©9/1/2020 Ruth Ann Scanzillo.
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Category Archives: social behavior
Why We Need EDUCATION.
by Ruth Ann Scanzillo, 5th Grade, Mr. Davis, Lincoln School.
Why do we need education?
We need education because we need to know things that we don’t know the day we are born. At first, as far as we can see, babies only know that they are hungry or tired. Babies who crawl find things in the house that make them curious, but because they don’t actually know what these things are some of the things might hurt them, like batteries or electrical outlets. This is why babies aren’t left alone. Parents must watch every move they make, especially when they are exploring. Even though they usually figure out how to walk, babies need other people around them. They learn to talk by hearing other people, and need their parents and other people to be sure they don’t fall down stairs or end up outside in the street hit by a car.
We also need education because we can’t learn everything we need to know just from our parents. My dad is a great barber and sings like Bing Crosby. He also plays the harmonica and his own “bones” which he made out of a John Deere plow handle when he was a rambler, and nobody taught him how. He also tells the most interesting stories, about missionaries and Pop-Eye in the jungle. But, he doesn’t know much about math. Mum was really good at math and way better than I am, so when I get confused by word problems she makes sure my homework is correct before I take it in to school. She also knows how to sew, and does alterations and dressmaking for customers who come to the house. I could learn to sew from my mother, but it doesn’t feel as though I could get any better at math just by being shown how by her. I don’t much understand how she thinks. So, because we have to learn math at school, we need to go to school for that. I don’t really understand why we need to learn math, but Mum keeps telling me I will use it someday.
The most important reason to go to school is to learn to read. Without reading, we can never find out what happens outside of our own houses or yards. When I was little, Mum always read us stories every night before bed, and I wanted to read stories as soon as I could. I remember wanting to write a story before I could read, and having mum help me with the letters in the words that went into the story.
We also need school to teach us about the world. Sunday School teaches us about what happened before Jesus was born, in the Old Testament, and what happened when Jesus was on earth, but the Sunday School teachers always say that the world is full of sin and heaven is our home. We don’t have a television because the people at Sunday School think TVs are the devil’s vision. But, Mum lets me ride my bike to Susie’s house to watch BATMAN. I can tell that Mum thinks that it’s important to learn about the world, because she knows an awful lot about it. I can tell because, whenever I’m doing my homework, she seems to already know the stories in what we are learning, especially the parts about World War II and what America was like before that. But, she spends most of her time at the sewing machine or at the machine shop threading and tapping nuts and bolts because she always worked there for the war effort. The lady next door spends most of her time smoking and watching television. Her kids are all grown. I don’t know how she could have taught them anything.
My big brother is eleven years older than me. I learn a lot from him. He has always played the piano and created projects at home, like drawing a picture of his 10 speed racing bike and having the high school kids come over and play big band music in the basement. When he went away to college to major in pre med, he got six hamsters who had litters and he had to make a big sign, Hamsters For Sale, and then rigged it with a string and a bell so nobody could steal it. Now, he has guinea pigs and they’ve had so many litters that my little brother and I help feed them the boxes of head lettuce hearts he brings home from Loblaws. He even lets me sit right beside him when he dissects the pigs in mum’s bread baking pans.
But, for all the things I can’t learn from my family I need to go to school. Some kids really need school, even more than I do. They only have a mother, not a father, and some of them don’t have any brothers or sisters. Some have clothes that look even older than the hand me downs I get from my cousin Frannie. Their hair and even their faces are sometimes dirty, and their shoes are scuffed. They don’t talk to the other kids much, either. One of the girls who sits near me smells like she needs a bath. I don’t understand why her mother doesn’t give her a bath, at least every few days like my dad.
I’ve always liked being at school. I like the smell of the wood on the floors, and the sounds in the hallways when classes walk by. I like the chalk and the chalkboards, and all the different teachers and the clothes they wear. I like doing seatwork, especially drawing on the good, white paper and remember making letters on the lined paper back when we first learned to write. I always liked it when the teachers played the pianos by the front wall, even though Mr. Davis doesn’t play. I like singing, and we still sing every day. I like the front covers and the pictures in our books for every subject we learn. I like looking around at the other children and watching them talk to each other. I like it when the teacher calls on me, and I like it when my pictures are tacked up along the chalkboard border after we have art. I like it when we go to the auditorium for assemblies, especially when the curtain is closed, because when the curtain is closed it means that the Jr League is putting on a whole play for us. This year, I wrote a play about Marco Polo, and had six kids come over and make his boat out of a cardboard box and practice their parts. Mum made all the costumes, even the red and black three cornered velveteen hat for me to wear because I played Marco Polo. After that, Mr. Davis, who usually sat at his desk reading while we were doing our seatwork, gave me his library book. It was called “Rifles For Watie”, and I loved that book so much. I loved it even more, because my teacher let me read it.
This is why we need education.
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© 8/28/2020 Ruth Ann Scanzillo. Originally published as a Note at Ruth Ann Scanzillo/Facebook.
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The American Girl.
This is my story. I was, from birth, an American girl. Only in America can a girl tell such a story, and only here will her story be acceptably distinct from the next.
Initially published in the 1950’s, “AMERICAN GIRL” was a magazine intended to help lead the nubile female through adolescence – her self image soundly indoctrinated and properly refined. But, that was the 1950’s. I was born too soon.
Raised by a strict subculture, its roots in sectarian Fundamentalism, I was never a subscriber to “AMERICAN GIRL” or any magazine intended solely for female teens. And, that is only the beginning.
Though born in 1957, post – 911 profiling in the United States and abroad was no news to me. I had effectively known it my entire life. Rather than systemic racism or any of its tangents (prejudice, bias), what I knew was that the way I looked consistently misled nearly everyone.
As a child, all I needed do was enter a room to be visually assessed. At maternal family gatherings, I didn’t look like any of the other cousins. While bearing inherently many of their traits – talkativeness, musical aptitude, a bit of clamoring – I would never have been named as among them by most outsiders unless one looked past the obvious.
The obvious was that my skin was a degree of brown. In those days, the term was “olive”. Neither the warm tones of the American southwest nor the African cafe au lait, it was a cooler hue given to darkening quickly under the sun’s rays and sallowing in winter.
The reason for my immediately distinct appearance was, at that time, simple; my mother’s side populated the extended gatherings, and hers was a mix of paternal Anglo-Saxon and maternal Danish/German. My father not having been raised by either parents or relations, his Napolitan/Sicilian people were never represented in my sphere. We visited them once, when I was five.
When I was just a toddler, mum would braid my long, nearly black hair. Having already borne a brilliant male child and birthed another soon after me, she might have argued too busy to dote upon her daughter with the expected buttons and bows; rather, corduroy overalls and sunsuits were the order of my apparel, mixing into the boys laundry with practical propriety given one, single exception: Sunday dress. Here, Mum’s premiere dressmaking skill shone, every even seam topstitched with rick-rack, every smock uniformly tooled, each elastic, cap sleeve unbearably scratchy with only occasional, stiffly starched lace. Perhaps for this reason alone I would grow to dread going to Meeting, what for the sheer lack of physical comfort being costumed afforded.
Once grown, I would carry a structure of frame and face that distinguished me from all who knew me well. But, those who did might have missed its significance.
Our northwestern Pennsylvania community having been founded first by Irish port fishermen and, a bit later, German machinists, its ultimately large Italian population would take claim on the city’s west side; however, my father having hailed from Boston, none of the Italians on that side of town resembled him or, more importantly, called him family. They were mostly Sicilian or Calabrese, hair black, faces round, skin not as dark, many with blue eyes. To every Italian who lived either there or on our east side, dad was “swarthy” – bearing the aquiline nose and angular jawline less familiar to their ilk.
I would inherit these features. Interestingly, Mum’s father’s nose was also regally aquiline – but, his parents being from the Cornwall coast of England, their heritage was Roman influenced. None the matter; strangers increasingly thought me a pure Italian, even first generation Rome, and nearly every one of them was sure I had been raised Catholic on the west side.
Nobody ever saw the W.A.S.P, though the revelation would sting many with surprise. My behavior never fit the image I bore. Only expressing the occasional Italianate gesticulation, my Puritanical, closed off social limits left many scratching their heads. I carried a Bible. I shunned dances, and parties, and anything likely to tempt the average teen. Mine was a life of Godly fear, and compliance was the order of my carriage.
Of natural course, college education at a nearby New York institution offered me welcome respite; there, blending remarkably well with those from “the city” or “the island” I no longer appeared odd, resembling many. And, higher learning on one of the country’s most liberal, secular campuses meant that none were judged by appearance alone. I flexed my stunted wings, learning far more than the arts and sciences, and grew to both relish and celebrate every aspect of my heretofore anomalous self.
In my case, childhood may have been one of mistaken identity; in adulthood, I now proudly represent the culmination of nature and nurture informed by as random a set of features as the melting pot will bear.
And, for that, no magazine is required.
Who is the American Girl? Allow me to introduce you. Properly.
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© 8/25/2020 Ruth Ann Scanzillo. All rights those of the author, whose story it is and whose name appears above this line. No copying, in part or whole or by translation, permitted without written permission of the author. Thank you for your respect.
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