God Bless You, Mrs. Barth
“Everything I ever really needed to know I learned in kindergarten,” a popular writer once claimed.
Not me.
Oh, I certainly learned some hard lessons back then, playing in the sandbox. But for me, slow learner that I am, the most important lessons came much later in life. In high school.
Most of these came from my high school English teacher, Rose Barth. Mrs. Barth (wasn’t it wonderful when married women were called “Mrs.?” So much more respect they had then) was not only a brilliant teacher of literature, she was tough. “Break it up,” she snapped one day to me and my high school sweetheart, Scott, as we stood by our lockers entwined in teenaged embrace. We obeyed. No one dared disobey Mrs. Barth.
Among other virtues, Rose Barth and her colleagues in the English Department made us, even the most sullen and resistant, read great books—scads of them. ... Read More...
