Adult Education in the Kingdom of Blubarbaria

This is the story of a series of dreams that turned into a nightmare. Dreams sometimes have a way of repeating themselves until positive steps are taken to analyze them and then do something about them. Sweeping them under the rug only makes them worse. But that is talk for the future...
The setting for these dreams were all the same: two old school buildings in the kingdom of Blubarbaria. One is a castle-like structure and houses all the school administrative offices of Blubarbaria. The other is somewhat newer and is the home of the Blubarbarian Adult Learning Center. There is an invisible moat around this building with menacing sharks in it. There are two bridges leading to the school. One bridge allows students and teachers to enter the building. The other bridge enters from the castle. IT IS OBVIOUS FROM JUST A CURSORY INSPECTION THAT THIS BRIDGE HAS BEEN RARELY IF EVER USED! This is the main reason that the dream turned into a nightmare. A statement kept repeating in my head just before I would wake up and it was this, "We don't have any jurisdiction over there." That statement was coming from the castle and being directed toward the school. Hmmmn. Trouble, right here in Blubarbaria Kingdom!
The calendar flips back in Blubarbaria and a prominent Blubarbarian by the name of Milton Higgins (middle initial "P") teaches Mechanical Drawing at a place called Belmont School in the evening for money. Gee, the beginning of what is now called "Night Life". Too far back! I will be writing forever. (My nephew in Oregon is waiting for my next episode of my life in St. Anne's Orphanage, so I cannot go forward from the 1890's!!!) I MUST flip forward to let's say the mid-1960's and take another look: Here we find a tall gangling Jimmy Murphy who later became Principal of Roosevelt School. He is the founder of the modern Night Life era as he teaches "Television Set Repair" at the old Commerce High School on Walnut Street, another prominent place in Blubarbaria; Jimmy was a really good Blubarbarian citizen too!
"Night Life", the name given to a wide variety of community based practical courses from Bartending to Palm Reading really became popular under the leadership of a Horatio Alger type character by the name of Mr. Gerry Sleightofhand (fictitious). Mr.Gerry could have been a top executive in Barnum and Bailey's Circus I am sure or a top CEO in some other business, but he chose to run the Blubarbarian Night Life program AND the adult education program for the Kingdom of Blubarbaria through the rest of the 1960's and through the next two decades and beyond. During some of this time, I left adult education for a time to become involved in a most controversial National Teacher Corps program with 25 people who were not Blubarbarians and as such were naturally suspicious. They came into the kingdom to develop a curriculum in African Studies but also had a "hidden agenda" of teaching children about something known as.....shhh.....racial tolerance....shhh...more than THAT!.....shhh...."acceptance".....There is a lot that I am leaving out, but after teacher Corps with UMass Amherst, I came back to working teaching immigrants English at the Blubarbarian
Learning Center. Now, Mr. Sleightofhand was very proud that his "school system was larger than what he would say was the entire school system of Blubarbaria!! Can you imagine THAT! By this time he had a person that he had to hire to do testing for him. This fellow was a graduate of Holy Cross and was a nice enough fellow but he had not been picked by Mr Sleightofhand and that meant trouble for the Holy Cross grad. Mr. Sleightofhand harassed him in every way that he could. He would refer to him as "the total loss from Holy Cross." Wasn't that awful! The one picture that I have in my mind from this era is "Mr Holy Cross" having his desk moved into a narrow back room where ESL Cambridge textbooks were piled to the ceiling along with copypaper (how ironic!)Mr. Sleightofhand did spend some of his extra money that he had left over from a booming "Night Life" culture to buy books and teaching materials for the immigrant program. He told me once that he planned to have the Cambridge Book Company salesperson always visit during lunch time. "Mr. Holy Cross" had the awful misfortune to have his desk deliberately placed at the back of this narrow supply room...a terrible indignity. When I asked him how he put up with such treatment, he said to me, "I have a wife and child to support." I felt so bad for him. It is too bad that years later Mr. Holy Cross seemed to forget what it felt like to be discriminated against. I cite this example to explain why CONTROLS MUST BE PUT ON INSTITUTIONS THAT ARE NOT COVERED BY TRADE UNIONS IN ORDER TO PREVENT THIS KIND OF TREATMENT OF EMPLOYEES. YES, it can happen in a school of learning and CONTROLS are even more crucial in a school that has IMMIGRANT STUDENTS IN IT. THEY HAVE NO VOICE AT ALL!!!....If these controls are not instituted and the offending people are simply removed, then the danger that history will repeat itself still will always be there. Unfortunately, history did repeat itself at the Blubarbarian Adult Learning Center, but the explanation of how that happened will have to wait for awhile. I have an Oregonian waiting for my St Anne's Orphanage story. (To be continued...)