Abraham Was Black?

      “Abraham was the father of the white race.” 

     I wouldn’t know it for another 23 hours, but I had just made one of the most controversial statements of my career. 

     A day later, I would hear from one of my students, a girl who hardly ever said anything.  At the beginning of the class hour, she blurted out, “My mom says you are full of. . .”  She stopped appropriately for the classroom of those days, but everyone knew how to fill in the blank.

       I was amused.  I knew her mom rather well.  I had  had her in class.  Her grandmother was an accomplished pianist who accompanied lots and lots of singing groups, including some at school.  I wasn’t insulted.  After all, my comment was rather in jest, not a dogmatic statement.

       Without hesitancy, everyone in class chipped in.  “Yeah, my folks said they didn’t think you’re right.”  Similar comments came from every corner of the room.  It ended with the preacher’s kid.

      “My dad says that the Bible doesn’t actually say that.  Abraham was probably white.”

      “ Then Terah would be the father of the white race.  Abraham was black.  Isaac was the first white man,” I countered, still half jesting, as my original comments a day earlier had been.

       Objections followed and I laughed.  I admitted that none of those things I had said were my idea, but ideas that had been circulated for many years by some who knew a lot more about the Bible than I did.

       We moved on, but I don’t remember what we were working on.  I  just remember that the question a day earlier came out of the blue and had nothing whatsoever to do with what we doing in class.

      The amazing thing was that everyone was listening.  In day-to-day classroom work, the enemy is boredom, ennui, lack of participation, lack of involvement.  To think that they were not only listening, but actually took it home.

         “What did you do at school today?”

       “Oh, nothing.”  No.  Instead,  “The nutty teacher said Adam and Eve were black, that Abraham was the father of the white race.”  I had to laugh.  Delightedly.

        Ashton, we’ll call her, caused the whole thing.  She was a blond, fair, student who, I came to find out wasn’t disinterested.  Just quiet, maybe.  Her question came out of nowhere.  It was uttered seemingly without cause.

     “Where did black people come from?” she asked.  The question had nothing to do with anything we were working on.

 

      Now in those days, there was a guru named Madeline Hunter.  She was beloved by many a principal and superintendent.  She provided a yardstick to actually gauge teacher effectiveness.  She made a principal’s dreaded job of evaluating his charges a little easier.

      She objectified an otherwise subjective job.  A principal could take a checklist of characteristics with him to observe a teacher at work.  He could fill it out and share it with the teacher in the required evaluation conference.  She could even make suggestions of how to improve.  Quite a difference from my evaluations in the early days of my career.

     A major problem with disciples of Madeline Hunter was that the administrator used that yardstick for purposes other than measuring, purposes that the schoolmaster of old may have used a yardstick for.  Like whapping his charges over the head with it.  Some principals were unable to practice what they preached.  They failed to dignify teacher’s actions when they fell short of the glory of Madeline.

      Madeline Hunter made a career of studying successful teachers.  She sought out those teachers who were successful, who were acclaimed by students, principals, and parents, whose students did well on SAT and ACT tests.  She visited their classrooms, sat in with their individual student conferences, observed their dealing with parents. 

     Then she drew up some characteristics that all these successful teachers demonstrated.  And less successful teachers failed to demonstrate.

 

     It came to pass that Madeline Hunter left her home in fertile California to sojourn in the heart of the Great American Desert for a night and a day, in Colby, Kansas.  And many of the pedagogues of Northwest Kansas gathered on an artificial hillside known as the basketball court of the Colby Community Building to listen to the great teacher of teachers.

     For six hours, three hours before lunch and three hours after lunch (I don’t remember what was for lunch, but it wasn’t fish and loaves) she dwelt on the subject of “Dignifying a Wrong Answer.”

     One of the things good teachers do is establish a personal relationship with their charges.  Jesus and Socrates come to mind. 

      Maintaining a good relationship prohibits embarrassing a student, especially in front of her peers.  So, when a wrong answer appears, you must handle it, without ignoring it, with a response that will allow the incorrect answerer to retain his dignity.

     It’s a form of “Jeopardy.”  When the wrong answer appears, you say something like, “Oh, you must be thinking of . . . .”  Then you supply a question for which the wrong answer is the RIGHT answer! 

      In the last section of her six hour presentation, Madeline answered written questions submitted by teachers, many who had felt the sting of the Madeline Hunter yardstick on their hides.  One question that appeared more than once dealt with the subject of “time-on-task.”  Madeline observed that good teachers spent a lot of their allotted class time engaged with students during the class “period.” 

       So some administrative disciples would actually set a stopwatch to see how long a teacher spent working with students during the class hour.  It meant a teacher needed to be still trying to engage students on a subject at the end of a long hour.  No time to just relax and visit with students.

      Well, Madeline set them straight.  When you’re done, you’re done, she said, in answer to a question she read from a small slip of paper.  No use whipping a dead horse.  She also said that some days, when the students can’t settle down and get to work, you might just as well pack it in and try again tomorrow.  I don’t think the ones who needed to listen to that actually listened to that.

       And now I must say that I was fortunate never to have to work under that kind of pressure or stress.  My principals were all good, as far as I was concerned.  But, we did have some in our system. . . .

       Anyway, we had had six hours of strategies to handle wrong answers from the great lady.  So when Ashton supplied not an incorrect answer, but a totally non sequitur question, my training kicked in.  Not for nothing did I spend six hours on the manufactured hillside attending the great pedagogical guru.

       “Where did black people come from?’

      “Adam and Eve were black.  Abraham was the father of the white race.”

      The question wasn’t where did black people come from.  The question was, where did the mutation known as Isaac come from!

      It wasn’t the first time I made controversial statements, even ridiculous ones, just to see if anyone was listening.  It wouldn’t be the last time either.

     It was the only time I got such a universal and unanimous reaction.