My friend, Lloyd, and I graduated from the same high school.
We often talk and laugh about that period in our lives. Our high school days occurred over fifty years ago but those days continue to produce interesting echoes.
Our high school served predominately white, blue collar,
working class neighborhoods in Louisville. Our school did not have all of the
resources or the perceived advantages of high schools in wealthier neighborhoods
in the East End. I used to think that whatever I learned in those teenage years
was in spite of my high school, not because of it.
Like high school kids everywhere we learned to entertain
ourselves during school hours by pranking teachers or inventing other ways to
creatively misbehave. Sometimes after school we entertained ourselves by
watching tough guys fight each other behind the Texaco station next door. The
tough guy fights drew large crowds and provided valuable learning opportunities
for those of us in the audience. For example, I learned how to avoid eye contact
and become invisible in order to avoid spin off fights that were sometimes
inspired by the main events.
I don’t remember much of the formal academic side of my high
school experience. However, I do have one exceptional high school memory. My senior year I took a humanities class taught by
Francis Schneiter. In Ms. Schneiter’s class we read, among other books, The World's Religions by Huston Smith and The Story of Philosophy by Will and
Ariel Durrant. I have very positive memories of sitting in humanities class reading and discussing specific pages of these books with Ms. Schneiter. It was not a coincidence that a few years later I
majored in Philosophy in college. Nor was it a coincidence that I paid attention to the remarkable
life and career of Huston Smith until his death in 2016.
Ms. Schneiter died a few years ago. I hope she was aware that she was a visionary and an inspirational teacher.
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