Legislators? Are You Listening?

My husband always called them "Serenity-isms". I gathered them into a collection called "The Wee, Wiley, and Wise". The fact is that my granddaughter, Serenity, at aged five could come up with some things that would make the wisest old man of the mountain give pause. Here is a REAL conversation I had with her when she was in kindergarten. I think we could all learn something from this kid!

"Nana? I thought school was supposed to teach you things?"

"Well it does, honey! Haven't you learned a lot this year in kindergarten?"

"Nana! I mean impor-nant things!"

"Well honey, you have learned important things! You know your alphabet and days of the week and how to count. You can even read a little bit!"

"Nana, I am telling you. A lot of kids don't know how to do something impor-nant!"

"What, honey?"

"Well at lunch, they don't say their prayers! And the teachers don't know how, either!"

A Textbook Case

I spent twenty-eight years in education, and watched it disintegrate from a world in which "common sense" ruled to one that was baited by the "almighty test" and driven from the first day of school to the last by that hook. I could rant for hours about the lack of "common sense" and the lack of genuine education and preparation for life that our educational system has come to. I thought of it as a mission field of sorts for twenty-eight years, and sometimes I feel as if I "bailed out" (which I did), but I can't say I miss it...

My family was one that threw away nothing. The least scrap of twine was tied to the end of another and rolled in a ball to be saved "in case". A piece of aluminum foil was carefully washed and folded away in a drawer to be used again, and again, until it finally wound up in pieces so small it could be used for nothing. That is how I wound up the family archives for a hundred years worth of old textbooks. They have all enthralled me...from the early books my grandfather went to primary school with in the 1800's, to the ones my father used in the 1930's and 40's.

I always hated math (to the chagrin of my father, an engineer, and my mother, a bookkeeper), and one day when I was well grown, I took a peek into my father's algebra book from high school. Instead of gibberish and numbers, signs and symbols, it was filled with word problems and explanations of how to use algebra to solve them. But these were not just ANY word problems...they were REAL LIFE word problems, and a farm boy could use them to figure how much acreage he needed for so many cattle, etc. etc. In other words, for the time and the life that boy would be entering (or girl...there were those things too), the book made SENSE. One could see the reason behind the numbers and signs and symbols....and I thought, "Now if MY algebra book had been like that, showing me the connection between the gibberish and things I would need to know or be able to figure...then I might have actually LIKED it, at least felt like the effort...rather than despising what I considered a complete waste of time."

Last night I picked up another of my father's old textbooks: "Treasury of Life and Literature", copyright 1938. I was searching for some favorite old poems and some well known early poets of the twentieth century. What I found was exactly that, interspersed with short stories and essays, all divided into topics such as: "Protecting Useful Birds", "Living Within One's Means", "Being Loyal to One's Work", "Saving the Forests", "Developing Bodily Vigor", "The Triumph of Good Work".

I was stunned. Our literature books today reflect our culture...and it is all about "me" and "personal freedoms" to "find oneself"...on a "me" basis. This book sought to build character using literature...where has that gone?

Now can you imagine how "politically incorrect" it would be to include this in literature books for students now? Can you imagine how "politically incorrect" many writers would consider this? How many would DARE to write of this kind of morality in these strong words even here? Yet....isn't THIS what made our country strong? And isn't THIS what we are lacking now?

"'Tis a lesson you should heed,

Try again;

If at first you don't succeed,

Try again;

Then your courage should appear,

For if you will persevere,

You will conquer, never fear,

Try again."

-William Edward Hickson

"Work!

Thank God for the might of it,

The ardor, the urge, the delight of it-

Work that springs from the heart's desire,

Setting the brain and the soul on fire-

Oh, what is so good as the heat of it,

And what is so glad as the beat of it,

And what is so kind as the stern command,

Challenging brain and heart and hand

Work!

Thank God for the pride of it!"

-Angela Morgan