When I was a kid my parents put me into a Christian private school – I had to wear a uniform: khaki pants, white shirt. And, the classroom was definitely the side room of a church that we didn’t go to, we went to another church. I don’t know wher ethey got the curiculum from, if it was something that they made up or leased or licensed but, it wasn’t that good. I have this memory of class one day, we all got a piece of paper and on the paper there was a circle, a square, a rectangle and a triangle.
My teacher said “Okay, everyone sit down and we’re gonna take a test. You need to color the circle green, the rectangle red, the triangle yellow and the square blue. And I’m gonna leave the room and when I come back, I’m gonna check your test.”
And she left, a room of us kindergarteners alone.
I was looking at the paper - I’d already forgotten what she said to do - and I noticed that at the bottom of the paper, upside down, the answers were written. So I read them out loud to the class who had also forgotten. Everyone got a perfect score.
When the teacher came back, she was shocked. I don’t think she expected 30 or 40 of us kindergarteners to all remember what she had said.
She looked around, “Who – how did ya’ll know what to do?”
And of course, good Christian kids, they all snitched and pointed right at me. And I thought I was going to get in trouble.
But it turns out, I was the only kid in the class who knew how to read.
And the next day, I found myself in the first grade.