I went to a smaller high school, not tiny but small. My graduating class had 105 students. I remember all my teachers (not as many of my fellow students). My favorite teacher was Butch Schnapp.
Mr. Schnapp taught chemistry, physics and half the math classes. I’m pretty sure I’ve written before about how he would rate sneezes from 1 to 5 as a way to acknowledge them with only a minor disruption to his teaching pace.
In my physics class, he made each student buy a slide rule (I think we may have been the last class to use them because they stopped being inexpensively made) to reinforce logarithms. This put everyone on an equal footing as far as calculation ability (being a geek, I wore a scientific calculator on my belt most days). He also taught a process he called dimensional analysis. Dimensional analysis was his way of requiring the units be used in the calculation to convert from one type to another. For example, if you needed to convert 5 feet to inches, he required us to show 5 ft x (12 in/1 ft) = 60 in. The idea was that 12 inches equal 1 foot, so dividing those two equaled 1, and multiplying anything by 1 gives you back the same quantity.
Mr. Schnapp was also the senior class sponsor. We took our senior class trip to Lake of the Ozarks (doesn’t sound impressive now, but then it was a treat) and he arranged for us to leave the high school at 3:00 a.m. Years later, I asked him why he scheduled us to leave at that time. He said he knew by leaving at 3:00 a.m., most of us wouldn’t go to sleep before leaving and would sleep on the 6-hour bus ride to the destination. In this way, he stacked the deck so that he wouldn’t have to call a parent to come pick up their kid for breaking a rule on the first day. I thought his logic was insightful.
“The Levitical priests, all the tribe of Levi, shall have no portion or inheritance with Israel. They shall eat the Lord’s food offerings as their inheritance. They shall have no inheritance among their brothers; the Lord is their inheritance, as he promised them. And this shall be the priests’ due from the people, from those offering a sacrifice, whether an ox or a sheep: they shall give to the priest the shoulder and the two cheeks and the stomach. The firstfruits of your grain, of your wine and of your oil, and the first fleece of your sheep, you shall give him. For the Lord your God has chosen him out of all your tribes to stand and minister in the name of the Lord, him and his sons for all time. “And if a Levite comes from any of your towns out of all Israel, where he lives—and he may come when he desires—to the place that the Lord will choose, and ministers in the name of the Lord his God, like all his fellow Levites who stand to minister there before the Lord, then he may have equal portions to eat, besides what he receives from the sale of his patrimony.” - Deuteronomy 18:1-8 ESV
This chapter from Deuteronomy was a part of my daily devotion time. When God rescued the Israelites from Egypt, he also created a society for them to live in. I interpret this part of the law to ensure the Levitical priests didn’t have to strive for their daily needs and could devote themselves to the community worship of God. Today, we do a version of this by paying a salary to our pastors.
I have no doubt that in a perfect, sinless world, socialism would be the utopian society. We would all strive to provide for each other. Unfortunately, we live in a sin filled world and no community or country has ever successfully created a socialistic society that didn’t implode from problems.
Butch Schnapp, in my assessment, was a wonderful teacher but didn’t have that luxury of the community taking care of his needs. As a high school teacher in a small farming community, he had to supplement his salary with other work. In his case, he tried to line up enough painting jobs to supplement his income during the summer months when school wasn’t in session. I found out later that he also invested in rental real estate and other side businesses. I learned about 20 years ago that he was accidentally killed when a delivery truck lost control and backed into him in a loading dock.
He probably never knew what high regard I had for him and his teaching style. I wish I would have told him.
