One man was the principal of my elementary school, the junior high where I attended 7th and part of 8th grade, and when I came back to Redlands, he was a counselor at the high school where I graduated. In 1979, I became the first 4-year National Merit Scholar at Redlands High School for the previous as well as the following, decade.
It was Orv Nease. Mr. Nease has been gone over ten years now.
He was a great man.
As a young woman, I was given the job of Director of Family Service Association, a job for which my only qualification was what Harlan Ellison had written to me, which was “You’ll go far, Amy, because you have heart.”
Family Service was a real charity, the first one licensed in the state of California in 1898, which helped very low-income working families and, as they began to arise in our town, homeless families. We helped single homeless men with clothing, blankets, food, and showers at the YMCA.
I just saw from Orv’s obituary that he had received the Roy Coble award from our hometown YMCA. Roy Coble was the “Y” guy and he was one of my grandfather Nort Sturtevant’s best friends. My grandfather supported the YMCA and played handball with Roy there two or three times a week for years. This is a small town. My small town. All small towns have good men like this who are the mainstays of life, providing stable, steady values and leadership.
All of these men would cut straight to the heart of today’s problems in education and society.
Orv knew what I’d been through after my grandfather died. He knew what I was capable of, as he’d received my test results as a third-grader. Orv’s the one who gave me the responsibility to operate the chemistry lab set that someone had given to the school and choose which kids worked with it.
I brought my friends in to use the bunsen burner to burn chicken bones and we almost burned down the school.
Nobody’s perfect.
As a young adult, I went to Orv for counseling to help me navigate a hard job that I was probably too young to have been given, and also how to be a good mother to my little daughter, who was running away from me after I picked her up at the Y.
“She’s laughing and running away from me when I get her, Orv. She’s trying to run in the street!”
I wanted to know what to do.
This was the early 90s and there was heavy publicity that any type of corporal punishment was “child abuse.”
Orv looked thoughtfully at me and said, “Take her little hand, turn her around, and give her one swat on the butt and say ‘No!’”
I did what he said.
It was like a miracle. She stopped trying to run out in the street.
Orv believed in worksheets. He wrote books, and asked me about publishing them. Some are still available.
He explained that our consciences are God’s (or nature’s) way of letting us know we were making good or poor decisions.
Orv asked me one question that, ever since, has influenced the way I live and choose what to do or not do in countless ways.
Here it is:
I answered, “That I left the world a better place than I found it.”
It just popped out of me.
I just read a lengthy X post from an IT executive at a mid-sized company earning over $250,000 a year. He explained in detail how he advanced beyond being an ordinary six-figure tech to higher levels of pay. It involved things like “make your boss look good” and many different ways of increasing his department’s budget, getting free equipment for his home office, and other tricks and tips for looking like he was working hard without really working, like writing emails during his regular working hours, and scheduling them to send at 8:39 p.m.
Over and over, the man repeated, “You don’t get ahead by working harder or doing a good job. You get ahead by playing politics and playing the game.”
Sure.
This is true.
He still spent his life accomplishing … what did he accomplish?
What Orv Nease did? What Roy Coble the “Y” guy did? What my own grandfather did?
Even this IT exec admitted, his moral compass was grayed-out and he didn’t think he accomplished much, if anything measurable, at work. His only goal was to keep the money rolling in, get a bigger house, and buy more stuff for himself.
There wasn’t much in this man’s missive about his friends, pastimes outside of work, or even anything that his company made or did. Just “how to get ahead” and detailed tricks of “how to play the game.”
That is exactly what I saw happening at Saddleback College where I taught part-time for 20 years.
Day by day, year by year, more people turning their backs on the duties of their jobs. Leaving students behind, phoning or Zooming it in.
Year by year, more and more teachers and administrators tuning out and just cashing checks.
Why would a lazy, demotivated, or bad teacher do these things?
Because their inner consciences and egos made them feel bad. Getting more money or a little bit easier job — maybe even setting things up so they could spend half the year in the United Kingdom or traveling abroad — they could feel better about themselves and have things easier: for themselves.
Orv taught me these facts. Orv Nease saved my life and directed me on a good path so many times, starting when I was in third grade and extending well into my life as a young adult and mother.
Men like Orv used to be common in our school systems.
Now? They can’t survive. They must leave, as he did, opening a private Christian counseling practice.
The public schools in the United States, with rare exceptions, should be ashamed of themselves. This is true of K-12 as well as the overwhelming majority of community colleges. Their consciences should compel them to change and do better.
But instead, one and all are choosing any and every way they can think of to defend, at every level, the way they have abused and misused the public trust and the high ideals which were upheld even into my school years in the 1970s.
The horrific state of “standardized test scores” and school attendance, with chronic absenteeism averaging one quarter of students, doesn’t “demand reform” it demands people doing their jobs, a thing which they have not done for many years.
It doesn’t matter what the root cause analysis is of this situation.
The truth is, for years, teachers have been paid poorly, treated horribly, and participated in a system that has become ever-more dysfunctional.
Not everyone has the capacity or ability to do 6 different careers successfully, like me. I started writing about Orv Nease because he was a crucial person in my life — and for many others. He did his job as principal, vice principal, and counselor.
See, after my grandfather died, I became one of those underprivileged, at-risk kids. I could have run away from home at age 13 like my best friend, whose father was molesting her, did. I could have gotten into drugs like at least half of my friends. I could have started having sex with my boyfriend instead of making a wood-burned block that said, “I LOVE YOU B-R-A-I-N.”
In 1975, I entered LeConte Junior High in Hollywood, at that time considered “the most racially diverse school” in the United States.
My English teacher sat on his desk in the “lotus position,” smoked weed, and assigned us to read Siddhartha by Herman Hesse.
After school one day, I left the prison-like building and saw a group of 7 or 8 girls standing outside the high fence, topped with big iron spikes.
“Hey boy, come over here, we got something for you,” one of them yelled. These were big girls, with adult-looking figures.
I didn’t cross 100 pounds until I was a senior in high school. I had a “uniform” too. Levi’s 501 button-fly jeans and a white t-shirt. I had short hair, just like I do right now. I had been forbidden to wear makeup, so these girls truly thought I was a boy.
Were they going to try to beat me up?
“I’m a girl!” I said, choking back tears of fear and shame.
They started running after me and it was really a good thing that I — not a boy — had the running speed and stamina of one, because I quickly outpaced them and ran all the way to my Dad’s house at the top of the hill above the Hollywood Bowl, about two-and-a-half miles.
These kids had been expelled from LeConte Junior High but they were still hanging around looking to sell drugs and turn tricks.
I was unable to make it in the Los Angeles Unified School District. I also attended Immaculate Heart High School for a short time, a top private Catholic school where my first friends invited me to score some lines with them in the girl’s bathroom.
After a year in Hollywood, I made the calculation that I could survive my grandmother’s severe mental illness, take care of myself and the house, and I went back home. In 1979, I graduated from Redlands High School and accepted admission to Scripps College in Claremont. I left home at 17 and never returned.
All the problems of LAUSD back in the 70s expanded and grew and became everyone’s schools by the time my daughter attended Redlands and Los Angeles schools in the 1990s and 2000s.
My daughter is fine today. She and her boyfriend work hard, they own their own small home, and are looking to buy another one.
I hope no one doubts that the U.S. is at the “weak men create hard times” part of this cycle.
I’m writing this because U.S. public and private education, K-12 as well as community colleges and our vaunted 4-year massively failing institutions, need to address the myriad problems inherent in group social education.
That’s what it is. I survived because many strong, good men and women, teachers, counselors, and administrators, maintained a good school environment in our small town of Redlands, California.
In addition to Orv Nease, I became close with the Board President of the organization I’d been hired to lead, Family Service Association. Ed Losee had been Superintendent of Redlands Schools for quite a while before he retired and volunteered at Family Service.
When I look back at those years, 1986–1996, I marvel at the guidance, decision-making ability, and great values of dozens of men and women who mentored me, who helped guide the organization, and who helped to educate and support that generation of children. Children my daughter’s age.
Children who have grown up to be parents today and are facing a choice:
Do I send my child to a failing, dangerous public school where they’ll have a person come in and show them how to use a condom on a banana?
Do I send my child to a private religious school where they have a significant chance of being molested?
How in God’s name did our country become a place where this type of education is prioritized over learning how to multiply fractions, the parts of speech, and how to write a poem or make a woodburned block that says “I LOVE YOU B-R-A-I-N”?
One of the best teachers at our high school was our auto shop teacher. Students who didn’t like any other aspects of school couldn’t wait to get to that class.
I understand why parents would choose to home school their children. If there’s any people in public school administration out there who fit in the “strong man” or woman category, I’m pretty sure they do, too.
And I say this as “Teacher of the Year” 2018 at Saddleback College — an award chosen by students — who did not have a job by the end of the following year.
Some full-time teachers decided that they wanted to each my early a.m. classes which they’d denigrated for years. They were planning to retire and that’s how the pension system works in California. By teaching “overload” they could greatly increase their monthly pension checks.
Playing that game.
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