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TI: Going back to school, earlier you told me about this interesting sort of, I guess, concept called the "Opportunity Class." Can you describe that and how you got involved and what that was?

MT: I was going Fifteenth Street School and I was in A5, the second semester fifth grade, when, I didn't know what it was, I found out later it was IQ test, and what they did was trying to start a class of high achievers and they decided to take two people from a certain class, grade, a boy and a girl who scored the highest in that particular IQ test and put 'em into a class. Now, this was a class not only of your grade but lower grades. I happened to, and this girl from my school, we were A5. We were the second semester fifth grade. Then you had B5s and down to the second grade, so we had this wide range of students in this one class and the idea here was trying to develop other interests other than, because regular schoolwork was relatively easy, so to keep us interested and occupied they would pick hobbies and different things, go on a lot of field trips, different things like that. And that's how we were placed in this opportunity class at a place called Leland Street School, which is far from where we lived. My folks, I had to walk to the school and they said, "Gee, that's too far," so they decided that they'll move. And they couldn't find a place nearby and they ended up being even further away, like a couple miles away, and about a mile and a half, I guess, I would have to walk from that place all the way to school. And then finally we found a place nearby, and so we moved over there and I went to that class. And I, being the oldest, we were the only ones that could do certain kinds of things because other people had not advanced. One of the hobbies was a night map, astronomy was one of the things that they wanted us to get interested, so I read about it and it was a lot of fun and I memorized the constellations and the stars, Betelgeuse, Antares, all those kind of stars, the big stars and dwarfs and all the kind of things that, kids like those things, would be interested. And then they started to put a October sky map up on pulleys made out of cloth, put stars where the constellations were, then pulleys would pull it up onto the thing. Well, it happens that I was the only one that could do extrapolations, from the little tiny map to that, so I ended up laying the whole map out and then we put it up there, and we also rigged up the pulley, but most people could handle that fairly easy. We did that. It was, so I had fun. Went to see trains, and I might still have a picture of the class going to the train station.

TI: But it's a very interesting concept. So it was very experiential, a lot of field trips, creating things, But, but taking essentially the brightest kids and exposing them to this.

MT: When you say brightest kids, there could've been someone that, in there that could've been not very bright. By that I mean they took the two highest scores and put 'em in there. But the one kid could get the highest score, but they came from a disadvantaged school. They didn't pick, they did not pick anybody from a disadvantaged school, by the way. They took it from the better school, but if it was that you could have someone who wasn't too bright but scored the highest and be in our class. And there could've been five girls better than me in my school, but they didn't get to go, four didn't get to go. I got to go. And so it wasn't really scientifically or properly, I think that it was just an experiment that they were doing.

TI: But conceptually, they did do something like an IQ test and say, okay, so this will be the measure of the smartest kids and we'll get them together, we'll not do the traditional classroom.

MT: Yes. I'm sure that if you weren't gifted you couldn't get in. You had to be at least gifted, I would suspect. I would suspect. Well, in any class you're gonna have some gifted kids, anyway. Some, most class would have, unless you're at a disadvantaged neighborhood, you may not have anybody who's gifted because of the educational background.

TI: Well, and I'm guessing for you that, that actually worked well in the sense that you're very, you mentioned kind of being rebellious, being very vocal, but probably this more, this nontraditional way of learning actually worked for you.

MT: Yeah, I had fun. I just thought that, afterwards I thought, gee, if we had concentrated on schooling I would've been way ahead at school because I, we would've got a lot of time to do it, instead of in a regular, traditional classroom you had to wait for the, for the poorer ones to catch up with you.

TI: So yeah, sure, if you were in traditional you would have excelled in what they teach in school. What do you think you learned by this experience? I mean, are there some things that you picked up or, or did that you think, yeah, that you learned?

MT: I really learned what they do today. They put people in the same grade in the same class, all the, all the, let's see, the gifted kids would all be in a class together so they compete against gifted kids. And so they feed on each other and do even better, and they don't, they may have other things they could do, but it almost seemed like they were keeping us to do these other activities like make bookends. With the copper, I drew a picture of a dog and I hit it with a hammer and raised it and put it on a bookend and made wooden bookends. Now, what does that got to do? I, although, because if somebody was not very skilled, didn't have the skill with their hands, they would not, they would not probably learn much, except they made a mess of things. So I think by putting, and that was to help the younger kids so they could compete, but if they got people in the same grade, I think it would have been better. The other thing, though, to my benefit was, came from Japan, was in Terminal Island, I was not very good at sports. I didn't know the rules. The kids had learned rules and I didn't learn it. I didn't know how to play baseball. I knew about it, but I didn't know the rules. When I went to this school, the younger kids taught me how, so I never became a star, but I became proficient in it. I would make the team, but I would not be the star kind of a thing, instead of being the last guy chosen or the next to last guy chosen because I didn't know what to do. That's, that was the biggest benefit that I received on that thing was suddenly I could play sports, baseball, basketball, whatever have you.

TI: Or how about group dynamics? I'm thinking in terms of you being older, you had to in some way mentor the youngers and whether or not that was a useful experience in terms of going into the future, thinking of how you worked in groups, were you ever influenced by what you did back in elementary school?

MT: I think so. I think so, because you had to look after these kids and make sure things were going well, or if they're having problems to help them and so forth. And so you feel good you're helping them, you're teaching them, you're mentoring them. You feel good about it, so it nurtures that part of it for you, and I think that was a good thing that happened. No question about it.

<End Segment 15> - Copyright © 2010 Densho. All Rights Reserved.