How Dolly Parton’s Teacher Humiliated Her—’I Felt Completely Worthless and Vile’

Dolly Parton had a bad experience at school that tainted her whole education experience. She took some crayons so she could color at home and the teacher made a spectacle of her as punishment. 

Why Dolly Parton took some crayons from school 

At Parton’s school, there were colorful pieces of chalk for the teacher to write on the chalkboard as well as crayons for the students to color with. Parton was drawn to the art supplies but felt too shy to color with them at school. 

“If I could just get those crayons home where nobody could see me and I wasn’t embarrassed, I could paint something real nice,” she thought to herself, as written in her first memoir Dolly: My Life and Other Unfinished Business.

So she took a box of crayons and two pieces of chalk when everyone was at recess.   

“I hid them inside my shirt when nobody was looking,” she wrote. “I put them in a hollow tree trunk near the school yard, planning to come back for them after school was out.”

But one of Parton’s peers saw her hide the art supplies and told on her to the teacher. 

Parton was scared of her teacher

Parton was born in January, so she started school at just five years old. From the beginning, she was afraid of her teacher. 

“The teacher was a big man, and he used to whip the boys with a razor strop,” she wrote. “He would stand at the front of the class and wave that big leather strop around and say, ‘You be good to me and I’ll be good to you!’ I guess he was intentionally trying to scare us. It worked.”

To young Parton, the teacher looked like a giant. She’d watch in terror as his razor strop sliced through the air just above her head.  

“That was my first experience with school, and it scared me to death,” she wrote.

Getting caught

After school, as per her plan, Parton snuck over to the tree she’d hid the crayons and chalk in. But her teacher was there waiting for her, razor strop in hand. 

“I closed my eyes and waited for the thick piece of leather to come down on me, but it didn’t. I would have preferred being beaten to what happened next,” she wrote. 

Parton’s teacher called all of the other kids over. 

“They watched as he took hold of my shoulders and shook me,” wrote Parton. “’Do you all see what Dolly has done? She has stolen!’ he railed. I was terrified and embarrassed. The teacher made such a big thing out of it. I felt completely worthless and vile.”

The “Coat of Many Colors” singer got in trouble when she got home as well. Her parents were big on the “no stealing” rule the Bible taught. So she was “harshly punished.” 

“That whole experience gave me a negative feeling toward school that I never really got over,” she wrote.