Blue, Red, and White Birds: Classifying Students by Ability

Special note: Some of the names, composite descriptions of people, and locations in this story have intentionally been changed.

In the Fall of 1981 I entered the third grade.

In the Fall of 1981 I became a blue bird.

In the Fall of 1981, my elementary school entered into an experiment whereby students were classified according to their intellect and abilities.  Blue birds were the smartest.  Red birds were average.  White birds were below average.

In my third grade class there were three blue birds and seven white birds.  The rest of the class, the majority, were red birds.

This is our story.

September of 1981 came and went.  In many ways it was no different than the previous three Septembers.  I had advanced through Kindergarten, first grade, second grade, and now I was in the third grade.

To me, it was a time of less sleeping in.  It was a time when the mighty Eel River and Dobbyn's Creek slowed to a trickle.  It was a time when my reading club roster would be viewed and graded against the other children who participated in the summer read-off contest.  It was a time for the starchy stiff newness of a set of brand new school clothes.

It was a time I knew I would never forget, for it was at this time that I became a rebel.

Mrs. Dauncy, whom everyone referred to as Connie, was our third grade teacher.  On our first day back from the summer of my beloved sleeping and reading cycle, I was tired and bored.  Connie had placed a plain looking sticker in the top left hand corner of our desks with our names printed on it.  When we entered our classroom for the first time, we were instructed to find the desk with our name on it and to sit down.  Additionally, we were told not to touch the sticker.  We were to sit and await further instructions.

I sat at my desk with my face and nose partially covered by my stretchy new shirt.  While I did not like the feel of my stiff pants and shoes, I loved my shirt.  I was sniffing it.  The starchy sweet scent of its newness was something I just couldn't get enough of.  Smelling it made me think of the day, two-weeks prior, when my mother had taken me to get new school clothes at the nearest Sears in Eureka, California, some 90 miles north of our home.  

Connie looked nervous as she introduced a new administrator.  I don't remember his name, but I do remember what I thought of him...

"Good morning, students!  How was your summer?"

There was a collective murmur heard throughout the room.  To me, it sounded more like the humming of a honey bee hive.

Someone threw a piece of trash at Helen.  It hit her on the back of her head.  She quickly spun around. Her perfectly groomed pigtails snapped about as she trained her gaze on me.  I raised my eyebrows and shoulders as I looked right back at her, signaling that I didn't know from where it had come.  When she turned around I could tell it had set her on edge.  For the remainder of our talk with Mr. Snoopy, Helen's pigtails jiggled and jittered, seemingly anticipating another volley of trash and the need to whip around to look for her assailant.  The trash never came.

I decided to think of him as Mr. Snoopy because he sounded like the teacher character in a Charlie Brown cartoon.  To me, his words sounded like hers, mainly because I didn't understand most of what he was saying, and since he wasn't a she, I thought it would be more interesting to think of him as Charlie Brown's side-kick, Snoopy.

He continued with his speech,"wah-wah, wah-wah-wah-wah, kids.  And we are going to have so much fun!  Wah-wah-wah, wah-wah, wah-wah!!!"

Connie looked out at us as she gave us the first of our instructions.

"Okay, everyone.  I want you to gently remove the sticker on your desk."

We did what she instructed us to do.

When I had finished removing the sticker from my desk, it revealed another sticker.  It was a sticker in the shape of a blue bird.

Quickly, I looked around at the students to my right and to my left.  Their stickers were red.  I looked some more, most of what I was seeing was red bird stickers, but I also noticed the other blue bird stickers, and a number of white stickers, and...

Connie continued.

"Now, class.  I want you to open the top of your desks.  Inside your desk you will find a bird pin of the same color as the sticker on your desk.  You are to put on that pin and leave it on throughout the day."

Connie had a look of determination about her with her arms crossed and her rail-perfect posture.  Come to think of it, she always looked as if she were standing at attention, military style, awaiting her orders.  She'd also just permed her hair.  I almost didn't recognize her that first day when I walked into the classroom.  She was wearing an unusually oversized pair of hexagonally shaped eyeglasses with pink-tinted lenses.  Her face was framed by a tight, extremely curly and glossy permanent wave.  I learned years later that this hairstyle was called a jheri curl.  Her fashionable hairstyle contrasted sharply with her clothing, usually very cheerful flower-print dresses, resembling the daywear of our former first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt of the 1930s.

I fastened the pin to my shirt.  The pin was nothing more than a blue paper cut-out of a bird with a ball-point sewing needle to hold it in place.

"Wah-wah, wah-wah, wah-okay kids, it's time for recess!"  Mr. Snoopy was dismissing us for a recess.  Thank goodness!  Helen looked at me again.  She had a red pin.

To the playground we went.  Most of the class went to the jungle gym, a metal iron maiden torture monstrosity shaped roughly into the form of a space shuttle.  It would be decades before this death trap was finally removed and replaced with something that actually is kid friendly.

I took to the hillside overlooking the playground.  The hillside was partially shaded with a row of cottonwood trees.  The hillside upon which these trees grew was carpeted with lovely wild chamomile.  I don't know how the chamomile got there, like the cottonwood trees they were not native to Northern California.

From my vantage point on the hill, I could see everyone on the playground.  Again, most everyone was a red bird, but I counted... there were seven white birds.  Jake and Rebecca, the other two blue birds, approached me.

Jake said, "have you noticed anything weird about all this?"

I looked at him and Rebecca.  I replied, "yes, the white birds are kids we know aren't that smart."

Rebecca gasped and said, "you're right!"

Behind us, Connie was calling to us, "Orval, Jake, Rebecca!  I need to speak with you, please."

We escorted Connie to the special room.  We called it the special room because we knew this was the place where other teachers took students for special testing.  They would show us objects and ask us to describe them.  Sometimes these tests took hours to complete.  Today, Connie had an assignment for us.

"Now, you must know the three of you are very special," Connie said.

Rebecca replied, "Yeah, we're not retarded."

"Now, Rebecca, that's not a very nice thing to say," Connie gasped as she replied.  Then, she continued, "I need the three of you to know that I have such confidence in your abilities.  You're going to be helping me to help out some of the other students."

I was sitting closest to Connie.  She smelled like canned pineapple.  Not pleasant.

Connie continued, "you are all going to revisit your vowels and consonants.  You remember this work from second grade, right?"  We all sighed, sounding like a group of honey bees droning for our work at the hive again.  She continued, "here's the bucket of cards that you worked with last year.  you are to pair off with the white birds in class, and you are to go through these cards with them for the next hour. Okay?"

I didn't know what I was going to do, but I knew this was wrong.

*    *    *

After recess, we went back to the classroom.  Jake, Rebecca and I had been moved to the front of the class.  Behind us were the red birds.  At the back of the class were the white birds, only the white birds sat at a single table.  Their things had been placed in cubbies behind the large table at the back of the room.

Connie spoke, "Okay blue birds, you know the drill."  She handed Jake, Rebecca and I each a bucket of cards.

As we walked to the back of the room, the red birds followed us with their eyes.

Connie clapped her hands to get their attention, "okay, class.  The rest of us are going to focus on the new reading textbook.  Helen, can you assist me with these books?"

At the back of the classroom, Jake, Rebecca and I stared at the white birds.

I was the first to speak,"okay guys, we're supposed to pair off and start working on these cards."

The white birds stared back at us.

Rebecca took the lead, "Orval's right. Okay, here we go."  Rebecca took to a couple of the white birds, helping them arrange their chairs so they faced her, and then she started laying out cards from her bucket.  Jake and I followed her lead.  

As we started into the cards, it quickly became obvious that we needed to change our delivery.  It was clear to the three of us that we were going too fast.  One of the white birds started to cry.  I looked at her and said, "don't cry, Laura.  We'll get through this."

As Laura continued to cry, her white bird pin slipped to the floor.  I picked up the pin and the piece of paper.  I fastened it back to her shirt.

It was in this moment that I knew I had to do something.

I stood up and walked to the supply cabinet behind us.  I took out a piece of white paper.  I removed the blue bird from my shirt and used it to trace its shape onto the white paper.  I repeated this two more times.  Then, I quickly cut out the white bird shapes from the sheet of paper.

Connie was engrossed in her talk with the red birds.

I turned to Jake and Rebecca and said, "take off the blue bird and pin this white bird onto your shirt.

Rebecca murmured under her breath, "I'm not retarded!"

"Rebecca," I said, "that's not the point.  This is wrong and you know it. We need to put these on and go back to our desks."

Jake said, "Orval's right.  This is wrong. We can't do this."

We walked slowly back to our desks.  As we approached the front of the class, Connie stopped talking.  The red birds had their eyes on us again, watching us as we calmly sat down at our desks at the front of the class.  Everyone could see that we had white birds pinned to our shirts.

Connie approached me.  With a raised voice, she said, "what is the meaning of this!?"  She was so angry, "You, you, and you, come with me!"  She pointed to the three of us.  We followed her to the special room.

When we arrived, I was the first to speak, "I want to speak with my parents."

Connie said, "absolutely, let me help you with that!"  Her voice quaked and tremored as she spoke.  She brought the desk phone from the connecting office into the special room, slamming it down on the table in front of us.  Rebecca started to cry.  Fortunately, the telephone cord was long enough to get the phone all the way into the special room.

I dialed my father and spoke into the telephone handset, "dad, something terrible has happened at this school.  Remember when we were talking about segregation?  Yeah, well, they just did that with the retarded kids in my class and they want to make me and Jake and Rebecca into their keepers.  Please call Rebecca and Jake's parents.  We need all of you to come up here right now."

I was looking at Connie as I spoke.  Her face appeared to turn a paler shade of white.

My father raised his voice on the phone.  We could all hear him screaming through the handset receiver.

I turned to Connie.  Pointing at her with the handset, I said, "he wants to speak with you."