In high school, I took remedial English class – maybe it wasn’t remedial , exactly , but without my knowing it , I had signed up for some kind of English class for juvenile delinquents .
Well m is wasn’t supposed to be a class for juvenile delinquents , but somehow everybody but me knew that was who it was for ; maybe it was listed in the course catalog as being for those students in the commercial program , the general program , whatever it was called to distinguish it from the academic precollege preparation program .
But anyway , on the first day I figured out who this course was directed at : The student were surly and wore leather jackets , and the girls all had shag hairdos as opposed to straight and ironed , which was how the “nice” girls wore their hair .
Knowing me , I must have signed up for that class because it indicated that no work would be involved . And I was prepared for the worst , because somehow , having moved and switched schools so many times , I had been stuck in juvenile delinquent classes before .
The juvenile delinquent classes generally meant angry teachers and angry students who never read the books assigned and never spoke in class , which was no wonder because the teacher was generally contemptuous and sneering .
But this class ended up being different ; the main thing was that the teacher , Mr. Paul Steele , didn’t seem to know he was teaching students who weren’t supposed to be able to learn . He assigned the books , --by Sherwood Anderson , by Hemmingway , by Melville – and somehow by the date everyone had read them and was willing to talk about them .