(In the picture, bottom left with the beard is Rich Widman, next to Rich wearing the red shirt is Chad Dockter, in the center is me – Mel Olson, the guy on the right is Trevor Jares and the woman is Shelly nee Sorenson)
The quote, “I never let schooling interfere with my education” is often attributed to Mark Twain, and I’m sure he used it in the many humorous talks he gave while traveling across this country, but it was his contemporary – the novelist Grant Allen that actually said it. The point is simple, education doesn’t happen only in school.
Lots of people get an education, both positively and negatively, through experience. In the work place there is still on the job training, including the old fashion apprenticeship through journeyman route that some professions still use. Abraham Lincoln never went to law school, instead he “read” law. He learned to be a lawyer by literally reading law books. Lincoln was certified as a lawyer after being found to be a person of “good moral character” and passing an oral quiz in front of the Illinois Supreme Court. Life, in general, is an education for all of us.
So, I understand that formal schooling isn’t everything. I accept that people can learn from others by example, for instance by watching tutorial videos on YouTube. However, I am appalled at what education has become in the last few years.
I was a teacher in the Mitchell school district for thirty-six years and began my career at the start of the 1982 school year. I was honored to be invited to the 40th reunion of the Mitchell High School Class of 1984. I was told that 208 students graduated that year, with 19 classmates passing away in the intervening years with just over 70 people returning for the reunion. I attended the get together held at Blarney’s where I reconnected with a number of former students of mine.
The 1984 Homecoming King and Queen were there, Joe Krall and Shelly Sorenson, as was the top Junior Prom Magazine Seller Trevor Jares, who also happened to be a stud on the high school golf team. One member of my tennis team (I was the Head Boys’ and Girls’ Tennis Coach from 1982-1984), Travis Peters, was also in attendance. We had a great time reconnecting. I had a wonderful chat with Chad Dockter, who was on the basketball team back then. I think MHS won the championship that year. I can’t remember if it began in 1984 or not, but MHS had a run of three state basketball championships in a row in the mid 1980’s. Christine Bauer came up and reminisced. She is now a published author and lives in Minneapolis. Danette Fitzler did some catching up and told me she was celebrating her 40th wedding anniversary. Her husband was visiting with others one table away. (I never had her husband in class. He graduated the year before I came to Mitchell, and he didn’t know me from Adam.) Rich Widman came back for the event. He was the class clown in his high school days. I served with his Dad, Paul Widman, in the South Dakota Legislature. Paul was in the House when I was in the Senate. Troy Magnuson was present. Troy had been my student and then was my boss when we both worked at the Corn Palace together. It is a credit to Troy’s personality and professionalism that situation never seemed awkward for either of us. Kathy Opbroek and I reminisced about her time at MHS and my experiences as the neighbor across the hall from her Dad, Jerry Opbroek the Advanced Biology teacher in those days. Lots of other “kids”, now pushing 60, came up recalling good times generally at MHS and specifically as students in my class.
I told them they had been students at the best time to be in high school, unlike today. In 1984, technology consisted of overhead projectors, 16 mm film projectors, ¾ inch VCR tapes (rapidly giving way to ½ VCRs), calculators and a blackboard. Personal computers were just beginning to be marketed widely (remember Apple’s “1984” Superbowl commercial?) and while there was a “computer lab” in the school there were no laptops, no cellphones and certainly no smart phones or Internet.
In those days, obviously there were kids who cheated and others who didn’t do their work at all. However, if you were going to succeed back then, YOU had to do the work. Kids had to read the material and write the essays themselves. The encyclopedia Britannica was your “internet” in that distant time. There was no Google to consult, no “cut and paste” feature to transfer an Internet answer to a student’s assignment and no modern day Artificial Intelligence or ChatGPT to literally do all of the work for you. Kids then had to listen, pay attention and learn without the temptations and distractions of the Internet or Smart Phones to get in the way.
There was also no social media. One had to meet friends and engage in person. When you answered the phone, no one asked “Where are you?” That’s because everyone knew you were at home, after all you answered the phone. In those days the phone was connected to the wall with a cord or if cordless, within range of the home base of the phone inside your house. If there was bullying, one could escape it by leaving the school environs. Bullying didn’t follow a kid on their phone everywhere like it does today.
High school then was an experience, not merely an attendance center. In 1984, everyone went to Mitchell High School. There were a few kids who walked across the street to avail themselves of tech classes at the Mitchell Technical Institute (as it was known then) which was located in what is now called the MCTEA building, but there weren’t many of those. The “campus” was a single building – MHS. Only seniors had open campus so even lunch was a community experience for most students.
I’m exaggerating a bit, but there were pep assemblies most Friday’s. We had one for every home football game and every home Friday night basketball game. There were skits, speeches, pep talks, cheers and songs by the Marching Band always including “On Wisconsin”, the fight song of the Mitchell Kernels.
There were school dances. I can’t remember the exact chronology but over the years MHS had a “Back to School Dance”, then the Homecoming Dance, sometimes a “Holiday Dance” in December, always a “Sadie Hawkins Dance” (where the girls asked the boys for a date) around Valentine’s Day, sometimes there was a Winter Formal open to all students and then, of course, the Prom for Juniors and Seniors.
How time has flown, and my how things have changed. I began teaching at MHS in 1982, when I was 22 years old, and retired after 36 years in the classroom in 2018 at the age of 58. At the end of my career there was only the Homecoming Dance and the Prom. There was a pep assembly for Homecoming and perhaps one if a team was headed to State but that was it.
There is no “high school” anymore. You’re saying, “Mel, if there’s no high school then what is the building on Capital Street and what’s being erected across the street from it?” Yes, there is a physical structure, but the communal high school experience, as past generations of Americans have known it, is gone.
Mitchell High School is now merely an attendance center. Many students have online classes, or physically attend Mitchell Technical College or Dakota Wesleyan. In my last year of teaching there was something like 40 seniors who weren’t in the building of MHS at all. They were “students” on the rolls, but they were getting their education somewhere other than the building of MHS. The music kids were always kind of on their own, in the back of the MHS auditorium in the old days before the Performing Arts Center, but with the addition of the PAC – they are now in exile, further isolated from their fellow students. Maybe that will change with the new building “hooked” onto MCTEA.
The experience that the class of 1984 received, the education, the bonding and the memories are something that the class of 2025 will never have nor will future classes and that is a crying shame. I’m always dismayed when people use “progress” and “change” as synonyms. It is true that there is no progress without change but most change is just that, something that’s simply different and not anything that’s actually better.
We’ve seen lots of change in education over the years but precious little progress. I envy the class of 1984 and other classes that have had similar experiences. I feel badly for the class of 2025 and all that come after them, even with a sparkling new MHS. They will never know what they missed.