By now, you've probably read about (and shaken your head over) the pre-K teacher in Okemah, Oklahoma, who forced Zayde Sands, a four-year-old southpaw, to write with his right hand. You might even be aware that the grade school where this took place is called Oakes Elementary. But it's unlikely you know who this Oakes fellow was...
My grandfather, Cecil E. Oakes, and my mother, who was left-handed.
By now, you've probably read about (and shaken your head over) the pre-K teacher in Okemah, Oklahoma, who forced Zayde Sands, a four-year-old southpaw, to write with his right hand, because, his teacher told him, left-handedness is "evil" and "sinister." News reports have it that the teacher even sent the child home with an article that describes being left-handed as "unlucky," "evil," and "sinister" "For example," the article is said to state, "the devil is often portrayed as left-handed."
You might even be aware that the grade school where this took place is called Oakes Elementary. But it's unlikely you know who this Oakes was.
Cecil Everett Oakes was my grandfather, and there's a school named after him not because he was president of the United States or an astronaut or a luminary in the fields of science, literature or politics. He was a man who devoted his time, his energy, his talent and his passion to the education and edification of young people.
Cecil was born October 22, 1902, in a town called Weatherford in Oklahoma Territory (statehood was still six years away at the time). As a child, his family lived in Rankin, Oklahoma, where Cecil's two brothers were born, Hemphill, Texas, and Pauls Valley, Oklahoma. He graduated from the University of Oklahoma in Norman and entered the field of education.
He served as the high school principal and school superintendent in Paden, Oklahoma, from 1925 to 1938, when he was hired by the town of Okemah, just 16 miles away, to serve as superintendent of schools. He would remain in that position for 31 years, until his retirement in 1969.
His lengthy tenure as Okemah's school superintendent suggests that he must have done a fine job; the fact that, when he announced his retirement, the people of Okemah elected to name a newly erected grade school after him indicates that he had earned the admiration, respect and gratitude of the community.
So I took it hard when I read the aforementioned story of fear, superstition and close-mindedness prevailing in at least one corner of Okemah. It was bad enough that someone was hired to educate young minds whose own thinking is seemingly stuck in another century (and not a particularly recent one), but it stung even worse to learn that Okemah's current school superintendent, the man who currently holds the position in which my grandfather served with honor, distinction and passion for so long, took no action to discipline or even correct the teacher.
It's a common idiom that suggests a deceased individual would be spinning in his grave if he knew what's going on in an arena with which he was associated when he was alive, and it certainly applies here. Such close-mindedness, such misjudgment, such backward thinking–not to mention the shaming of a student over something he has no control of whatsoever–would have appalled my grandfather.
Cecil Oakes believed in his students–in their abilities, in their unique gifts, in their futures–and they knew it. His was a positive and encouraging approach to education (and to discipline, when necessary). Not that he was a soft touch; he expected his students to comport themselves in appropriate fashion and to work hard in pursuit of their dreams, and he didn't hesitate to confront them when they stepped out of line, but it was because he saw the best in them that he held them to a high standard. He recognized what they were capable of achieving, and he wanted nothing more than for them to recognize it, too.
Cecil Oakes loved his grandchildren. He was a warm, welcoming, and often hilarious presence in our childhoods; no kid ever felt more loved, protected and supported by a grandparent than we did. He accepted us as we were, for whom we were, and I can only assume he did the same for the thousands of students whose education he oversaw during his career of 44 years.
He was a man of his time, but he wasn't stuck in the past. He was always open to new ideas, new approaches. It's a purely anecdotal remembrance, but I don't recall him ever speaking ill of "these kids today," even though he certainly saw some significant cultural changes over the course of his career, even in the small towns where he worked and resided. Never did I hear him denounce the music we listened to, the television programs we watched, the length of our hair–and this from a man who wore a jacket and tie even on the weekends, because he felt he should.
I remember with great fondness accompanying Cecil on Saturday mornings to the high school where his office was. He usually had some paperwork to catch up on, but we were allowed to enjoy the strange pleasures of an empty school. We'd make nonsensical "announcements" over the PA system, take off our shoes and go sliding down the highly polished floors of the school corridors, marvel over the odd creatures preserved in formaldehyde in the science classroom, and even get to shoot baskets in the gymnasium (not that any of us, at that age, had any hopes of sinking a basket). These are among my most treasured childhood memories, and Cecil's at the heart of all of them.
Cecil Oakes was the kind of man every child deserves to have overseeing his or her education, from pre-K through their senior year of high school. That young Zayde was failed by both his teacher and the school district's superintendent is heartbreaking and maddening. Here's hoping that he is in no way held back by their close-minded views and superstitious, ill-informed pronouncements. May he grow up to be the best he can be, just as the man after whom his school is named would have wished for him to be.