YEARS TWO, THREE AND FOUR IN THE UNILLUSTRIOUS HISTORY OF HILLCREST HIGH SCHOOL

This chapter of my autobiography TEACHING IS HELL takes place thirty-six years ago, when I was starting my fourth year in the NYC school system.


The brand new innovative Hillcrest High School, the John Dewey High of Queens, began its second year of operations in 1972, with students in grades nine, ten and eleven. Since this was our first year with an eleventh grade, it was now time to think up new innovative courses for the juniors. Despite the fact that the kids needed a good solid year of American History, the wrappers and crappers were at it again conjuring up new Land of Oz courses. A teacher who had flunked out of law school decided that what we needed was a law program, which he could of course teach. Since he had an entire year of law school before flunking out he was now the law maven of the department. In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king. People who went nowhere in private industry, the legal profession, the medical field and so forth were now the kings of the shit pile.

We had a new chairman in the highly knowledegable Gerson Antell, author of the economics textbook used through-out the city. In the early 70's there were still some decent tenured old line chairmen who actually helped you out. Antell was a realist who referred to the school as a Potemkin Village.

The Russian History class was a tremendous success during the first cycle, with the kids really mesmerized by the idiosyncrasies of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great. The trivia was also a big hit. Word spread amongst the more academic kids that this was the course to take. In cycle two when I started teaching four more Russian classes the kids came in on the first day yelling Rasputin, Ivan the Terrible or “the state swells while the people shrink.” The latter was a famous quote by the great Russian historian Klyuchevsky that was a theme of the class.

I had the privilege of supervising two student teachers during the year, one in the fall and another in the spring. In fact I had eight more in the next four years. In those days the student teachers went from room to room observing all the members of the staff giving lessons. They then selected which teacher they wanted for their cooperating teacher. I was always selected, and received many free graduate courses at Queens College for taking them on.

I also started a Hillcrest tradition of having a yearly trivia contest in the library. Working with Marian Pellman the librarian, a team of teachers played a team of students in a trivia match. This became an annual popular event and attracted quite and audience. The teachers always won, however.

In the spring of 1972 I decided to set up a new course for the fall, entitled Civil War. This was really a basic course in American History from the sectionalism in the Jacksonian Era to the end of Reconstruction in 1877. Even though the War Between the States would be emphasized I designed the syllabus to provide the students with some down to earth knowledge of U.S. history from 1828 to 1877. I was disgusted with the fact that kids were receiving no background in American Studies as they were opting for such eleventh grade electives as Youth and the Law or Criminology. I went around to many social studies classes, plugging the new elective and telling the kids to sign up for it. I even gave them a flyer with such provocative questions as, "On which Civil War battlefield were more Americans killed in one day than in en entire year of the Vietnam War? Which member of Lincoln's cabinet may have plotted his assassination? Which Civil War general first came up with the term “hooker” to denote women of the evening? What was the last line of the movie Gone With The Wind?" When all was said and done 300 kids signed up for the class.

One of Gus Antell’s policy changes in the second was the setting up of remedial classes for students reading well below grade level. This was the first time that homogenous grouping replaced heterogenous classes. It was probably a sound policy as the brighter kids could study more advanced topics and critique more difficult documents and historiography. However, from a teaching point of view when you had a remedial class you were apt to have the class from hell. I remember in the spring of 1972 teaching a remedial version of a class entitled Nationalism and Colonialism. Many of the kids in the class had been suspended one or more times in their illustrious academic careers and now comprised a negative version of Its Academic. As I have pointed out previously, there were no video tapes or dvds to in those days to help you survive this academic nightmare. To deal with these students teachers of remedial classes were issued class sets of workbooks by an educator named Jack Abromowitz that were many years old and looked like rejects from a 1950's elementary school. The kids had to read boring passages and answer very juvenile fill-in and multiple choice questions. We still had modular programming in the early 70's and when you had an unmotivated audience for nearly an hour it was the longest hour of your life.

Needless to say the academic discourse in the daily lessons was not on a very high level. The class was unlikely to be engaged in a discourse on why did Otto Von Bismark refer to Italy as a geographic expression. One incident that manifested the scholarly aspect of the course occurred on a day when the biology department conducted a plant sale, which saw many of the kids purchasing small plants earlier in the day. In the middle of the lesson an honors student named Lorraine Dash started screaming at the top of her lungs, "My plant is dying. My plant is dying." She then ran out the room with the plant in order to water it, which undoubtedly saved the flower from an untimely demise.

In the fall of 1973 I taught four sections of Civil War for the first time and the course was a tremendous success. The students really received an in depth knowledge of the Civil War era. Tons of work went into the preparations for the class in the pre-Xerox days as I spent numerous hours typing up countless rexographed stencils. I gave the kids excerpts from Mary Eastman’s book Aunt Phillis's Cabin, which was the Southern response to Uncle Tom's Cabin. There was an overview of historiography on slavery and the causes of the Civil War where we analyzed the viewpoints of such eminent historians as John Hope Franklin, Kenneth Stampp, David Donald, Ulrich B. Phillips, Allan Nevins and Bruce Catton. We analyzed actual battles and military strategy, a vital element of history that was never a part of any curriculum. What were the basic military goals of such illustrious leaders as Lee, Grandt, McClellan, Burnside, Hooker, Joe Johnson, Sherman and Sheridan.. What were the types of warfare, some utilized for the first time in history, employed in the Civil War: trench warfare, the siege, ironclad battles, blockades, total warfare involving civilian populations, scorched earth policies, and so forth. We looked at the actual battle tactics and flank movement on the battlefield of such well known engagements as Bull Run, the Peninsular Campaign, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville, Antietam, Gettysburg, Vicksburg, Chattanooga, Spotsvylvania Court House, The Wilderness, Cold Harbor, Sherman's March to the Sea and Petersburg. How can one really understand military strategy in World War I, World War II and even Iraq without examining the classic battle of the Civil War. We even examined Lincoln's suspension of the writs of habeas corpus in certain areas of the country where loyalty to the U.S. government was dubious at best (which certainly is relevant today in light of George Bush's rendition policies). We finished up the course with a hard look at the Era of Reconstruction, a term which a chairman named Al Weiner later told me was improper to use. Every Friday was also trivia and nostalgia day, which really added to the fun of the class. Who was the first actor to play Superman? Which movie ended with the line, "Louis this is going to be the start of a beautiful friendship?"

Naturally I received some criticism from other teachers for running the course. "You took some of our best kids for your classes." This common refrain overlooked the fact that
many of these kids would have learned nothing in some of the dumbed down classes running at the time. Would they have gained more cultural literacy out of The Future or The History of rock Music. One highly respected veteran educator complained, "Why do I always see kids walking around the school with books about Civil War battles?' Gee. I wonder why? The whole purpose of the course was to turn them on to Civil War battles as many of them wrote reports on them. That's really terrible to see kids reading classic historical literature such as Andersonville by McKinley Kantor. Better they should walk around with comic books.

In 1974 and 1975, years IV and V at Hillcrest, hundreds of kids took the course as an elective after fulfilling their three and a half years of required social studies courses. (Today kids must take a full four years of social, while but back then it was seven semesters.) This meant that each year there were at least 170 kids taking Civil War who would be taking no social studies classes at all. If 170 less kids took social, one teacher in the department would be excessed out of the building, as 170 kids would equal five classes and one teaching position. Instead of complaining about the class, the other teachers should have thanked me for keeping an extra person employed in the department.

By 1975 the composition of the school was changing dramatically. We were receiving more students from feeder schools in South Jamaica and less from Forest Hills and Kew Gardens. There were more remedial kids and less academic kids. The cafeterias and halls were totally out of control.

On a November afternoon in 1974 I had an interesting confrontation with an honor student named Andrew Young. The identity of the pupil was always easy to remember since it was the same name as Jimmy Carter's United Nations ambassador who later became mayor of Atlanta. He had failed the previous term because of attendance and lateness problems. In those days you could still fail a student for not showing up, whereas today you cannot. As you will see later in the book a student can be absent the entire term and still earn a passing mark, or even a high grade. I'm sure that in the job world, which we are preparing youngsters to enter, a young man or women can stay out as much as they desire.

I was sitting in my empty classroom (room 410) at the end of the day marking exams, when Andrew and two of his buddies walked in. Andrew pleaded with me to change his failing grade to a 65, but I refused all his entreaties. As you will see throughout the book I was one of the few teachers who maintained standards and stuck to their grades. He then took out a gun, pointed it at me and asked if I would reconsider. Now I am an immovable block who never knuckles under to students. Believe it or not, I did not feel at all intimidated, panicky or unnerved. I just said to him very calmly, "Andrew, I issued you a grade and it's not going to be changed." Andrew then put the gun back in his pocket and began laughing, with his two friends joining him in their perverted version of amusement. They three then walked out of the room laughing.

Throughout my career I have never backed down or tried to avoid a confrontation with a kid. I could not have survived for thirty-five years in inner city schools if I gave in to the kids. You have to show them that you are not intimidated by them in any way. Over the years I have been assaulted numerous times and endured countless death threats without ever blinking an eyelash. To give just one example, in August, 2004 I was proctoring a Regents exam at Flushing when I spotted I kid cheating and called him on it. He told me that in September he would come down to the library and confront me. I told him, "Fine. You know where to find me. I look forward to it."

Getting back to Mr. Young, I had him arrested by the police. Principal Salmon also gave the student what was called a Superintendent's Suspension, where he was permanently banned from the school. For some reason they never arrested his two confederates however. The gun turned out to be fake. Since he was still under sixteen the case was remanded to the Family Court in Jamaica. At the courthouse he was given two lawyers from the Legal Aid Society. I had to attend three or four court appearances over the years, which were very degrading and humiliating experiences. Young, with the help of his lawyers, claimed that he had not threatened me in any way, but was merely at that moment taking out the gun to show to his friends. This is a very common argument that every kid uses who is picked up on a weapons charge. I have seen numerous articles in the Daily News and the Post over the years about juveniles picked up with guns and knives. In each case they invariably say that they were merely showing the weapon to a friend, or took the gun to school to exhibit,

The lawyers also continually joked about the fact that it was a toy gun and not a real firearm. If he had taken out this fake gun in front of a policeman would he still be alive now? Are we all expert members of the NRA who can differentiate phony pistols from real revolvers? His father continually came to chat with me in the waiting area outside the courtroom, attempting to become very friendly. He and the lawyers kept telling me that it was just a foolish thing done by an immature youngster who had no idea of the seriousness of his act. They attempted to convince me to drop the charges and give Andrew another chance. They also made it sound very plausible, even to Andrew, that the judge would easily understand that he took the gun out to show to his friends, resulting in an instant acquittal.

Finally after a year’s delay a judge was ready to hear the case in court. About five minutes before court appearance time, Andrew's two lawyers suddenly told him to drop the idea of telling the judge he was just showing the pistol to his friends. (The whole argument, as I always surmised, was merely a con job on the part of the lawyers to persuade me to drop the charges.) They instructed the kid to tell the judge he had just acted foolishly without realizing the gravity of his actions. In the courtroom the Judge inquired about his academic career since departing the hallowed halls of Hillcrest. It came out in court that within days of expulsion from Hillcrest he was placed in Forest Hills High School, one of the best in the city; where he was maintaining a passing average. Since he apparently underwent a metamorphosis and rehabilitated himself at Forest Hills the judge felt no need to waste a space on him in jail or a juvenile home. He was completely exonerated and the records were sealed so that no future school or employer need ever know about his criminal past.

So Andrew was rewarded for his felonious little plans. Instead of continuing at a school in decline, he was now ensconced in one of the best educational edifices in the city. The incident illustrates how our city educational system functions. Students who commit criminal acts are not incarcerated or even expelled, but merely placed in another school. The powers that be do not want to psychologically harm or stigmatize the innocent youth in any way that might hamper or endanger his academic career. The superintendent's suspension process is really a game whereby a felon at Hillcrest heads for a new home and in turn Hillcrest gets a criminal in training from another school. I wouldn't be surprised if principals traded problem kids the way baseball teams swap players. "I'll trade you one arsonist for two assaulters, a student to be named later and a third round draft pick.

Kids quickly learn through the grapevine that they will merely incur a slap on the wrist when crimes are committed on educational property. I don't believe in isolated incidents. A youngster who assaults a teacher has usually emulated this action before, and knows he has a permanent Get Out of Jail Free card. Years ago there were milieus such as 600 schools and wildcat academies for out of control delinquents, but these have gone the way of the Model T Ford. It is now considered too psychologically stigmatizing to send miscreants away to special milieus. Today we even have in house suspension, whereby a student who assaults a teacher is not even expelled from his school for one day. Instead he sits in a room in his school for three days, ostensibly keeping up with his class studies, after which he is returned to his regular classes and buddies. In many cases he is returned to the same class presided over by the teacher he attacked. He often returns to class with the sound of cheers and accolades from his peers.