SAU 's Old Main Building
Old School/New School (find a horseshoe)
After so many years as a student and a faculty member it occurred to me that much had changed during the course of my life in education. The hackneyed phrase Old School/New School may have some validity to it. I decided to pursue that phrase. At first I was worried that this talk might be too dark for such an auspicious occasion. But after analyzing it, I found a kind of universal commonality. See if you agree.
Thanks to my father’s job with the State Department, it placed me in four Spanish speaking countries; I did not attend school in Bogota, Colombia his first Latin American assignment. Argentina, Cuba, and Chile followed. Interestingly, we lived through three revolutions in those four countries and saw the ouster of Juan Peron and the arrival of Fidel. My father had nothing to do with those historical events, I must add. He was an accountant.
I started first grade in 1956 in Buenos Aires, Argentina; the Lincoln School was definitely Old School. Our building was a very long walk away from the main building. One day, at recess, I found a horseshoe in the grass. I stashed it and brought it home. It hung for many years in my parents house. Recently, I asked my brother if he had seen it; he had not. I wonder if that horseshoe brought me some of the luck I have experienced since. Who knows? Second grade was in the main building on the second floor, a long climb for me.
Havana in 1957 was our next stop. I spent three years at the Ruston Academy (third through fifth grades). There I picked up a passion for baseball and the NY Yankees. (I’ve long lost both.) They did not play baseball in Santiago, Chile, my father’s post after Havana. That ended my hopes of a career in the Major Leagues. I ended up at an English school, The Grange, a boys only institution where they taught Latin, wore uniforms, and the masters wore their academic gowns daily at the morning assembly. The Grange was Old School. When I first saw Hogwarts on the screen it was deja vu but without owls or quidditch. Instead of Gryffindor, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, and Slytherin we had the light and dark grays and the light and dark blues. Like at Hogwarts, we competed with each other. Instead of baseball, we played soccer, rugby, cricket, and field hockey. Academically, we stood up when the master entered the room and when we answered questions. Discipline was Old School: cannings and rulers across knuckles kept us in line. Imagine me wearing a blue blazer, grey slacks, and a blue and grey school tie EVERY DAY. No wonder now I favor shorts, Hawaiian shirts, or overalls.
In 1963 my father was assigned to Washington, DC and worked at main State. Imagine my distress at visiting a ninth grade classroom at Kensington Jr High (the school is long gone, but they have a Facebook page: that’s New School). I was in class wearing street clothes (no uniform) and the teacher called on me. My years of conditioning at The Grange made me jump to a stand to answer but the desks at the two schools were different. In Chile, there was ample room to easily stand but at Kensington I caught my thighs on the desk and had to listen to the laughter of my new classmates. Very New School.
Soon, it was time to chose a college. Here was my list: USNaval Academy, University of Maryland, Notre Dame, and Johns Hopkins (my mother had a friend whose son had gone to Hopkins, plus she wanted me to be a doctor). More on this soon. The Naval Academy doctor said my eyes were not correctable to 20/20 but our doctor proved him wrong. I met with our Congressman; he asked if I wanted to go to West Point (this is in 1967, FYI. Check your history books. I declined). So, he got me a primary appointment to the Merchant Marine Academy in King’s Point, NY (that’s on Long Island). I declined that too. What a crossroad that was. Was the horseshoe at work?
Hopkins, then and now, was a power in lacrosse and I got hooked on the game. As a high school senior I watched Hopkins beat the Naval Academy 9 - 6 at Homewood Field. It was Navy’s first defeat after 33 wins and eight consecutive national championships. The home stands were packed so I perched on the wall in front of the first row. Academically, I quickly discovered that my mother’s dream of having a physician son was not my dream. But, I soldiered on in the pre-med curriculum, very Old School. In 1970 the Selective Service System instituted its first draft lottery. I won. My draft number was 363 out of 366 (see if you can figure that total). Only the first 100 numbers were likely to be drafted and nearly all of those draftees would end up in Viet Nam. That was Old School squared. Maybe that horseshoe was still working. However, the horseshoe ran out when Hopkins asked me to leave after three years and a 1.9 GPA. I spent a year working as a truck driver for Flow Labs. They sold biological products and lab animals from New York City to Washington DC. My weekly route had me in New York at Sunday midnight. Philadelphia on Tuesday, Baltimore on Wednesday, and DC on Thursday. By that point I had worked over 60 hours. Old School.
Tiring of the working life, I decided to go back to college. The University of Baltimore admitted me after telephoning me asking about my what major. I said: What do you got? That poor lady went down the alphabetical list of majors until she reached psychology. I stopped her and declared a major. After all, I had six hours of psychology credits in my academic pocket already. That’s New School. But something lucky happened (that horseshoe again). My psych professor became my mentor. I now saw a clear path to my future; I wanted a PhD in comparative psychology (we study all animals, including Homo sapiens). At the U of B, my GPA soared, I ran the rat and pigeon lab, and conducted my first research projects. I was ready for grad school. But only LSU admitted me and in February! (That’s early, BTW).
Louisiana was very different as we all know. Graduate school was a blast, for the most part. I had a goal. I helped bring lacrosse to LSU and it is still there today as a club sport. But, they have a big budget now and they travel in a team bus. (New School). We carpooled to games from Texas to Florida and slept many to a room. (Old School) We beat Texas A&M in Kyle Field with no one in the stands. We lost to Tulane in the old Sugar Bowl (also empty). Academically, I first earned a master’s degree and then taught at LSU-Eunice for two years while still in grad school. I had to teach five classes each semester. I quickly realized that it took me 7 handwritten pages of notes to cover a 50 minute class. I still have those notes in my office if you’d like to see them. That was very Old School. I conducted my dissertation research there: Female preference for male coloration and size in the guppy. On the day I graduated with my PhD I went to the office to say good bye to the staff and the head secretary (Old School, they were not Administrative Assistants, back then: New School) told me that the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee wanted to interview me. There was that horseshoe again. I got the job!
Shortly after arriving at UWM, the American Psychological Association told them that their clinical program was weak and needed additional faculty. I’m not a clinical psychologist. My tenured job was not to be. I was just a lowly, temporary instructor. I spent the next two years looking for a permanent position. What had happened to my horseshoe? Again, I was in an Old School situation. In 1980 I had my two only job interviews. One was at Mount Mercy in Iowa the other at SAU. At Mount Mercy we each quickly realized we were not a match but had to go through the formalities anyway. That left SAU.
I arrived in Shreveport in March 1980. Dr. Ida Flemister picked me up. Then, she was about the same age I am now. A spring storm was brewing so I volunteered to drive to Magnolia and she let me. It poured, but we made it. Somehow, SAU offered me a job as the new, third assistant professor in the department of psychology. Let me tell you how college was back then. It was very Old School.
We had chalk and blackboards. We had filmstrip projectors. We had 16mm black and white films. We had paper grade books. We had typewriters. We had newspapers. We viewed channels 3, 6, 9, and 12 on our TVs. Can you smell and feel the Old School? The internet had not been invented. We had a mainframe computer; it was called Ivan. I had taken a course in BASIC at Hopkins and I decided to learn more about it than I had back then. Anne Thomas had a dumb terminal in Cross Hall and she let me use it at night. Soon after, Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak founded Apple Computer. We bought an Apple II+ for psychology and I had a new toy and a new interest. New School. I began to program in Applesoft BASIC. I was writing programs to conduct experiments, mostly.
In 1984 Apple released the Mac. We bought a few. I was soon writing HyperCard stacks to teach general psychology. Picture me carrying my Mac to class, plugging it in, and connecting it to a black and white LCD projector. Notice that was New School at the time and Old School now. This was before PowerPoint was invented, BTW. My general psychology stacks connected lecture pages, graphics, and a glossary. Wow! Eventually, we had a lab full of Macs running the general psychology course. None of these Macs were networked, not to each other, and certainly not to the yet-to-be-invented internet. Sneakerware was when I would update each Mac, one at a time, using the then revolutionary 3.5” disk. New School then, Old School now. Can you see what is happening to the Old School/New School distinction?
You may not know how SAU finally got on the internet. One Sunday in 1991, the Arkansas Democrat Gazette published a map of ArkNet and all of the colleges in Arkansas were on it except SAU! It turned out that the Old School SAU president did not want to spend the $30k necessary to connect. Imagine the hubbub that ensued. SAU got on ArkNet, in last place, and I was there. It was a Saturday and a tech guy came down from UALR. He needed a computer so we used one from our Mac Lab, a Mac LC, colloquially known as the “pizza box” Mac. After a few minutes, the tech guy said, “I need some software I don’t have.” Imagine what I was thinking, now he had to go back to Little Rock…But, NO! He said, “I can download it.” Blew my mind. Very New School.
Let me turn to some observations about students and Old School/New School. Old School students carried heavy backpacks filled with books. They carried pens, pencils, and notebooks. They brought them to class. They wrote papers in long hand. Later, they typed them. They passed notes hand written notes in class. Nearly all of them wore wristwatches. At home or in the residence hall they dialed wired telephones. Many of them drove vehicles that had a clutch pedal. Are you getting the Old School picture?
Today students still use books but they may have them uploaded on their laptops or read them online. Many fewer students bring notebooks to class today, and some even need to borrow a writing implement to sign my roll. Writing papers now is nearly always done on a word processor from the start. Wristwatches are passé but digital watches are still around. No one passes notes, they text instead. Everyone has a phone all of the time and telephony is only one of that devices apps. Try to buy a standard transmission nowadays; you have to look hard. This is the state of New School today for students.
What about faculty? There are no blackboards and chalk left at SAU. Whiteboards replaced them along with erasable markers. A color projector hangs in every classroom at SAU. Many faculty now offer their classes on BlackBoard and may teach those classes in person or online. Don’t you wish you had bought Zoom stock in 2019? So New School.
What will happen in the future I wonder. What will make New School from Old School. The past gives us some hints, but predicting the future is hard and dangerous. Where did you park your flying car that Popular Science magazine predicted in the 1950s that we’d all have by now? “Experts” have predicted the future far too generously. No flying cars, no RDD2s, no C-3POs yet. Large Language Models (ChatGPT and its ilk) and AI are definitely in our future. So is increased use of facial recognition and mass surveillance (already used in China). Suffice it to say Old School becomes New School all of the time. You have seen some of the examples I lived through. Notice, I had little influence on those changes. Yes, I still carry a pen and paper all of the time. When my children were still around I’d dictate my texts to my wife to them and they would send them to her on my phone. They were so much quicker than I. I resist using social media, I love to make restaurant reservations on the phone, and I buy hard back books. I made my children learn to use a clutch and shift gears. Our oldest said the exact same thing a few weeks ago. He was going to make his two boys learn to drive with a stick shift. The problem is that one is two and the other is four months old. Where will my son even find a vehicle equipped with a standard transmission in 2038! (Do the math.)
Old School is always changing into New School. Often we are unaware or surprised when that happens. What New School changes will catch you unaware? What will you enjoy and what will scare you? Get ready. You are Old School now and don’t even know it. Wait until you have kids, they will show you. And if you find a horseshoe, keep it!
