Sometimes I wonder why I seem to have more memories of things that went on in elementary school than I do of events in high school. For sometime I've thought of Pratt Turner, what became of him and how his life turned out. In the sixth grade we concentrated on Louisiana's colorful history. One day the teacher called the class's attention to Pratt Turner and how he was learning history. He had made a "moving picture machine." It consisted of a long roll of paper connected to two rollers, which when turned showed drawings of historical events. Pratt had drawn, using crayons or water colors or a combination, episodes of Louisiana's storied past. I seem to remember one of Hernando DeSoto and Indians beside the Mississippi River. The teacher (the same one who raved about me "spelling down a room full of girls,") was amazed and had to show it to the class. Pratt said it was the only way he could learn history.
Fast forward a year and we were in the seventh grade and Mr. Trout was the teacher. This was the most difficult academic year of my life. I'm convinced that it was so difficult because it was designed to flunk half the class to avoid crowding the high school. Even if you give me the formula I doubt I can to this day determine the area of a sector of a circle. Mr. Trout was convinced that boys learned through their bottoms so he would spend much of his time wielding a heavy paddle. Get 14 right on a math test of 20 problems and you escape a beating. Get only 13 right and you get 14 licks as hard as he could hit. All of us had problems with math, but I knew Pratt to get only 5 right and thus get 30 licks. How he survived I don't know. The heck of it is the eighth grade was a waste. Math consisted of adding rows of figures, the teacher being a football coach. The only class worthwhile was grammar.
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