Edith (Jean Stapleton): I'll never forget the first time I made pot roast for your father. Only he wasn't your father then; we was just keeping company. I invited him to my house for dinner, and I made him pot roast. And that was the first time he ever called me "dingbat."
Gloria (Sally Struthers): Well that's awful, even if he didn't like your cooking.
Edith: Oh, no, he loved it.
Michael (Rob Reiner): Then why'd he call you "dingbat?"
Edith: Well in them days, Archie was too shy to call me "sweetheart" or "darling" so he called me his "little dingbat." And you know what? Ever since then, no matter how mad he says "dingbat," I always hear a little "sweetheart" in it.
There have been times when I have taught college–level courses that I have had students who would be classified as nontraditional students — typically people who left school at some point and then returned after several years to pursue their degrees. I have long admired the courage it takes to do something like that. It can't be easy to be in class with colleagues — or even a teacher — young enough to be one's children.
They say one is never too old to learn, though, and Archie Bunker (Carroll O'Connor) proved it 45 years ago tonight on All in the Family — even if he did it for the wrong reasons — in the episode "Archie Learns His Lesson."
Archie was angling for a dispatcher's job, but he had a problem. The job required a high school diploma, and Archie had to drop out of school to help support his family. So Archie went to school at night to earn his GED.
He didn't want Mike (Rob Reiner) and Gloria (Sally Struthers) to know, though, so he swore Edith (Jean Stapleton) to secrecy. And Edith did a pretty good job of keeping the secret until Archie blew his own cover. He told Mike and Gloria that he was going bowling, then left without his bowling ball.
Mike and Gloria were very supportive of Archie when they found out, and Mike and Archie started studying together at the dining room table — leading to some of the series' most entertaining dialogue between the two.
At one memorable point, Mike told Archie, who was studying for an American history test, what manifest destiny meant. That sparked a debate of sorts between the liberal Mike and the conservative Archie, which by itself wasn't especially memorable, although it was hilarious in the context of history and politics. Then Edith helped Archie study by asking him questions.
Before they began, Mike asked if he could listen in because "I love science fiction." Archie wouldn't go for that and shooed Mike away from the table.
But Mike listened from the sofa and finally could take no more when the subject of the American government's treatment of Indians came up. Archie's logic was too much for him.
But Mike's reaction was nothing compared to Gloria's when she found her father writing the answers to the history questions on little pieces of paper.
She observed that they looked like crib notes.
"Bingo!" Archie replied. He said he would keep them in his breast pocket in case he needed them.
"Daddy!" exclaimed a shocked Gloria. "That's cheating!"
Archie explained the difference.
"Cheating is when you're supposed to give something to somebody else, and you don't give it. I'm taking a test. I'm supposed to give 'em the right answers. That's what I'm gonna give 'em!"
"But, Daddy, you're cheating yourself," Gloria insisted.
"No," Archie said. "I get a diploma out of it."
Gloria wouldn't give up. "You're not being honest with yourself."
"I certainly am," Archie replied. "I sat down and I asked myself a question. 'Can you pass this exam without them little pieces of paper?' And I gave myself an honest answer: 'No.'"
That sent Gloria screaming from the table.
Mike, who had been upstairs, came into the room as Gloria was screaming. "Been talking to your father?" he asked.
Gloria's point was rendered moot, though, when it turned out that Edith had glued Archie's notes to a board so he could study them on the subway. She was pleased with herself, but Archie was sure he was going to fail.
As it turned out, though, Archie did just fine. He was notified by mail that he had passed his test, and his family congratulated him on his achievement.
But a buddy of Archie's called with news. As Archie explained it to the family, instead of studying history, he should have studied the theory of relativity. The dispatcher's job had gone to the boss' nephew.
"And here I am," Archie said, "stuck with a high school diploma."
