Gordon,
The Early Years
The Early Years
He was incorrigible. A serial offender.
By the age of 12 he had already served seven years of hard time in a federally funded, minimum security social conditioning camp, complete with a chain link fence, hall monitors, a security guard and a warden principal.
The longer he was incarcerated, the more he rebelled. Endless admonitions to 'settle down' and 'behave' did no good. No amount of 'talking to' seemed to work.
He was pubic school's worse nightmare.
He would complete a one-hour study assignment in 15 minutes, then fidget in his seat, targeting unsuspecting flies with tiny, aerodynamically optimized spitballs fired from soda straws, writing coded notes to friends complete with hidden ciphers, drawing impolite pictures of school officials, scribbling on every available surface and basically driving his poor teachers crazy.
The system was in a pickle. He was getting straight 'A's, so they couldn't kick him out of school. State mandatory education laws wouldn't allow him to be sprung until age 16.
And they couldn't drug him into becoming an obedient zombie. ADD hadn't been invented yet. Nor had the school nurse's office yet been turned into a mind-control, behavior-modification drug dispensary.
There was talk of moving him out of the general population, however there were no facilities for 'exceptional' children in those days. Every child was considered to be a unique individual and therefore automatically exceptional.
Because the 'No Child Left Behind Act" did not yet exist, lots of kids got left behind, just like in real life.
And because Congress had not yet passed the National Education Act and sabotaged public education, there wasn't any extra federal free cheese to start some hare-brained new program that could get this difficult young offender out of class by sending him somewhere where other administrators could deal with him.
The local school board was sunk. They were stuck with him for five more years. Five very, very long years.
Then someone had a bright idea. It was the janitor, the only person in the school system without a degree or a license.
His 'Three Step Program' would get the young offender out of the classroom so often that it would almost be as if he weren't there at all!
And it would accomplish this without making him a truant or embarrassing his parents. It was simple, and best of all, drug and psychiatrist free.
All this in an effort to avoid driving everyone else crazy. And it worked! It was a milestone in public education. Allow a child to:
1. Progress at his own speed on his own schedule, thereby learning the principles of autonomous self-government.
2. Largely self-instruct, with occasional supervisory assistance, thereby learning the principles of academic independence and free thought.
3. Develop a passion for excellence in all areas of general education, thereby laying the groundwork for a true renaissance education.
4. Focus on self-selected areas of particular academic interest, thereby reinforcing a love of learning.
It's true. A janitor invented home schooling.
By the age of 12 he had already served seven years of hard time in a federally funded, minimum security social conditioning camp, complete with a chain link fence, hall monitors, a security guard and a warden principal.
The longer he was incarcerated, the more he rebelled. Endless admonitions to 'settle down' and 'behave' did no good. No amount of 'talking to' seemed to work.
He was pubic school's worse nightmare.
He would complete a one-hour study assignment in 15 minutes, then fidget in his seat, targeting unsuspecting flies with tiny, aerodynamically optimized spitballs fired from soda straws, writing coded notes to friends complete with hidden ciphers, drawing impolite pictures of school officials, scribbling on every available surface and basically driving his poor teachers crazy.
The system was in a pickle. He was getting straight 'A's, so they couldn't kick him out of school. State mandatory education laws wouldn't allow him to be sprung until age 16.
And they couldn't drug him into becoming an obedient zombie. ADD hadn't been invented yet. Nor had the school nurse's office yet been turned into a mind-control, behavior-modification drug dispensary.
There was talk of moving him out of the general population, however there were no facilities for 'exceptional' children in those days. Every child was considered to be a unique individual and therefore automatically exceptional.
Because the 'No Child Left Behind Act" did not yet exist, lots of kids got left behind, just like in real life.
And because Congress had not yet passed the National Education Act and sabotaged public education, there wasn't any extra federal free cheese to start some hare-brained new program that could get this difficult young offender out of class by sending him somewhere where other administrators could deal with him.
The local school board was sunk. They were stuck with him for five more years. Five very, very long years.
Then someone had a bright idea. It was the janitor, the only person in the school system without a degree or a license.
His 'Three Step Program' would get the young offender out of the classroom so often that it would almost be as if he weren't there at all!
And it would accomplish this without making him a truant or embarrassing his parents. It was simple, and best of all, drug and psychiatrist free.
- STEP 1: Gordon would be allowed to start his own all-day photography program, including the conversion of an unused janitorial broom closet into a photography darkroom that (ironically) contained enough chemicals to blow up the school.
- STEP 2: He would be allowed to leave school during the middle of the school day to walk downtown, running spontaneous busywork errands for teachers who seemed to always run out of rubber bands and paper clips.
- STEP 3: He would be repeatedly removed from class on a moment's notice to run movie projectors throughout the school system as a one-boy Audio-Visual department.
All this in an effort to avoid driving everyone else crazy. And it worked! It was a milestone in public education. Allow a child to:
1. Progress at his own speed on his own schedule, thereby learning the principles of autonomous self-government.
2. Largely self-instruct, with occasional supervisory assistance, thereby learning the principles of academic independence and free thought.
3. Develop a passion for excellence in all areas of general education, thereby laying the groundwork for a true renaissance education.
4. Focus on self-selected areas of particular academic interest, thereby reinforcing a love of learning.
It's true. A janitor invented home schooling.