Music Appreciation

Martin Smolin

Those were the days that elementary school consisted of eight grades and was called grammar school; middle school had not yet been invented. PS 241 was our neighborhood school and we kids could trudge over to President Street in the morning, back and forth home for lunch and then, if there were no after-school activities like religious education, back home around 3 p.m. You could think of it as a kind of factory into which the unformed raw product (us) was processed into valuable citizen workers. Classrooms had fixed seats; the teacher’s desk was up front and behind her was a slate blackboard on which you could write with white chalk. If you knew how, you could move the chalk in such a way that made a horrible, piercing sound capable of simulating dental pain. The American flag was near the window and we would salute it each morning while reciting the Pledge of Allegiance.

In fifth and sixth grade we had Miss Bailey. Miss Bailey, we knew, lived with her cousin, Miss Mott, and they took trips together. We never for a moment questioned this story until many years later. Miss Bailey followed new educational guidelines for progressive education then under study by the New York City Board of Education. Progressive education involved, so far as we understood, keeping the same teacher two years, being allowed to plan our daily routine, using workbooks for arithmetic instead of textbooks, and working at our own pace. No rote memorization. What we didn’t know was that the other kids in regular classes hated us because we were protected from tedious routines and fights with other students by Miss Bailey, who watched over us like a lioness. Our class was also called “IGOp,” an acronym for “Intellectually Gifted Opportunity.” So we were hated, being regarded as elitist, snobby, privileged kids. Naive me: I didn’t realize this until high school.

There was not supposed to be punishment for IGOp students; no after-school detention, no writing misspelled words 25 times, nothing like that. But Miss Bailey had her special way around that rule which she used to control us: her long fingernails. She would swiftly place a hand on a neck and her nails would sink in as in an iron maiden, while calmly reviewing our transgression. No use struggling.

In the spring, my parents bought me Peppy, the lovely cocker spaniel I had been clamoring for. Trouble was she had ringworm and I caught it. Ringworm is highly contagious, which meant that I had to be out of school for three weeks. Homework was delivered to my door by Hannah, who lived in the same apartment house. One day she brought over a fat manila envelope. It was filled with get-well notes from my classmates. Most of them said how much I was missed or what we were doing in class. However, Jeanette, ever committed to moral clarity, added a postscript of what I suspected was the full truth: “Miss Bailey made us write these.”

Miss Bailey’s control extended beyond the classroom. Social equity meant that no one could be excluded from any activity. Like a party at home. Naturally, since no one had an apartment large enough to accommodate a crowd of 36 excited pre-teens, there were no home parties those two years. That didn’t stop cliques from developing. Five very popular girls dubbed themselves “The Big Five.” Just as their namesakes cooperated to annihilate Hitler, our Big Five’s raison d’etre was to exclude Grace and to let her suffer. They were as successful at making Grace cry as the other group was in settling with Hitler and Mussolini.

What a shock to move out of the IGOp into seventh grade. It was like being expelled from the Garden of Eden to a place where you went from teacher to uncaring teacher each period and where you weren’t supposed to talk in the halls and where you could be sent to the terrifying principal, Miss Caine, to sit in her office until your mother came to pick you up. Miss Caine: her very name suggested a weapon.

Miss Messa was not-so-secretly mocked by her students. She seemed to wear the same black dress every day and, unfortunately, had severe dandruff which covered her shoulders like snow. Bruce’s father owned a drug store, and she made a deal with him to supply her with discounted medications, allowing him to get away with murder in the classroom. Why else was he permitted to make salacious remarks and not get sent to Miss Caine? Yet he was kind to her in his way, gently brushing dandruff off her shoulders while smirking.

These were also the days when we brought rulers, protractors and straight pens to school. During an arithmetic lesson, Miss Messa perched on the edge of my desk where I had accidentally left the protractor, point side up. Well, maybe it wasn’t completely an accident, but it was almost accidental. Miss Messa sat right on it and it stuck well into her tush. Everyone in my row saw it and gasped. Miss Messa didn’t seem to feel pain, or more likely, she was wearing a foundation garment. Soon notes began to be passed around the room and almost everyone needed to throw paper into the wastebasket. This was an unforgettable event. Miss Messa rose, the protractor still stuck in her and then it dropped out.

It was Miss Kennedy whom no one would cross. Not even think of it. She was a buxom matron who taught eighth-grade math. Pacing stiffly back and forth across the front of the room, she taught us about acute and isosceles triangles. Diagrams illustrating the Pythagorean theorem were chalked in immaculate script across the blackboard. You learned it the first time or faced a withering stare from Miss Kennedy. She lived in a doorman building down the street from me and Alice. Once Miss Kennedy was absent because of an illness. The substitute teacher collected our homework papers and asked Alice to deliver them to Miss Kennedy’s apartment. She approached the meeting with the same anticipation she might have experienced if asked to feed a crocodile. But Alice survived undamaged; she said Miss Kennedy was very sweet. Really?

Miss Cross’s mnemonics in seventh grade music appreciation class have been imprinted so deeply I can never be rid of them. She had a collection of scratchy 78-rpm records which she introduced with the intention of getting us barbarians to recognize important musical works. The beginning of a selection was played, then the mnemonic given to us to memorize. “This is the sym-phon-e-e-e…. that Schubert wrote…. but never fi-i-i-inished.” Know that and you could identify the musical selection and its composer. I don’t recall if there were any Russian composers; the Cold War was beginning. Later there was a test. Of course.