It all started as Teachers College Laboratory School in Sabin Hall, one of the venerable buildings that now overlooks the contrasting modern architecture of Maucker Union at the University of Northern Iowa. Many fellow students in the class of 1962 had happy recollections of attending kindergarten through third grade in the heart of the Iowa State Teachers College campus, a unique and interesting beginning of their school years.
In 1953, my classmates began fourth grade in the brand new elementary wing of the Malcolm Price Laboratory School named for the past president of I.S.T.C. and highly-respected professor of education, the sine qua non in teacher development that became known far and wide.
When I joined my class that year they talked fondly of the old school but agreed the new building was a significant improvement. In a few years, when we graduated into junior high, I got a taste of the old building when the physical education classes were held in the gym on the first floor of Sabin Hall. We had to trek up to “The Hill” since the athletic facilities of Price Lab were under construction.
When all was said and done, the entire state-of-the-art school, complete with indoor track and swimming pool, was dedicated to Dr. Price. The high school maintained its name of Teachers College High School, affectionately called TC High. It transitioned through State College High School (SCI High) in 1961 and University of Northern Iowa High School (UNI High) in 1967, following the changes of the parent institution.
Ours was an insulated life at MPLS in the late fifties and early sixties. Its district was basically the southwest corner of Cedar Falls, including contiguous rural areas. The idea was to have real-life integrity for training teachers, and, of course, to provide an excellent educational experience for its students. At this time, much like Cedar Falls, the school was lacking in students with color. Neighboring Waterloo had a ten percent population of African-Americans, but it wasn’t until later that school officials sought to bring in a diverse student body. This brings back a memory that demonstrates how a group with a deficit of experiences with people unlike themselves may have an unconscious bias.
It took place in Contemporary Problems, a senior social studies class instructed by Mr. Leland Hott. His student teacher—we had a lot of them over the years--Al Schneider had progressed enough to solo in the conduct of the class. He implemented an experiment that I will never forget. It involved an interior drawing of a city bus in which sat sundry passengers in various seats as the bus was in transit. One of the passengers was a clergyman sitting on the aisle. A black teenager sat across from him. Standing in the aisle was a white juvenile-delinquent type teenager holding a knife and threatening the clergyman. Other passengers looked on, apparently not wanting to get involved. This situation was projected on a screen at the front of our classroom, but first, Mr. Schneider picked six students to go out in the hall before viewing the bus scenario.
One student was asked to come in from the hall and study the picture for a minute and then turn away. His task was to describe what he saw to the next student to come in, and they both could not see the illustration. The second student had to pass on what she heard to the next student from the hallway, and so on, until all the students had come in and listened to the spiel. Keep in mind that the class was looking at the picture while each student, not seeing the scene, passed on what he or she thought they heard to the next one. By the sixth student, the black kid was holding the knife and threatening the man in clerical garb, and the white kid was an innocent bystander. It was an amazing display of our callow prejudices right before our eyes.
