A tree grows in Brooklyn - Betty Smith [68]
Francie, huddled with other children of her kind, learned more that first day than she realized. She learned of the class system of a great Democracy. She was puzzled and hurt by teacher’s attitude. Obviously the teacher hated her and others like her for no other reason than that they were what they were. Teacher acted as though they had no right to be in the school but that she was forced to accept them and was doing so with as little grace as possible. She begrudged them the few crumbs of learning she threw at them. Like the doctor at the health center, she too acted as though they had no right to live.
It would seem as if all the unwanted children would stick together and be one against the things that were against them. But not so. They hated each other as much as the teacher hated them. They aped teacher’s snarling manner when they spoke to each other.
There was always one unfortunate whom the teacher singled out and used for a scapegoat. This poor child was the nagged one, the tormented one, the one on whom she vented her spinsterly spleen. As soon as a child received this dubious recognition, the other children turned on him and duplicated the teacher’s torments. Characteristically, they fawned on those close to teacher’s heart. Maybe they figured they were nearer to the throne that way.
Three thousand children crowded into this ugly brutalizing school that had facilities for only one thousand. Dirty stories went the rounds of the children. One of them was that Miss Pfieffer, a bleached-blond teacher with a high giggle, went down to the basement to sleep with the assistant janitor those times when she put a monitor in charge and explained that she had to “step out to the office.” Another, passed around by little boys who had been victims, was that the lady principal, a hard-bitten, heavy, cruel woman of middle years who wore sequin-decorated dresses and smelled always of raw gin, got recalcitrant boys into her office and made them take down their pants so that she could flay their naked buttocks with a rattan cane. (She whipped the little girls through their dresses.)
Of course, corporal punishment was forbidden in the schools. But who, outside, knew? Who would tell? Not the whipped children, certainly. It was a tradition in the neighborhood that if a child reported that he had been whipped in school, he would receive a second home-whipping because he had not behaved in school. So the child took his punishment and kept quiet, leaving well enough alone.
The ugliest thing about these stories was that they were all sordidly true.
Brutalizing is the only adjective for the public schools of that district around 1908 and ’09. Child psychology had not been heard of in Williamsburg in those days. Teaching requirements were easy: graduation from high school and two years at Teachers Training School. Few teachers had the true vocation for their work. They taught because it was one of the few jobs open to them; because it was better paying than factory work; because they had a long summer vacation; because they got a pension when they retired. They taught because no one wanted to marry them. Married women were not allowed to teach in those days, hence most of the teachers were women made neurotic by starved love instincts. These barren women spent their fury on other women’s children in a twisted authoritative manner.
The cruelest teachers were those who had come from homes similar to those of the poor children. It seemed that in their bitterness towards those unfortunate little ones, they were somehow exorcizing their own fearful background.
Of course, not all of the teachers were bad. Sometimes one who was sweet came along, one who suffered with the children and tried to help them. But these women did not last long as teachers. Either they married quickly and left the profession, or they were hounded out of their jobs by fellow teachers.
The problem of what was delicately called “leaving the room” was a grim one. The children