The united American : a magazine of good citizenchip., December 01, 1923, Page 19, Image 19

DECEMBER, 1924
19
THE UNITED AMERICAN
Starting Life Anew in the American Night School
[For a quarter of a century prior to the Russian Revolu­
tion, Professor Serge V. Givotovsky, member of the former
Petrograd Imperial Academy, was a teacher at the Ksenia
Institute, otherwise known as “The Petrograd Institute
for Noble Young Ladies.” He is known to Russians also
as an editor and journalist of note. During the war he
served at the front as correspondent and artist for a Petro­
grad daily. An illuminating glimpse of his present life as
an immigrant resident of New York City is contained in
the following word sketch of scenes in a night school for
the foreign born, which recently appeared in Novoye
Russky Slovo.J
P OR TWENTY-FIVE long years I walked up and
down between the benches in my classroom at the
Ksenia Institute, observing the deportment of my
pupils and examining their note books. Then sudden­
ly, I find myself seated on a little bench in school.
Like one of my institute girls in old Petrograd, I
listen intently to what Miss Teacher has to say and
write it all down in my own note book.
Seated next to me is my twelve-year-old son, very
proud at finding himself suddenly become my fellow
student and classmate. On seats nearby are my older
son and my wife. In the same class there are some
twenty-five other students. Most of these happen to
be Germans, with a sprinkling of Japanese, Chinese,
Italian, Spanish and French men and women.
I am the oldest person in the class, and this makes
me feel rather uneasy. My relations with my younger
son, in particular, are somewhat unnatural. I catch
his sense of superiority in the class. The scamp grasps
everything quickly and remembers things so easily!
With me, at the age of fifty-four, the business of
learning English is no easy matter.
Once, when I could not make my answer to a ques­
tion put by Miss Teacher, I whispered to my boy:
“What is that word ? You know ...”
His answer came back in a whispered ultimatum.
“Will you buy me an ice cream if I tell you ?”
I was stirred to anger.
“A cuff on the ear is what you will get!”
But he was not repulsed.
“Then I will tell the teacher,” he threatened, “that
you are fighting in the classroom.”
At the end of one month in the night school an
event occurred which left me utterly discouraged. My
wife, my sons—my whole family—were promoted to
a higher class, while I, on account of my backward­
ness, was sent to a lower class.
Once more I take up my education, beginning with
an item on handwashing.
“My hands are dirty,” the blackboard legend reads.
“I walk to the sink.”
In the manual for foreign born classes the study of
English begins with this lecture on hygiene. The
symbolic meaning may be this: Wash off from your
hands everything European; begin your American
life with a clean slate.
In a moment of great depression I confided in my
young teacher the fear that I was too old to learn
English. But she only gave me a very maternal pat
on the shoulders and said:
“Why, fifty-four-year-old gentlemen are considered
boys in America. It is never too late to learn, you
know.”
Under the spell of these stimulating words I felt
more than ever like a Ksenia Institute girl, and turned
to the task of educating myself with renewed vigor.
It is now more than a month since I fell to the
charge of my new teacher and, to my own amazement,
I begin to have faith that in another year I will actu­
ally be speaking English. Already, if you please, I
am my charming teacher’s assistant. Under her
orders I am assigned to the blackboard, where I draw
pictures of sinks, baths, trees,—everything necessary
and appropriate in the practical American method of
language teaching.
Once, when one of my younger classmates tried to
make fun of my unsuccessful effort to arrange a
phrase in English, my teacher said to him:
“When this honorable gentlemen tries to learn Eng­
lish he is manifesting his respect for this country, a
thing that you have just failed to do by poking fun
at him.”
The rebuke was delivered by my teacher with such
stern severity that I felt sorry for the poor fellow.
After a boy has spent a year at college he resembles the
pictures in readymade clothing advertisements.
Laughter is the wine of life, but a good bit of it is vin ordi­
naire.
Some women even go to church for their husbands.
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