In the autumn of 1963 I began the fifth grade at Hampstead Elementary School in Hampstead, Maryland. We'd moved to Hampstead from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a couple of months before.
It was not a move I was happy about. In fact, I was very, very unhappy. Most kids are if they're ripped away from their friends and lives when they're 10 years old. But it's never up to the kids, is it? Frankly, it shouldn't be, but no kid would ever understand that.
But I digress. The 5th grade teacher at Hampstead Elementary was the formidable Mrs. Bankert. And man, was she formidable. Built like a fireplug, about a million years old--the kind of woman who didn't suffer fools gladly. You knew if you fucked with her she'd slap you silly. We called her "Battleship" Bankert. I can't remember her real name, something like Rita or Roberta or Matilda or something equally ancient. She wore navy blue or black dresses well below the knee and heavy black shoes that I swear to God she had to button up every morning.
Mrs. Bankert was not a native Marylander. If memory serves, she was from Wisconsin. But boy did she have the zeal of the recent convert. She ate, slept and breathed Maryland. And she pounded every Maryland fact into our hard little heads. I haven't lived in Maryland for 40 years but I can still name all 23 counties thanks to Battleship.
The fifth grade is--or was then--the year when you learned your local history. So even though I was born in Pennsylvania and lived about half my life there, I know next to nothing about its history beyond Billy Penn. But boy, do I know Maryland history. I can sing the first verse of "Maryland, My Maryland," tell you more than you'd ever want to know about Charles Carroll of Carrolton and Lord Baltimore. I've visited the crypt of John Paul Jones in the Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis and the home of Francis Scott Key, "Terra Rubra," outside Taneytown.
But just learning facts and figures about her beloved adopted home wasn't nearly enough for Mrs. Bankert. If you were going to be a real Marylander, you had to taste and eat it. Guess where this is going?
Every year Battleship sent her poor henpecked husband to the Lexington Market in downtown Baltimore on an errand of exquisite cruelty. Back he'd dutifully come with a bushel of oysters, still cold and briny from the Chesapeake Bay. And, yep, she made each and every student eat a raw oyster.
There was no cocktail sauce, no Saltine crackers in this little tableau. No way. This was the taste of Maryland, straight up.
As you might imagine, things often got a bit gnarly. Kids were gacking and hacking on raw oysters and there was always at least one kid--usually a girl--who would puke all over the floor in the cafeteria, where this annual Bacchanalia took place.
Can you imagine the uproar and outrage that would ensue if a 5th grade teacher made her kids eat raw oysters today? The ACLU would be on it like stink on shit. Lawsuits and protests would follow in short order. The teacher would be burned in effigy if not in person.
Truth be told, no teacher today would be dopey enough to try something like that. They know they're in the classroom to do three things: 1. Keep order 2. Keep kids from killing or maiming each other 3. Teach kids to pass proficiency tests. Today's teachers spend so much time on teaching to the tests they'd never dare take the time to actually give kids a taste of life.
Remember field trips? Not allowed anymore. Shit, Mrs. Bankert bussed us all over Maryland. We made an all-day trip to Annapolis to visit the General Assembly and the Naval Academy. I remember parts of it like it happened yesterday.
We stopped at Sandy Point so the kids and adults--more the adults--could pee. Some of us walked down to the water where a couple of old black guys were fishing. One of them got all excited when he started reeling in his line and something was pulling hard on the other end. We laughed our asses off when he pulled in a rubber boot.
I remember we went into a little shanty of a hamburger stand and there was a slot machine near the counter. Slots were all over the state in gas stations and dives--they lasted until 1968. Bobby Harriman got in trouble when he put money in it.
I remember parts of the Naval Academy, especially the crypt of John Paul Jones under the chapel and Bancroft Hall, the largest dormitory in the world. I think we walked all over the campus that day.
Then we went to the state capitol and toured that. J. Millard Tawes was the governor, but I don't recall if we met him. We did see the legislative chambers. The House of Delegates was pretty impressive, but the Senate chamber was tiny and sort of dull.
I have a theory about teachers like old Battleship Bankert. I don't know if research would validate it, but it makes sense to me. Here goes:
In the 40s, 50s and early 60s, most elementary teachers were women. And they were smart women. Many were the best and brightest of their generation. They became teachers because there were few other employment opportunities open to college-educated women. (Actually, there weren't even many college-educated women.) They were also dedicated to their craft. They didn't have teaching licenses--what's that all about?--and they didn't have to pass state tests or background checks. They just showed up every day and worked their asses off and taught us knuckleheads what we needed to know to be informed citizens. And yes, some of them whacked us when we deserved it.
Today, the dolts of nearly every university are found in the colleges of education. That has been proven statistically and I've seen the numbers. I think it's one reason why the quality of education has declined so dramatically over the last four decades. Add in way-too-powerful teachers' unions and way too many parents who don't give a shit and you end up with the current mess. I think it's really as simple as that.
I tried my hardest to fail in the fifth grade. Somehow my pretzel-logic brain figured if I did, we'd move back to Harrisburg. Yeah, wow, that's pretty twisted. Sort of like voting for Obama to teach Bush a lesson.
But Mrs. Bankert made it her mission to force me to succeed, even if it meant taking me to the woodshed once a day and calling in my folks once a week. I don't recall her every whacking me, but her tongue was so sharp I almost wish she had. She was a fierce and relentless foe of sloth and stupidity.
She's long dead now, so I'll never be able to thank her for what she did for me. Sadly, that's how it usually goes in life, doesn't it?
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