“A mule can’t kick when it is plowing
and it can’t plow when it is kicking.” (Anon)
LESSONS
How we learn is not left up to us –
A knock on the nog from dear old dad
does not allow his scattered thoughts
into the nooks and crannies in your head.
It’s accidental, so no need to ask
that lovely one to lunch, then latch
onto the words she uses ‘til
she finds we’re all just louts in suits.
And did you profit from exchanges
in the locker room with sturdy lads
who never drew a glance from
ladies over ten or under sixty-two?
We learn thru intellect, I think,
so I have bones to pick with Dad
about my DNA inherited from chimps
who sucked out ants from crevices.
And I have noticed farmers bent
over in the sun who have such freedom
they can drink fresh water in the fields
and still get home by dark to sleep.
– Charles Brady
To those pushing for drastic changes in our educational system (For example, the new Secretary of Education is in favor of more and more for-profit schools), I usually say something like, “Our ancient educational system, with its pen and pencil, math and slide rules, PUT MEN ON THE MOON!” However, that unequivocal fact does not always satisfy the younger set!
Although I know that I am always right and that I NEVER have to seek answers that don’t agree with my pre-set convictions, I do sometimes get the nagging thought that what and how I learned may not be the total answer to everything.
I thought that perhaps I should talk about that. For example:
In the flat above ours in San Francisco there resides six young men who met and became friends while at UC Davis. They are in their late twenties and are accomplished in their various tech fields.
They are residing together because it is the only way they can afford to live in this city! It is expensive because the building was recently sold and the new owner (who is also a nice guy) set the rent at market rate. Lee and I are protected to a degree because we are “Grandfathered” in (You can now snicker!) by city regulations.
Somehow, despite the two-bedroom-one bath arrangement, they make it work because they are all simply great guys, and you can’t help but like them. Only occassionaly do they get me riled up because of their youthful enthusiasm and loud music (and I have no idea how one would categorize their taste there!)
All of that said, there is one thing to which I had to adjust regarding our new building arrangements and these nice young men, and it is this: Except for whatever skills they have at their various jobs, they are blissfully ignorant of just about all things required for every day survival outside their offices!
I could provide many examples of this, but I will share just one.
Because of city parking and the fact that they have but two safe spaces – their one garage and the driveway just outside their garage – they have to shuffle cars around. They have had made and exchanged extra keys (I praised them for that!), and things worked well until the inevitable morning of “Oh, what to do?” happened.
The one car WITH A STICK SHIFT was in the driveway, blocking the garaged vehicle from leaving, and the owner of this throwback vehicle was at work! The solution?
The doorbell rang and one of our young men was standing, keys in hand, before me
and asking, “I was told that you know how to drive a stick shift!”
I moved the car for him.
My point is that it is possible, for reasons I am not sure I can define, that our younger generation may not possess necessary skills and that they have not been given those skills.
And that brings me to think of how I learned some basic survival skills, back in pre-history, and to reflect upon whether or not those skills are outdated. (Maybe technology has leapfrogged way beyond my ability to keep up!)
Whereas these men were taught and then given the opportunity to practice what they needed to know on the job, for FINANCIAL reasons, they can’t drive unless it is made easy for them and they cannot separate garbage and trash, fill the correct garbage cans and get them to the curb on the correct day for pickup. (In their defense, when I knew we were to be away on pickup day, I left written instructions for the closest young man and warned him that the place would begin to stink if it was not collected. It worked for that one time.)
OK! These guys are bright and skilled at work and they are nice young men…..and they always seem very willing to learn. So what is the difference between their education and mine? I will try to give a possible answer, and it will be a simple one because I am fumbling in the dark here.
I’ll tell about just two ways I learned: 1. Being taught, absorbing, and then demonstrating that I knew and 2. Actually following the example of another – or others – and gradually getting to know BY DOING.
My “barely high school” high school had the barest of basics – no library, no science lab, no auditorium and no sports teams except basketball. But, in a separate building, my school offered Mister Jack Hurst, who taught all of the “Industrial Arts” courses. I was taught how to use just about any carpenters’ tool one would ever need. (I first had to demonstrate that I could learn how to SQUARE a piece of lumber. ) In my second year of shop my friends and I were constructing sets in the Elementary School auditorium for the high school play. We also were responsible for ALL minor repairs in and around the school!
Every boy graduating from Bradwell Institute High School (Hinesville, Georgia) in the 40s had to become proficient in the use of basic tools and in building or he would not pass – and he would not graduate, period!
I have used the skills I learned in high school for all my years. For example, back in the 1970s,I hauled lumber and materials eight thousand feet up a mountain on the Continental Divide in New Mexico, and alone and with complete confidence, constructed a twelve by sixteen foot cabin, complete with windows.
And, as for learning by doing, I point to my earliest days on my Grandparent’s farms. I do not remember exactly when, but it was at an early age, that I learned to hitch up a mule to a wagon or plow. An early memory is of riding the “stalk cutter,” a box on a cutting device to drive over dead corn stalks before plowing the field. That was dangerous work for kids or adults.
I was no more than ten when I was doing farm chores. I was feeding chickens, hogs and cattle, pitching hay and grain for the mules, cutting and bringing in wood for the stove and fireplace. I learned to do all of this, and do it correctly and efficiently, by trailing a grandparent or uncle or aunt and by JUST DOING IT!.
At about the same time, I could shuck, shell and grind corn, and I could pick cotton and tobacco and I could climb up in the barn and hang the tobacco for curing.
I knew by listening and watching, to know when it was time to break land, fertilize, sow and deal with the other problems of farming. I JUST KNEW.
Before I could do so legally, I was driving John Deere and Farmall tractors to break land, plow, plant, seed and distribute fertilizer. I was illegally driving the landowners’ pickup trucks to haul dirt and supplies. When I sheared a pin on the universal joint, I replaced it from the handful I carried in my pocket.
So you might say I had all the advantages our young tech workers did not have. I went to school to learn PRACTICAL SKILLS for everyday contingencies, but I also had to learn the tricky stuff – all that English, math and geography.
But one has to ponder whether the young men and women of today actually NEED those skills that still seem so essential to me. Are they, for example, going to have to read instructions, when everything they may need is available instantly by addressing a hand-held device?
(A teacher who worked with me a few years ago was lamenting the fact that her husband never read books. In our first conversation after returning in the Fall for a new school year, she happily informed me that she had bought “Books on Tape” for her husband and that “he had READ two books over the summer!”}
I’m not so sure they need every skill I needed, but I think it is sad that they don’t know things like: How to siphon gas from a neighbor’s car or how to make candy from boiling sugar cane juice down and twisting it, or how to “grunt” fish-bait worms by driving a board into the wet earth and rubbing another over the edge.
I’m even sad that they probably never learned how to walk down to the creek with only a fishing line and a hook to go fishing, knowing they could cut their own pole, find a bit of natural cork, and that they could always find grasshoppers and frogs, or scoop up a handful of minnows or stop by the old abandoned farmhouse and pick a few Catawba worms for bait.
Poor Kids!
