WelcomeLearning to count (numbers, not in life)
I (BMcC[18-11-46-503]) was not a math prodigy. I was not any kind of prodigy. I was just very intelligent on the intelligence scale.[1] Or maybe everybody around we was just not intelligent? Or some of both? My father was not stupid. I seem to have heard a rumor his IQ was 120, and that "was something" in his social surround of origin. And whatever his "IQ", he was an astute and sucessful salesman and sales manager in business.
Whatcould be easier than counting numbers? Simple as one, two, three... right? Not for me. I apparently did well on arithmetic tests — I even did my assignments in indelible ink and rarely crossed anything out.But that should not be taken to mean I could count. I seem to racall that maybe in 2nd grade I could get up to 100, but then it went: one-hunderd one, two hundred. I distinctly recall thinking that 101 was followed by 200. Makes sense, doesnt it? 2 comes next after 1. Numbers did not mean anything to me. I never fully memorized the multiplication table. What was the point of it? I was a very trainable dog. The teachers threw me bones: "A" grades. Bow! Wow!
Does this give some indication of the quality of my pedagogy? I learned very little; I undertood very little. I had good aptitude for test-taking. But I always feared they would give me a a test I couldn't ace and then I would be roadkill.
Nobody ever explained anything to me. I was not supposed to question them → the ever present, inntrusive "them", who made me do whatever their whim of the moment was Or else!. That is the one thing they taught me: "Or else!". A ¬f*cking waste of my youth (which waste cardinally conspired. to what extent by intent and to what extent by some kind of inadvertance, to deprive me of sex, becsuse I was intelligent! That was the lesson my schooling taught me: That because I was intelligent I would not have pleasure in my life.)
It wa worse than that: I had been so thoroughly ignoranced and fightened that even the very idea of callung their bluff never entered my little head. Who knows? Myabe if I had confronted them they would have collapsed like a Baby Trump balloon punctured by a lady's shoe's stiletto heel? Pfssst.... Or maybe they would have literally not metaphorically destroyed me. I don't know. But they never got a chance to show their true colors because I didn't even try, but I think if had known better I would have. K?
What did I learn anything in school besides to be afraid? Did I learn arithmetic in elementaary school? I cannot figure this out. So I think it is best to hyothesize that because I can't remember learning hardly anything I did not learn much of anything. I was [fortunate for me!] somehow adept at producing the answers they wanted to their endless testing of me. As said, I was a highly trainable dog. I did learn some things. I vaguely remember little workbooks for practicing penmanship which, of course, was largely pencileunuchship and I never liked pencils. These little books showed great detail including little arrows to guide the child's voluntary fine motor coordination how to make the little loops in letters "correctly".
Once I stopped, in 7th grade, doing cursive script handwriting (more here), never in my life again have I crossed a 't' or dotted an 'i' (or as I prefer to put it: never again have I crossed an 'i' or dotted a 't'...), except a very few times to confirm that I have for all practical purposes lost the motor skill to be able to. This is the one and only time in my life that I decisively defeated them. Or at least they gave up and let me win.
Had they escalated to apply sufficient force to coerce me to continue to write cursive script to break me, so that each word I would write going forward would have been wsa passum sub iugum (an acknowledgement of submisison to brute force). Castration of the will. I would likely have given up, still fearing and hating them, but with no will left to fight to try to be a person → "Yes, masters". I had succeeded in blocking "my" teacher from pushing me down, but, but because no one (no parent or teacher) ever helped me up, I never flourished. One hundred, one hundred one, two hundred. Notes by rote. (I was still secretly counting on my fingers under my desk in 7th grade.)
Footnotes
- ↑ That there are foems of giftedness that do not liek on the "IQ test" intelligence scale is not an idea totally unknown to at least my school teachers. They were keenly aware that some young persons were unusually gifted in: athletics. They did not even give grades for this kind of giftednes. They rewarded it with varsity letters fame, omerta sanitary services, etc. My problem is they did not understand the particular kind(s) of non-"IQ test" giftedness(s) I had, which were obviously not on the athletic scale, either.
