Tuesday Voice: Missionary Kid

My schooling

By Vic Midyett

As I was born in India, the first language I spoke was Bengali, one of over 800 different languages and dialects in India. When it came time for me to start school, Mom and Dad taught me to speak English.
    My first three years of scholastic learning (kindergarten, first and second grades) was via the Calvert Correspondence System mailed to us from America. I was totally in love with Jill from “Jack and Jill” and adored “See Spot Run.”
    When I was eight years old, it was becoming too politically dangerous for us to stay in Assam, so we moved to Hyderabad in central India, Dad took up the post of dean of a small Bible college.
    For third grade, I was put in an all-boy’s school called Baldwin Boys. I was only there about two months before they re-enlisted me into a co-ed school called, Bishop Cotton. The reason was that I was being beaten up by my peers almost daily at Baldwin Boys, where I was the only white boy. Bishop Cotton had not only girls, but also many Anglo-Indians, mixed-race kids. It was wonderful! I was in love with my teacher, who memory tells me was in her early twenties.

The Indian standard of schooling was quite different from the Western standard. For instance, they strongly emphasized mathematics. In order to pass the third grade, I had to know, by heart, the times table to 20. (Do you know what 18 times 19 equals?) Dad paid my teacher to tutor me after school. She was very pretty and gave me cookies. I took my time learning from her, but I passed the first half of the year!
    The difference in the two countries’ standards gave me an advantage going to school later. For instance, when we returned to Mason Hall, Tennessee (where my dad was from) on furlough during my high school years, I was placed in two grades. I did some of my subjects in ninth grade and some in tenth. This made for a much larger variety of friends. (As a matter of interest, I also did the second half of third grade in Mason Hall School, which dad attended but sadly is no more.)
    After returning to India, my sister (Anita) and I were sent on a two-day train ride to an American standard boarding school in North India. It was in the town of Nasik, not far from Bombay, now called Mumbai. The standard there was, to say the least, incredible. Now, when security questions are required on a website, I use the name of my favorite teacher there, who demanded absolute excellence from all her students. I also learned to raise one eyebrow the way she would occasionally.

To summarize, in 13 years of schooling (including kindergarten), I was in 12 different schools in five different countries, finally finishing high school, once again through correspondence, while working as a deck hand on the Logos, a non-denominational mission ship. Actually, 12 different schools in seven years, plus five years of correspondence courses.
    I must say unequivocally, that my scholastic history in so many different settings and cultures is something I would never trade. It taught me so very much about people of very different ways. Naturally, I didn’t think so at the time.

Copyright © 2014 by Vic Midyett