My Little Schoolhouse

Patty Hearst,  aka "Tanya,"  Posing with an Uzi for the Symbionese Liberation Army

Reading the story I wrote about my fervent Nixon supporting neighbor reminded me of another ardent politico I knew. This time it was a teacher.

 Ms. Barbados, yes...Ms. She was a mid 20 something fifth grade teacher who ran one of the three fifth grade classrooms in my grammar school. I never had her but knew all about her due to our class being next door to hers. Every other day, we’d hear her screaming at her class over God Knows What. I don’t think she took anything lightly as she treated everything as a fight to the death. Her dark brown eyes had the ability to screw you to the wall. Now that I look back on it, her fervent teaching ways stemmed from her "Revolutionary Zeal."


Ms. Barbados was a fierce, left wing, womens libber socialist. She was the only teacher to wear jeans while teaching and many times she kept her dark long hair under a blue or red bandana. It wasn’t too hard to imagine her in camouflage carrying an AK 47 for Che Guevara. The school’s principal, Valmour Collette, kept wide berth of her.


It was 1975 when I was in the fifth. That year you saw the leftwing was winning wildly. The Woman’s rights movement was exceptionally hot with Helen Reddy and women refusing to wear bras.  In Congress, the Church Committee was trying to castrate the CIA. I can remember a news story of a Congressman holding up an electrically powered pistol, used for really quiet assasinations and questioning some CIA deputy about it.  Also, you saw the continuing rise of the environmental movement. Do you remember that Crying Indian commercial and the polluted rivers?


One day, our class was invited to watch a movie in Ms. Barbados’s class about pollution. We all piled in there, carrying our chairs from our classroom and trying to find a decent spot in front of the movie screen. Before we could watch the movie though, we had to listen to a political speech from Barbados.


She went on…and on…about pollution, the corporations and every other right wing evil out there that was poisoning our precious Earth. When she finally shut up, we got to watch a documentary on sudsy rivers, filthy beaches, and countless shots of smokestacks belching black soot. The move ended it’s tour of Filthy America with a moral saying “It’s about time we ended this destruction of our country.” There was final shot of smokestack being imploded and crashing straight down under it’s own weight. At that moment, the kids who had Ms Barbados as a teacher all started cheering wildly at the sight.


I and the other kids from our class looked around in slight surprise. We didn’t all cheer that explosion. Then again, we weren’t little foot soldiers in the Barbados Revolutionary Force for the People.


I didn’t hate her or her politics. At 10, what real positions do you take on “issues“?  I found her to be a bit intolerable with her strident nature.


There is no way she could get away with that in today’s schools. You can't unbend a paper clip in a classroom today without being accused of making a pointy weapon. And never mind training a classroom of 10 year olds from a copy of Das Kapital.