COMMENTARY: September and `Red' Apples

by James
C. Johnston Jr.

For
fifty years, I went to school as a student and then as a teacher. As
a student, it was not a happy time for me, but as a teacher, it was
an exciting time full of adventure and bright prospects. I made a
great effort not to do the awful things that I had experienced in the
classroom as a child fighting for my intellectual integrity.

From
1950 to 1958, I attended school in the Town of Franklin, Mass. In the
abstract, I should have been grateful for that opportunity afforded
me in a free society that actually cared enough to invest tax dollars
in my education, but I wasn’t. I dreaded the coming of the end of
my summers of sublime freedom when I could do pretty much whatever I
wanted and could get away with doing to amuse myself and actually
learn many things through both scientific and social
experimentation.

Basically,
I hated all restrictions. Restrictions get in the way of perusing
life. I was also very ridged about what I believed to be true. For
example, I was brought up in a religious belief system where I was
told to blindly accept all I was taught by holy religion as absolute
truth, and I was also taught that everybody who disagreed with the
teachings of this particular belief system were wrong and could go to
Hell and burn for not following the party line. By the time I was
ten, I wished that I had been born into other more liberal faith
systems that were a bit more flexible. I envied my contemporaries
for whom this inflexibility was not a reality in their churches. In
the summer time, because there was no Sunday school, it seems that I
could escape all that.

Getting
back to 1950 when I was six years old, my first grade teacher was a
Mrs. Gertrude Mac Ivor who taught at the Ray School. She was a very
nice lady with about forty first grade students, of various
abilities, to teach the fundamentals of everything. I can remember
that the class was divided into three groups> The Robins, The Blue
Birds, and the Swallows I think. We First Graders took very little
time in figuring out that this was a system of stratifying us into
sub-classes which reflected academic and even social class. A few
kids who we knew were somewhat less academically gifted were in the
Robins because the father of this particular individual was a lawyer.

Inadvertently,
I drove poor Mrs. Mac Ivor crazy, and I loved her. She was a very
tolerant woman who, never-the-less, had her breaking points all of
which I seemed to ferret-out. For example, for an art lesson one
Autumn Day, she passed out a line-drawing of an apple. Under the
apple was the word “Red”. This I understood to be a “suggestion”
to color the apple red. Actually, it was not a suggestion. It was a
“command”, but this dictate made no sense to me what-so-ever.
After all, apples are not all really red are they?

All
I had to do to validate my thesis was look at Mrs. Mac Ivor’s desk.
There were always many apples on her desk, because back in those far
away days more than three-quarters-of-a-century-ago, it was a
friendly gesture, or custom of the country, to bring a teacher you
liked, or wanted to bribe for your own questionable reasons, a fruity
bribe. I wonder sometimes what a whole bushel basket of Macintosh
apples could have done for me in this arena of lower academic life. I
never had access to the resources to find out what such largess as a
hundred or so apples at one time could have resulted in.

Getting
back to that art lesson and what became “The Red Apple Incident”,
It was “suggested” to the student to color red, I decided that
realism for the accurate depiction of this wonderful fruit was a far
better route for me to follow. As a budding artist, I belonged to the
School of Realism. I was not the rebel of the Jackson Pollock stripe.
My mother was an artist, and I was very eager to learn from her. Her
work was and still is beautiful in my eyes. From my observation of
the apples on Mrs. Mac Ivor’s desk, I could plainly see that in the
real world apples could be red, orange, green, and russet all at the
same time. Yes indeed, some were green, some were yellow, and some
were something else. The world of apples was very democratic, and I
was never a blind follower.

Even
as a small child, I followed my own path, because I always knew that
my judgement could really be far superior to all others. Such
radicalism failed to make me popular with my fellow students who
didn’t like other kids who were “different”. Dissenters like
me disturbed the peace and reality of their fragile world. Children
were not to disturb the Universe after all. Now, how scary is that?

I
loosed my creative juices, and I colored away in all the frenzy of my
artistic creativity totally unaware that I was challenging the very
foundation of mass-education, not to mention civilization itself, by
my artistic rebellion. “Red” was not a suggestion when boldly
presented in clear and well-defined print underneath this very round
apple line drawing. It was an absolute command, and I was acting in
contravention of all good and duly constituted order. And worst of
all, I was actually thinking for myself and acting on my rebellious
instincts!

The
foundation of the educational system of all of Greater Franklin in
the year 1950 was being both assaulted and challenged by the open
rebellion of a six-year-old-rebel armed with an orange crayon! Good
Lord! What could be next? An artistic rendering of a brown and
obviously rotten apple! Was there no end to my artistic depravity?

A
shocked Mrs. Mac Ivor looked over my shoulder as she wandered up and
down the neat aisle of her classroom watching all of her little
charges obediently coloring their apples a uniform red color. Their
main challenge was staying in the lines. I was fighting the
rebellious urge to turn the paper which had the mimeographed round
apple printed on it, which still to me looked very cartoonish, and to
boldly draw an apple in a more natural, realistic, and oval shape.
That of course was the sort of artistic heresy that might have
brought down consequences at least as serious as those visited on the
head of Galileo by the Inquisition for his support of the Copernican
System!

Now
came to moment! The situation was at its point of absolute crisis.
“What are you doing!’ cried Mrs. Mac Ivor as she looked at my act
of utter artistic revolution.

“I
am coloring my apple the way it’s supposed to look. You know-like
the ones on your desk,” I replied smiling, because I could see how
impressed she was with my artistic daring. Let’ just say that I
grossly misread the situation.

“But
Jimmy, the apple is supposed to be “Red”! It’s not supposed to
be all of those other colors!” she cried. That big word under the
apple is “Red”! she cried again. Heads turned eighty eyes fixed
on her! What was going to happen next!

“Really?
What about my shading?” I asked. Now I fired my big gun. ”That’s
the way my mother taught me. When coloring, what is closer to you is
lighter, and as you move back, things shade to darker. That makes
them look like they are really round,” I said with some enthusiasm.
Again, I misread the situation. There was no doubt about it, I was
being “Difficult”.

Mrs.
Mac Ivor in total exasperation marched over to “The Door” that
separated our classroom from that of the school’s ultimate
disciplinary authority, The Principal”-Miss. Dougherty herself!

“Now
I wonder what that is all about,” I thought.

Then
it came to me. Mrs. Mac Ivor must have been very impressed with the
artistic realism of my apple. At last! Recognition! I just thought
about how Michelangelo and Leonardo must have felt when their mastery
of the use of color and perspective was discovered. Yes, in my house
these two artists were actually discussed along with many others as
well as the concepts of “color-use” and “perspective” like
what she called “the vanishing point” as illustrated in The
Mona Lisa when
my mother shared her artistic interests with us which was a daily
event.

Getting
back to the events now about to transpire at Miss Doherty’s door,
Mrs. Mac Ivor knocked and a few seconds later a smiling Miss Doherty
opened the magic portal and asked what she could do for her caller.
“Mrs. Mac Ivor replied, “It’s Jimmy Johnston’s apple! It’s
not ‘Red’ “ as the offending rendering was shown.

“I
can see that. Jimmy, this very nice. It almost looks real. Very good
Jimmy,” Miss Doherty almost cooed.

Mrs.
Mac Ivor was almost incandescent with apoplexy, “You don’t
understand Miss Doherty. It’s supposed to be red! The Apple is
supposed to be red! You can see the word ‘’Red” printed right
under the apple! Jimmy can’t seem to conform to my directions. He
always challenges me. It’s very frustrating!” the poor woman was
beginning to making me feel sorry for her, but what could I do? The
world of Artistic Integrity was resting on my narrow shoulders.

“Wait
a minute dear,” the principal said softly as she came over to my
desk.

The
principal leaned over me so that I only could hear what she had to
say.” It’s been a long day Jimmy. Do you think that you could
make Mrs. Mac Ivor happy by coloring another picture of the apple
red? I liked your apple very much. May I keep it? I would like to
take it home and show my sister what a nice job you’ve done. It’s
so nice. So can you make a nice red one for Mrs. Mac Ivor and be a
good boy and do what she tells you to do from now on?”

I
was awash in her praise and kindness, “I think so,” I whispered
back confidentially. That was a very nice spot in my school day which
I can remember 76 years later. Both of these women were bright spots
in my earliest academic life. I look forward to sharing more with you
later as we move on to the opening of school which still fills me
with a sort of latent unnamed dread! Labor Day always greeted me with
very mixed feelings.

James C. Johnston, Jr. is a retired Franklin educator.