Pellissippi State preps student for GED—65 years after grammar school

“I like history, I like science. I'm not in love with math,” the 77-year-old Ferguson confesses after class as she pencils in a find-the-hidden-word puzzle.

Ferguson may not be great at math, but she is nonetheless impressive: It was 65 years ago that she was forced to drop out of grammar school. But since August, she is back in the classroom, learning math and reading and writing and social science and history. Ferguson and most of her peers, not one of them younger than 50, are studying to earn their GED. They are instructed once each week by Joe Morin, assistant coordinator of the Adult Education Program at Pellissippi State. Morin comes to their home, Summit Towers Apartments in downtown Knoxville. The 278 units of Summit Towers are occupied by residents who are 62-plus, handicapped or disabled, and typically on a fixed income, says Manager Jan Hall.

GED stands for the “General Educational Development” Testing Service, the American Council on Education area that develops and distributes the GED test. The GED provides the opportunity for students who don't finish high school to later earn their diploma. One out of seven high school diplomas issued in the U.S. annually comes from passing the GED test, and approximately 860,000 adults worldwide take the GED each year. Comedian Bill Cosby, Delaware governor Ruth Ann Minner and actor Christian Slater are just a few of the 860,000.

Ferguson and her peers weren't thinking numbers or celebrities when they sat around the table in the community room at Summit Towers and voted to pursue the GED.

Ruby Elmore, a Summit Towers resident who already earned a high school diploma but nonetheless attends class regularly, states the motivation simply: “Every time you learn something it improves you.” Ruby Elmore's mother, Ruby Moore, has a fourth- or fifth-grade education and uses a wheelchair. She too is in the class.

About Elmore, Ferguson says, “Ruby would make a good teacher. She's good at explaining things.”

About herself, she says, “I've always wanted to do it [earn a diploma], but I didn't have a chance till now.”

Josephine Ferguson was born and raised in Depression-era Harlan, Kentucky, one of five children.

“Dad made tables and chairs, handles for tools,” she recalled. “He delivered freight with mules. He knew a lot of stuff about the mountains.” The family got by on what he reaped from the land and what staples they bought in Cumberland.

When Ferguson's father died, she was “goin' on 9” and her situation changed dramatically and for the worse, she says.

“They called what he had a 'leakage of the heart.' After he died, all of us children were scattered.” Ferguson completed sixth grade, then was taken out of school.

“I stayed with a cousin some, and an uncle. I went to work, washing—on a washboard [her emphasis]—ironing, taking care of children. My mother moved down around London. Mother wasn't all there; she had a brain tumor and liver cancer.” Josephine's mother and three siblings ultimately went to the “poor farm,” she says, and her brother died there when he was about 20.

Ferguson married the first time at 16, for two years. She was married to the father of her children about 25 years and was still in her 40s when he died. Ferguson, her neatly cropped hair long since turned white, spent most of the time before and since his death raising four girls and working whatever job would make ends meet. (All four daughters, it should be known, completed high school, one is taking classes to finish college, and one earned a college degree and teaches kindergarten.)

“I worked in a factory a total of 20 years, sewing parts of pants. I've worked in home health care. I worked in a children's home, in a school with little kids—washing their hands, teaching them other skills....

“I'm not bitter about it. Only thing I was bitter about was that I got taken out of school. They could've got me an education.”

Residents of Summit Towers converge in the community room every day, sometimes twice a day, says Jan Hall. There, they take part in various group activities: lunch (served Monday-Friday), ceramics, exercise, church services, bingo, creative writing, movies. It was Ferguson—her easygoing manner seems to make her a natural leader among the other strong women in the GED group—who brought up the idea of earning a diploma at one of the gatherings.

Ten of the original 14 residents who began the class in August are still with it.

“Some of 'em got scared,” Ferguson said. Not surprising. The Bill of Rights, lowest common denominators and representative government can be pretty intimidating. Scared or not, those serious about earning the GED have to learn them all, and learn them well.

In fact, according to the GED Testing Center, people who obtain scores high enough to earn a GED credential outperform at least 40 percent of today's high school seniors.

GED instructor Joe Morin explains it another way. “The GED test is given to high school students graduating in good standing,” he said. “The GED passing score is set at 40 percent above the lowest score the high school students achieved.”

For those interested in improving their lot in life, the studying and the passing are worth it: The vast majority of employers in this country give GED graduates the same consideration as traditional high school graduates when it comes to hiring, salary and advancement opportunity, the GED Testing Center says.

Morin agrees. “Earning a GED instead of a high school degree is becoming more commonplace. Most employers accept it. I see more older students—students in their 40s and 50s—than before. I think it's a result of downsizing in employment. They worked someplace for 20 years and lost their job, and they need it for a new job.”

By and large, the students at Summit Towers are not in it for a job, better or otherwise. Ferguson's pride in having learned the difference between a possessive pronoun and an object pronoun attests to that.

“They're in it for different reasons,” said Morin. Morin has worked in adult education for 25 years. At Pellissippi State, he has been coaching students to take the GED test for four years. “GED students at, nearing or beyond retirement age are in it to achieve a milestone in their own life, or to help their grandchildren study.” (Ferguson says she never expected to be studying side by side with her ninth-grade granddaughter, but that's exactly what she does now.)

“When you have anybody over 65 working to earn their GED,” said Morin, “it's atypical. When you get a group that averages 55, like at Summit Towers, it's a unique situation.

“Summit Towers came about because we're always looking to the community to branch out. The activities coordinator there contacted Joan Newman.” Newman is director of Pellissippi State's Learning and Testing Center. The center coordinates Adult Education, including adult literacy, basic and workplace skills, preparation for the ACT and a variety of other placement tests, GED preparation, and English as a second language.

Pellissippi State's Adult Education program offers its services free to the community, and has since it began in 1992. Much of Adult Education's support is through grant funding from the state Office of Adult Education. The award-winning program serves approximately 1,000 people a year, and that number is on the increase, says Newman.

“If I had to pay for it, I wouldn't be able to,” said Ferguson, a resident of Summit Towers for 17-plus years. That, no doubt, is true. But even if Ferguson weren't able to attend the GED classes, it's a good bet she would be doing something else constructive.

“I volunteer for Second Harvest. I've been a foster grandparent. [She humbly confesses to having received the Foster Grandparents program's Grandparent of the Year award.] I want to go back into that program,” she said. She also exercises once a week and attended another class to learn computers.

At only three years away from her 80th year, Ferguson is obviously not scared of continuing to expand her horizons. Quite the contrary, she seems determined to keep on learning, to keep on forging ahead.

“I'm writing an autobiography—have been for three or four years. I want to leave my family a history of me. For me, [learning and doing new things] keeps my mind occupied; it's something to look forward to. To know that I can do it....”

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