Dave Wood

When I was a wee freshman at Wisconsin State College at Eau Claire I made ends meet by soliciting ads to businessmen on Water and Barstow streets. Some of the older business fellows would invariably say “So you’re over at the Normal; How are those Commies treating you?” Translation:  By “Normal” I soon learned they meant Wisconsin State College, and by “Commies” they meant my poor learned professors, whom the businessmen assumed were Democrats—or even worse.

I soon found that old-timers called all colleges “Normal” years before. How so? Because when the powers that be created our fantastically complicated system, they cast about for names to differentiate the small colleges from the big grand University in Madison. God knows why but they found a name in France, where those fancy Gauls call their teachers’ colleges Ecoles Normales.   

Our Normals were much different than the ones overseas, where a colleague told me they were so carefully regulated that a federal inspector threatened him with dismissal when he was caught teaching the passive voice on Oct. 3, when on that date he was supposed to be introducing the active voice! Not that the Wisconsin normals were perfect. Some were good, some bad.

Let’s start with the great Miss Margaret Larson, who served as my father’s sixth grade teacher and years later me when I was in third grade. She was a product of Eau Claire Normal. She was stern because she had little to smile about, having been left by her siblings to care for her aged parents, but both my dad and I agreed she never shrunk from her duties and paid equal attention to the dim and the bright, and never tolerated wiseacres.

When I was a senior at Eau Claire State, I was assigned practice teaching duties in Blair where Miss Larson was teaching. She quickly volunteered to drive me there. On the way in her old Chevy coupe she regaled me with adventures that she experienced when the state department of education chose her to conduct their outrageously stupid ideas about educational theory and also how she never got rest in the summer as she drove to Eau Claire each summer school day still in pursuit of the four-year B.S. More about Margaret later.

I forgot about Margaret after I graduated, earned a Master’s and hired on at a fancy private college that paid starvation wages, and then at a state university, ISNU, Illinois State NORMAL University, a name that was dropped and renamed just Illinois State University. I left before the name change with some bitter memories of the NORMALcy which meant emphasis is aimed solely at teaching skills. Non-tenured profs like me were subjected to periodic visits from the chairman who never mentioned content, only that I hadn’t made all the window shades even. This school with an enrollment of 9,000 students didn’t offer one course in philosophy “Because grade and high schools didn’t teach that subject.” The English Department offered no courses in drama (except Shakespeare) because drama belonged to the speech department. Its huge education department was chaired by Dr. Frank Philpott. I guess that about says it all.

That brought back memories of my days at Eau Claire, where methodology ruled the roost (girls shouldn’t wear patent leather shoes to class because the shine might reflect their undies). Even at Bowling Green, where I received my doctorate, the head of the education department told females to carry a Monkey Ward catalog to put on boyfriend’s lap before sitting on it if they were crowded travelling to an away game.

So whatever happened to Margaret Larson? Just before she retired, Ruth and I purchased a farm close by her home in Whitehall and we frequently brought her produce from our garden.  She confided to me that she had completed her courses at renamed Wisconsin State University.

“CONGRATULATIONS, MISS LARSON!”

“But there’s a catch,” she replied, more glumly than usual. “After all these years teaching and working for the ideas asked for by Madison’s silly Education Department, Eau Claire insists that I spend ten weeks PRACTICE teaching.”

A pretty Abnormal request, I’d say.