[Sidenote: Irresponsibility]
When Goldie Johnson reached the eighth grade her mother often remarked
to a neighbor,
“Goldie is in the graduating class now. She doesn’t have to take care of
little Joseph all the time. She is getting too big to be kept at
dish-washing and dusting, too.”
Goldie’s reaction to this treatment by her mother was carried into the
school where her independence and antipathy to authority were shown in
her determination to escape hard work. Accordingly, she repeatedly
failed to hand in the required home work in arithmetic.
The teacher, Miss Cook, undertook to command her to do her work. She
failed to comply. Disobedience and carelessness were shown in other
lines of work. Goldie failed to complete the eighth grade work. She
refused to go to school the following year. The result was that her
education ended here. She would have gone to high school had she not
been allowed to fail in the eighth grade.