Recent posts have gotten me thinking about some of the stories my mother told me about teaching. Seeing that picture of Ruth Freitas helped me remember that she and my mom were good friends, and socialized outside of school--and I know why. When I was attending schools in Moraga, my mom and several other women teachers were in their mid-forties. They were part of whats called The Greatest Generation, who grew up during the depression and started working, like my mom, right out of college just as WWII began. Mom used to tell me how the schools were run by all women, since the men of her age were either in the service or in war-related industries. She used to say how well the all-women schools ran, and how they did all the work and maintenance themselves. She also used to tell me how annoying it was, and how pissed off some of the teachers got, when the men came home after the war and took away their jobs. Mom and Ruth had gone through the same thing and it bonded them. I like to think that those women were the genesis of the Womens Liberation movement, although it was their daughters who did a lot of the heavy lifting for that movement. My granddaughter takes it for granted now, but she does know that her great-grandmother was in the vanguard of that movement. We owe them an enormous debt.
Posted on: Sat, 20 Sep 2014 20:30:59 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015