to do it. But I do recall some kids not being able to handle it and got excused from it. I don't think I ever mentioned it to my parents. As I said the practice was stopped sometime in the mid seventies, why, I don't know for sure, but it probably wouldn't be hard to guess.
Morning, I heard Bernie Sanders is going to give a speech
at the Brandenburg Gate. Just kidding. I am a liberal, therefore I will vote for imperialism.
Just kidding. I'm not a liberal.
Anyway, high school, ya, had some times. Ours was brand new and to not break up the senior class in the adjoining
district, we went without a senior class the first year. So our sports teams didn't do very well, 0-10 in football, 1-19 in
basketball, etc. By my Senior year we were 2nd in state in basketball and the wrestling team was 3rd in state and won it
all the next year. That first year was a little depressing but we pulled out of it.
So...
you were an imperialist jock in high school, conquering all the other schools?
Disclaimer: I was too, my first two years, then, somehow, my conscious became altered.
We were the Blazers
The mighty, mighty Blazers.
i
was in "gym," freshman year, for I think three days. It was clear to me it was the army. So I got out. Never went back.
Me too
I hated gym. Found it invasive, abusive and pervy. I lasted about 6 mos. into the 10th grade and then never went back. I hated high school and was very rebellious. I ended up with a mediocre grade point average because of my many incomplete's as I I opted out and just never went back. I got A's in all the humanities and incomplete's or D's in everything else. I did great on the SAT's even passed the math part using my own on the spot mathematical statistical pattern with the answer spaces.
I started cutting school in the 6th grade and by the 10th had it down to an art. I did get busted in my junior year as we moved to a upscale suburb in Oregon. Lake Oswego was a small all white and richie rich high school. The English lit. teacher used to say 'I'm not teaching, I'm babysitting for the Country Club. I got busted because i forged a letter to the admins. that said 'Cindy will not be attending School on Wednesdays or attending PE as she is getting treatment for her chronic asthma and allergies." My mom came in for a conference a couple of months later and the VP asked her how my medical treatment was going. She pleaded her usual defense of my rebellious behavior 'she's so sensitive and creative'. The school made my parents send me to a shrink but sadly it was after school hours.
Before the 10th grade I attended an elitist expensive Catholic girls school. I was expelled as the Irish Dominican nuns said I was a incorrigible heretic and a bad influence on the other girls. I argued very effectively in religion and totally biased world history class. (those pagans needed it) As an avid reader of Camus, Alan Watts and other existentialist philosophers and beat poets, along with being a student of rock and roll music and humanist writers and visual artists, I came to class armed to the teeth. I used all my rational humanist talking points to counter the really abusive, fucked up mental, sex obsessed, fanatical nuns concepts of sin, women and god.. There was no gym or disrobing as it was considered sinful and we girls we're supposed to HATE SIN. Every morning sister Fatima who taught religion lead us in a cheer written in caps on her blackboard. She would shout WHAT DO WE HATE GIRLS? and the class would reply SIN! I did learn at Scared Heart Academy how to swear, smoke and play poker. I also honed my drawing skills by doing excellent ball point pen drawing's of pop stars which I copied and sold to my classmates.
Wow...
just for shits and giggles I did a quick googelty search about high school nude swimming classes and here's the first 3 responses, Illinois mentioned over and over:
http://www.topix.com/forum/education/T6EV3K3OQIBNMLCK4
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5597441
http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017179411
best indoctrination program for future
naturalist nudists... oh, my. You want me to search if the Nazis had something similar during the Weimar Republic?
The Cult of Health and Beauty in Germany. A social history. 1890 - 1930
Organized nudist groups in the 20 thousands around 1930. Those were not embedded in schools, but you can bet, certain schools cherished them, you know...the N.... Oops, do you have the Godwyn rule here?
Anyhow, you get the pictures where those "tendencies" of nude swimming lessons might have come from.
Oh, come on, mimi...
watch the movie Woodstock. I can't tell if you're being snarky or not. Skokie, Illinois did have some famous neo-Nazi gatherings so I guess those suckers infiltrated the Illinois High School swimming curriculum, LOL. You can go back a little further for those "indoctrination programs for future naturalist nudist", oh, let's say back to the ancient Greeks or Romans, or hows-about prehistoric man.
you got me wrong - and I didn't mean what you
concluded. I said there is a history of nudist naturalism movements in the 1920-1930 that was "liked" by the Nazis.
In the 1970 we had in Germany same anti-authoritarian, liberal, more hippy-ish nudists in Germany as well, similar movement like the US had, just not that strong. I didn't mean to say that your highschool swimming program was the result of Neo-Nazi infiltration. I mean, be fair, there is a little difference in culture of the 1920ies and the 1970ies on both continents. Germany had also a small contingent of Neo-Nazis in the 1970 and a larger liberal, antiauthoritarian and socialist movement among its 20 to 35 year olds. The Neo-Nazis of the 1970ies had nothing to do with the "Nacktkultur" (nudist culture) of the Germans in the 1970. Same I think as in the US.
I just had fun looking up the history of the nudist movements in Germany in the 1920-1930 and tried to point out that the movements were "liked" by all sorts of people of different ideological or cultural background. Those movements were also mixed in with "green naturalist and environmentalists" of that time. You might be amazed from which kind of different corners people come together. To me that's always interesting and confusing at the same time. And I like to get a clear picture.
Hope that clarifies it.
oh btw :-) I go back to the cave men, even they were not
nudists, those prudish bummers... /s
This might stir up a shite storm
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/05/31/1389320/-If-Bernie-beats-HRC-in...
due to be published here at about 1pm.
FDR 9-23-33, "If we cannot do this one way, we will do it another way. But do it we will.
yeeks! As I read on I thought..."what??"
I was thinking about my high school days. Good times. Of course I couldn't wait to get out but I did enjoy the social aspect.
One day they sprang a dress code on us. One item of interest was "boys must wear socks". I happened to not be wearing any at the time so I immediately got up and went over to the teacher and turned myself in. He was a little confused but eventually ordered me to go to the vice principal's office. I got a stern talking to and was let go.
I had a soccer game to play later that afternoon and my coach was mad at me because I could have been suspended and missed the game. Eventually I got kicked off the squad because my hair was too long. Not my coach's decision. We had one of those "do it my way and I fought for your type" athletic directors. I got a haircut but it was decided it wasn't enough so I said "ta-ta". Looking back I guess I could have cut it but like David Crosby said....
In any case, no openly perverted teachers at the school. As far as I knew.
Monopoly power consolidating control of the U.S. economy
link
How come
nobody including our so called populists like Elisabeth Warren or Bernie never even talks about busting some trusts? In the past during eras of out of control monopolies and robber barons now called savvy business men anti-trust laws were used to bust them up. I believe these laws are still on the books. There seems to be no interest in reigning in the masters of the universe from anyone with the power to do so. Our DoJ is nothing but consiglieri's for the out of hand savvy businessmen and women who 'rule the world'. I imagine the TPP will be the final nail in any kind of anti-trust law at all. It's not just our individual rights human and civil that are gone, old rules of law regarding commerce, trade, tort and property are now reinterpreted or new law written so that people have no parliamentary means to restrain or get compensation from the transnationals who 'are too big to fail'. TR sued 45 companies under the Sherman Act and Taft 75. We really need a functioning justice department and a AG who is did not work for the likes off Covington & Burling or the New York Fed. Holder has now gone to work for JP Morgan and his friend Jamie Dimon.
Anti Trust Law
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_antitrust_law
http://dailycurrant.com/2014/09/26/eric-holder-takes-77-million-job-with...
"Starting in early November, Holder will serve as JPMorgan Chase’s chief compliance officer, where his responsibilities will include lobbying Congress on the company’s behalf and ensuring it “gets the best deal possible” from any new proposed financial regulations. Holder will also fetch morning coffee and breakfast orders for CEO Jamie Dimon and board members. For his efforts, Holder will earn an annual salary of $77 million plus bonuses for a job well done."
Said Holder
“By joining JPMorgan Chase, I’m simply cutting out the middleman -- the U.S. Justice Department -- and going to work directly for the great Jamie Dimon,” he said. “Plus, when Jamie Dimon calls you, or one of his many secretaries calls you, you pick up the phone immediately. Seriously, that’s what we do here in Washington.”
Don't even get me started on Sweet Loretta Lynch. And then the Democrat's wonder why people do not vote for their corrupt asses. This lot of Dem. Third Way'er global crooks, has outdone all it's Democratic predeceasing incarnations as far as corruption goes.
Sanders wants to break up the big banks
I have not seen anyone, including Sanders, talk about trust busting in general, but Sanders wants to break up the big banks.
http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/05/06/bernie-sanders-ur...
IMO, The banks should only be the beginning. We have entire sectors that are too big to fail.
Do I hear the sound of guillotines being constructed?
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable." ~ President John F. Kennedy