Makes You Want To Scream And Curse-ive

It’s the early to mid 1990s, and I’m in fourth grade. One of my teachers has recently started to focus on our handwriting (it was all cursive back then) – he sets homework where we have to write an essay that he will then grade for content AND looks. I generally enjoy this type of homework (nothing pleases me more than to talk about the stuff that interests me), but this teacher nearly manages to make me hate it.

Our teacher does not collect the homework but instead walks around the room and looks at everyone’s work, reading a paragraph here and there. He stops at my desk, takes out his red pen and – without even reading a single word – crosses out the page.

Teacher: “Unacceptable. How is anyone supposed to read that chicken scratch? You need to write more legibly – I will not check your homework until it is up to my standards.”

So, I go home and write out the whole essay again, trying really hard with my handwriting. It is very much legible (not that it wasn’t already), which I know because I took a survey of all my classmates who could read the essay without problems. But to no avail – the next day the same thing happens. He takes a look, crosses it out, and tells me to redo it.

After nearly two weeks of this, I am incredibly fed up because I’ve copied this essay so many times, I nearly know it by heart, and on top of doing the regular homework for this class. Still the same thing happens.

Until one afternoon when I am copying that essay yet again, and I am so frustrated that I burst into tears and throw my notebook to the floor. My mom, of course, notices this, and I tell her the whole story. She takes my notebook and flips through the past two weeks. She tells me I won’t have to write it again and that I can go play.

Happy again, I head off to play, and when that teacher later comes into the room for the lesson, he doesn’t even come near my desk. He doesn’t ask to see the essay (or the current homework), doesn’t speak to me, doesn’t look at me.

That evening over dinner, my dad asks about everyone’s day, and my mom says, casually:

Mom: “Oh, I prepped dinner and then went to the elementary school to ream out [Teacher]. Did you know he was making [My Name] copy the same essay for two weeks because he thought her handwriting was too ugly? Like that has any bearing on the quality of her homework! Anyway, I told him and the principal that if he has trouble reading, he should take a refresher course or maybe consider changing careers instead of taking it out on a ten-year-old little girl.”