He nodded. “No doubt … if you want to. Money problems can always be solved by a man not frightened by them. But when I said, ‘With what?’ I was talking about up here.” He tapped his skull.
I simply stared. “Why, I’ll graduate from high school, Dad. That’ll get me into college.”
“So it will. Into our State University, or the State Aggie, or State Normal. But, Kip, do you know that they are flunking out 40 per cent of each freshman class?”
“I wouldn’t flunk!”
“Perhaps not. But you will if you tackle any serious subject-engineering, or science, or pre-med. You would, that is to say, if your preparation were based on this.” He waved a hand at the curriculum.
I felt shocked. “Why, Dad, Center is a swell school.” I remembered things they had told us in P.T.A. Auxiliary. “It’s run along the latest, most scientific lines, approved by psychologists, and-”
“-and paying excellent salaries,” he interrupted, “for a staff highly trained in modern pedagogy. Study projects emphasize practical human problems to orient the child in democratic social living, to fit him for the vital, meaningful tests of adult life in our complex modern culture. Excuse me, son; I’ve talked with Mr. Hanley. Mr. Hanley is sincere-and to achieve these noble purposes we are spending more per student than is any other state save California and New York.”
“Well . . . what’s wrong with that?”
“What’s a dangling participle?”
I didn’t answer. He went on, “Why did Van Buren fail of re-election? How do you extract the cube root of eighty-seven?”
Van Buren had been a president; that was all I remembered. But I could answer the other one. “If you want a cube root, you look in a table in the back of the book.”
Dad sighed. “Kip, do you think that table was brought down from on high by an archangel?” He shook his head sadly. “It’s my fault, not yours. I should have looked into this years ago-but I had assumed, simply because you liked to read and were quick at figures and clever with your hands, that you were getting an education.”
“You think I’m not?”
“I know you are not. Son, Centerville High is a delightful place, well equipped, smoothly administered, beautifully kept. Not a ‘blackboard jungle,’ oh, no!-I think you kids love the place. You should. But this-” Dad slapped the curriculum chart angrily. “Twaddle! Beetle tracking! Occupational therapy for morons!”
I didn’t know what to say. Dad sat and brooded. At last he said, “The law declares that you must attend school until you are eighteen or have graduated from high school.”
“Yes, sir.”
“The school you are in is a waste of time. The toughest course we can pick won’t stretch your mind. But it’s either this school, or send you away.”
I said, “Doesn’t that cost a lot of money?”
He ignored my question. “I don’t favor boarding schools, a teen-ager belongs with his family. Oh, a tough prep school back east can drill you so that you can enter Stanford, or Yale, or any of the best-but you can pick up false standards, too-nutty ideas about money and social position and the right tailor. It took me years to get rid of ones I acquired that way. Your mother and I did not pick a small town for your boyhood unpurposefully. So you’ll stay in Centerville High.”
I looked relieved.
“Nevertheless you intend to go to college. Do you intend to become a professional man? Or will you look for snap courses in more elaborate ways to make bayberry candles? Son, your life is yours, to do with as you wish. But if you have any thought of going to a good university and studying anything of importance, then we must consider how to make best use of your next three years.”
“Why, gosh, Dad, of course I want to go to a good-”
“See me when you’ve thought it over. Good night.”
I did for a week. And, you know, I began to see that Dad was right. Our project in “Family Living” was twaddle. What did those kids know about running a family? Or Miss Finchley?-unmarried and no kids. The class decided unanimously that every child should have a room of his own, and be given an allowance “to teach him to handle money.” Great stuff . . . but how about the Quinlan family, nine kids in a five-room house? Let’s not be foolish.
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