Dave Drove in the Ditch

 

Restoring the foundation of academic excellence in US schools

 

Of all the components of the executive function of the mind, one stands out crucial for children to learn: self-regulation. This is built primarily by imitation in trusted relationships, where emotional control and collective action are learned in meeting a common need. Since creation, this mental function built strong families, tribes, and nations. High rates of incarceration in the United States today reflects children's growth with deficiencies in this essential brain function. It’s at the core of brain development needed for academics, and for human life itself.

 

In the early 40’s, military psychologists were concerned about this capacity among recruits. They designed a simple test of self-regulation to be given children, to predict fitness for platoon loyalty. The test was repeated a few years ago, and researchers compared the results with those of the 1940’s. They found that 5-year-olds today are about where 3-year-olds were in the 40’s, in self-regulation.

 

It’s remarkable that this function among our young has been declining in our nation. Why? Is it that we have progressively dismantled engagement with real life risks among our youth since the last century? Ask any old farmer around in the 4-score age range if he remembers riding a bus to high school. Were students driving his bus then? I can testify, that was the dominant practice in rural America in the 50’s (look up The Mountaineer, “Student Bus Drivers”). 

 

After school, in a rainstorm April of 1960, mud splattered my windshield from the vehicle ahead as the rain joined in with wipers opening a smeared patch to see the mud on the road ahead. Visibility opened just enough to cause me panic. Looming at me and my bus, a cement truck was taking the middle of the road. I slowed and moved as near the grass ditch as I dared. The truck passed within inches. I took a breath and set the steering wheel to aim back to the solid crown of slick mud in the center. I slowly engaged the clutch. What I dreaded happened. Instead of moving forward, all six wheels slid for the ditch. I clutched, the rear wheels stopped turning, but it was too late. The entire bus lazily tipped at a crazy angle, and gently stopped.  I’m sure I joined in with the screams of some thirty high school students behind my driver’s seat.

 

The screams morphed into teasing as it was clear the only outcome was the crazy angle of the bus the cradled in the grassy shallow ditch: “Dave drove in the ditch, Dave drove in the ditch!” The chant rose from the back of the bus and quickly became hilarious.  I don’t remember who said it first, might have been me. “Well, come on, lets push it out!” Everyone clambered out the rear door of the bus, since the front door was jammed against the grass. We took off our shoes, dug our toenails into the grass for grip, and started a rhythmic rocking of the whole huge bus. We could rock it! “If we can rock it, we can move it,” was my thought, as driverless, the bus started creeping. I was just about to jump back in the driver’s seat and start it up….

 

It was a November day in 1959 that our student bus driver, Rich, got a citation driving his car. He could no longer legally drive the route. My dad reminded me that we lived at the end of the route, and I might be appointed to drive. I was. In a week I passed the test for a chauffer’s license (no CDL then), and began driving the bus to school every day, arriving home in time for chores. There was no “adult” on the bus, ever that I remember. We were expected to self-regulate, and generally did well. This was an exception.

 

He was on the bus, probably started the chant to embarrass me. I know he joined in rocking the bus. As it became clear we could actually push the bus, either me or another student shouted, “Let Rich drive it out.” Anyway, he was the one who got under the wheel, started it creeping forward as our rocking kept rear wheels alternately gripping the grass and the strip of gravel at the road edge as the bus started in motion.

 

Rich drove it back onto the road, and teasingly took off, but stopped so we could climb in.   I was back in the driver’s seat less than 15 minutes after we hit the ditch, and we were on the road home. I don’t remember telling anyone about this until writing it this week. The remarkable thing then was not that high school upper class students drove bus routes in rural America then. No, that was normal, as far as I know. The remarkable thing was that we, all the students on that bus when the need was obvious, jumped out into the mud to rock it into motion and get it back on the road.

 

When will we return to seeking mutual benefit with teenagers in useful risk-taking, and transcend the litigious culture that has arisen around our schooling in Montana and America?