I have always been a friend and strong advocate of education. I grew up in the home of a PhD summa cum laude father from Cornell University, and a Prince George's County Public Schools music teacher mother, graduated from Drake University and student of violin at Eastman School of Music. However, this by no means intends to say I have no disapproval of certain school policies I experienced while in public school, grades 1-12. Often, trouble can also spell opportunity, and so this essay is mostly based on inspiration for education improvement opportunity. Some fond personal incidents and events will be recounted, however!
I remember by name every one of my elementary school teachers, and most(but not all) of my junior high and high school teachers. It is reasonable to presume that these have all moved to the world of the great beyond by now. Hence, I will refer to them by name without trepidation or misgivings, while also refraining from mentioning any former school classmates by name, out of respect for the on-going repute of the living.
My parents had taught me to read, write and do basic arithmetic early-on. Hence during my first and second-grade years, I spent some class-time in the hall-way, teaching these skills to a slower-learning friend and class-mate. While this gesture was virtuous in itself, I should have spent that time on subject areas where I myself was weak, most notably in mathematics.
I recall my first grade books: Reading For Meaning, and Tip and Mitten(the saga of a dog and a cat). One story I recall was of a boy who put his dog on top of his head and shoulders, and covered the dog up to its neck with his coat. To this day, his ostensible reason for doing this still escapes me. But in any event, when the boy removed the coat and released the dog to its freedom, the boy had dog-excrement all over his head! Boy, did I think that to be hilarious!
My third-grade teacher, Mrs. Henrietta Guest, was a real pill: she was an embarrassment to some students. One day, while students were eating lunch in the school cafeteria, the relative quiet of the occasion was suddenly pierced with a loud shriek of her voice, as she frantically rang a desk-bell on the table. Pointing to one of the students, she shouted, "STOP EVERYBODY, STOP! THIS BOAH(BOY) IS EATING HIS PEACH LIKE AN UMBRELLA!" She went on to demonstrate in detail how that hapless little boy was just enjoying eating his peach in a manner strongly-contrary to her approbation. "What's the big deal here?", I thought to myself. In the end, the dunce of the day was Mrs. Guest, rather than the boy.
In fourth grade, I had Mrs. Ruth Howard for a teacher. I remember little of that year, except that I actually drew a picture of a night-time street scene which drew much praise from her. this was surprising because I generally suck at art.
Then in fifth grade, I transferred from Berwyn Elementary School to Hollywood Elementary School. One week-end day, I and a classmate friend decided to be adventurous(boys will be boys), and so we dug up the temerity to climb up onto the school building roof and look around! Fortunately, we came back down and no harm was done. Still, a few days later, the school principal, a Mr. Parker, found out about our little "Mission Impossible" and called us to his office to tell us on no uncertain terms that he took strong exception to it. He was visibly shaken by the incident. So, we did not repeat our bravado, and, as in years past, I continued to be a very good student otherwise.
In sixth grade, our family moved to Beltsville, and again I transferred to Beltsville Elementary School. There, my teacher was a Mr. Charles Harpole, whom I fondly remember for all his stories to the class about his adventures in the U.S. Marine Corps during World War II. For the most part, I was an excellent student there. But once again, I was a little bit naughty--boys will be boys! I just loved airplanes, and was reading a book about them which I found in our classr0om. One day, Mr. Harpole asked the class for the book: had anybody seen it? He said he needed it for reference at some conference he would attend. I had the book in my desk, but did not say peep one about it: I just loved those airplanes too much, and I was to be damned, if I would return the book to my teacher! A few days later, I was absent from school. Upon my return, I learned that Mr. Harpole had found the book in my desk in my absence! "Do you remember my asking for it?", he asked me. I must confess to lying: I told him yes, I remembered, but had located the book myself a couple of days after he asked for it(lie!). So in sixth grade, I was 95% virtuous, but not 100% so: I just loved those airplanes! I collected and assembled many plastic model airplane models at home.
Then came junior high school years. I do not recall too many momentous events of those years, but one bit of humor came from my seventh-grade science class. Another student wrote on an exam: "The sensory nerve is the nerve that senses, and the motor nerve is the nerve that motors." Brilliant! My first two years of junior high school were at Buck Lodge Junior High School in Adelphi, with the third being at the newly-constructed Beltsville Junior High School. I recall meeting a very outstanding music teacher at Buck Lodge by the name of Leonard Moses. You could give him any three notes, and from there, he could improvise at the piano a theme based on those notes after the structural styles from Vivaldi, Corelli and Palestrina, all the way to Elvis and the Kingston Trio, with Tchaikovsky, Rachmaninoff and George Gershwin in between. WOW!
I also remember well my physical education teacher, Mr. Kenneth Hildreth. He had previously been in the Navy. He was a short fellow--5'6" or 5'7"--but he was very muscular, built like an Army tank, and you did not mess with him unless you are Chuck Norris or Arnold Schwarzenegger. He taught us human anatomy for a while. I remember he taught us that the human heart is the strongest muscle in the body: if all its energy could be harnessed to some sort of lifting machine, the machine could lift ten(!) tractor-trailer trucks one foot off the ground! I will always remember a true-false exam he gave us: every statement he made therein on the exam is true! I missed two questions I marked "false". No other teacher of mine has ever done that, before or since! But I got an "A" grade from him for the course.
Social life was very difficult for me in my teen-age years, largely sad and miserable. Academically, I did reasonably well, always an honor-roll student. Still, I was a social reject. I had started to take music lessons on the violoncello at age eight, and started trumpet soon after. I did not mind telling my classmates I play trumpet: this is a band instrument, and bands are associated with football games. Thus, playing trumpet was and is "culturally correct". But cello? "Culturally incorrect" as per American culture. I recall feeling a sense of chagrin and embarrassment at the time, to tell my classmates I play cello. To be sure, I greatly enjoyed it personally and still play it today. But in my adolescent days, a teen-ager playing Classical music on cello was seen by my classmates as being as odd as a fish trying to walk on land. Most had--and probably still do not have--the first idea what the cello is all about. FOOTBALL IS MORE IMPORTANT!
While at High Point High School, I made gargantuan efforts to excel at sports; but alas and alack, I was not made of the right stuff to do so, and sucked at them. Then, as now, sports athletes in our society are so deified that success or failure at this sacred endeavor is the defining criterion--at least for men--for acceptability into or rejection from society. Because I was a royal flunk-out at sports, I distinctly recall great chagrin and reluctance to socialize with my contemporaries, especially with the opposite sex. What woman in her right mind wants for her male consort a guy who plays cello instead of football? My years were sad at High Point High School because I was not honored and respected for the talents I did and do have. I was first-chair principal cellist in the all-Prince George's County high school orchestra for three years, but without any honor for it from the school administration: FOOTBALL IS MORE IMPORTANT!
The High Point High School experience was not altogether somber and dark, though. The senior P.O.D. civics class with Donald Horner as our teacher was a blast, as we often discussed current public affairs. I remember doing for that class a statement made by an educator: "Facts wear out, skills obsolesce. So, what is the use of learning anything? Nothing, except the art of learning how to learn." I disagreed with that statement, citing the on-going value of learning and knowing foreign languages. They do not obsolesce so quickly within one or two generations so as to be no longer good after that. Then, our tenth-grade biology class was also great. Mr. Ronald Neafy, our teacher, was first-rate excellent! But I had troubles with chemistry and higher mathematics. My teachers--Paul Boston and Belva Hopkins--were just some of the nicest and most congenial of people I could hope to meet. Still, that part of my brain geared to math and sciences was woefully under-developed. I just could not "hack" those subjects! Still, my overall academic record in both junior high school and high school was always of honor-roll caliber. My sadness was definitely not caused by academic failure: rather, it was caused by 1)lack of academic freedom, i.e. compulsion to study course subjects contrary to my personal wishes, ostensibly "for my own good"; and, 2)I was a total failure in sports, and not socially acceptable for my musical endeavors. I was--and still am today--"culturally incorrect". I had grown up in a very musical family. and for that reason, I was the "white crow" among my classmates. At the time, I felt like an object of ridicule, a total social outcast. Today, however, the general public is getting pretty weary and disgusted with this doctrine of "political correctness". Hence, I now wear the badges of "political incorrectness" and "cultural incorrectness" with great pride.
I was glad to graduate from high school, and go on to college--first, at Indiana University(B.A.), and then at University of California Los Angeles(M.A.). There, I would have much more academic freedom than in high school. I did not always get the best grades I hoped for; still, I was much happier in college, pursuing academic endeavors I wanted to study, instead of putting my heart on "hold" to study something some education bureaucrat told me I must study. Also, at last, my musical endeavors were respectable at Indiana University. Football was still important there, but at least, I no longer had to feel any chagrin about playing the cello at Indiana University.
Finally, the story about Larry's revenge! I took private lessons in the Russian language for two years while in high school. In my senior year, when taking college entrance exams, I took the Russian language exam along with several others. I made my highest score of all on that Russian language exam, thus successfully thumbing my nose at all I had studied in public schools for twelve years!
A few of my former high school classmates likewise pursued greatly successful careers competely independently of anything they learned in twelve years of public schooling. Today, I feel it is a crime, for the education establishment to require specially-gifted students to put their hearts on "hold" while studying topics they have neither the talent nor the interest to study. "No child left behind" also sounds like "no child can get ahead" to me. School curriculae priorities are mandated according to the lowest common denominator, and so I begin to appreciate the true meaning of Ayn Rand's controversial book, The Virtue of Selfishness.
My hope for the future of education in America is that public schools will be operated much like colleges and universities, granting much more academic freedom than before. We want in our schools enthusiastic students eager to learn, rather than bored students finding it drudgery to learn. But judging by the low turn-out at our 45th anniversary high school reunion--just 12% of the former class--I gather most of our classmates prefer to forget those years of 45+ years ago, and just move on. My prayer is that this tragedy can be reversed by education reforms resulting in far more highly-cherishable class reunions of future generations.
There is dispute and debate between the merits and demerits of a "well-rounded" education versus high specialization in one subject. I see both virtue and vice in both choices. But in the final analysis, whether I be intellectually "rounded", "squared" or "triangular" is my business, not that of government. And even if we make mistakes in life, it is far better that we make them, than that government make them for us!
-LKM
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
LKM On Money
Money is still our universal king, even if sex is the crown prince. Money is an all-consuming focus of our attention in all human affairs, and nothing happens without money in the picture somewhere.
How does money relate to religion? The Bible New Testament mandates Christian believers to understand themselves as being not owners of money, but merely its stewards. Money, says the Bible, must be used to advance the cause of the Kingdom of God, and not to be consumed on personal carnal lusts: war and contentions among men result from the latter behaviour. Luke 12:43-48, 18:18-25, and James 4:1-3. The Lord requires of each Bible believer a measure of financial accountability concommitant with the extent of his or her financial blessing: "..to whom little is given, little is required, and to whom much is given, much is required.." The religion of Islam condemns usury, i.e. taking undue and exploitive advantage of those needing to borrow money. Judaism sees money as a ladder to heaven, saying few, if any, good works on earth are possible without money. Indeed, Christianity also has a long historic record of building academic institutions and hospitals, and rest assured these tasks were not accomplished for free! But money could also be a ladder to hell, if used for ungodly, diabolical purposes. Even so, the famous Bible New Testament parable of the talents(Matthew 25:14-30) agrees with the Judaic view of money, so long as its use is for cause of advancing the Lord's kingdom. Indeed, Jesus Christ said the unprofitable servant is to be cast out and rejected.
What of the conflict between capitalism and Communism? Karl Marx, the father of Communism, was descended from a long ancestry of Jewish rabbis. Some of his complaints about the social impact of capitalism are also shared by the Bible, e.g. capitalism makes a virtue out of greed, it destroys all human inter-personal abstract values and replaces them with shameless cash value, it leads to militarism and global imperialism, private property-owners are exploiters of working-class people, and, in the end, it digs its own grave through business failures and mergers, until monopoly is accomplished. This process, said Marx, is the historically inevitable evolution from capitalism to socialism and finally Communism. The Bible goes further, to record in Ezekiel 7:19 that in the Day Of The Wrath Of The Lord, men will throw their gold and silver in the streets as useless to the satisfaction of their needs and greeds, because "it is the stumbling block of their iniquity".
Still, the Bible does not advocate Communism, as once claimed by the late U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy during his hey-day of the early 1950s. Jesus Christ did advocate sharing of one's riches with the less fortunate, but on voluntary basis motivated by love for both God and man. Whereas, Karl Marx said "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", Jesus Christ said, "From each according to his ability, to each according to the need of others". Communism proposes to solve the enigma of human greed by forcible confiscation of all private property from individuals by the government. The Bible, by contrast, proclaims that God loves a cheerful giver. II Corinthians 5:7. The Bible advocates private property, as seen in the Decalogue commandments of THOU SHALT NOT STEAL, and THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S POSSESSIONS.
As long as capitalism is based on voluntary exchange of goods and services without government intervention of any kind, the consumer is king in the free and open market-place, while Communism is largely discredited and doomed to the trash-heap of history. Economic Communism and socio-political free democracy simply will not cooperate to mutual benefit. Either we will freely decide for ourselves, or government will decide for us, and rob us of the capacity to decide for ourselves.
Who or what decides the purchasing power of the dollar? Most people today would point to the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and to other financial institutions. But surprise! It is the heart and spirit of the individual person, who decides how many dollars he or she must receive in exchange for a product or service. This decision, in turn, is based on ability and willingness do distinguish between need and greed: how high-off-the-hog do people think they "need" to live? But the answser to this question necessarily includes potential capacity to bless and benefit other people, as well as one's self. It is great for us to have money, so long as money does not have us!
-LKM
How does money relate to religion? The Bible New Testament mandates Christian believers to understand themselves as being not owners of money, but merely its stewards. Money, says the Bible, must be used to advance the cause of the Kingdom of God, and not to be consumed on personal carnal lusts: war and contentions among men result from the latter behaviour. Luke 12:43-48, 18:18-25, and James 4:1-3. The Lord requires of each Bible believer a measure of financial accountability concommitant with the extent of his or her financial blessing: "..to whom little is given, little is required, and to whom much is given, much is required.." The religion of Islam condemns usury, i.e. taking undue and exploitive advantage of those needing to borrow money. Judaism sees money as a ladder to heaven, saying few, if any, good works on earth are possible without money. Indeed, Christianity also has a long historic record of building academic institutions and hospitals, and rest assured these tasks were not accomplished for free! But money could also be a ladder to hell, if used for ungodly, diabolical purposes. Even so, the famous Bible New Testament parable of the talents(Matthew 25:14-30) agrees with the Judaic view of money, so long as its use is for cause of advancing the Lord's kingdom. Indeed, Jesus Christ said the unprofitable servant is to be cast out and rejected.
What of the conflict between capitalism and Communism? Karl Marx, the father of Communism, was descended from a long ancestry of Jewish rabbis. Some of his complaints about the social impact of capitalism are also shared by the Bible, e.g. capitalism makes a virtue out of greed, it destroys all human inter-personal abstract values and replaces them with shameless cash value, it leads to militarism and global imperialism, private property-owners are exploiters of working-class people, and, in the end, it digs its own grave through business failures and mergers, until monopoly is accomplished. This process, said Marx, is the historically inevitable evolution from capitalism to socialism and finally Communism. The Bible goes further, to record in Ezekiel 7:19 that in the Day Of The Wrath Of The Lord, men will throw their gold and silver in the streets as useless to the satisfaction of their needs and greeds, because "it is the stumbling block of their iniquity".
Still, the Bible does not advocate Communism, as once claimed by the late U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy during his hey-day of the early 1950s. Jesus Christ did advocate sharing of one's riches with the less fortunate, but on voluntary basis motivated by love for both God and man. Whereas, Karl Marx said "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need", Jesus Christ said, "From each according to his ability, to each according to the need of others". Communism proposes to solve the enigma of human greed by forcible confiscation of all private property from individuals by the government. The Bible, by contrast, proclaims that God loves a cheerful giver. II Corinthians 5:7. The Bible advocates private property, as seen in the Decalogue commandments of THOU SHALT NOT STEAL, and THOU SHALT NOT COVET THY NEIGHBOR'S POSSESSIONS.
As long as capitalism is based on voluntary exchange of goods and services without government intervention of any kind, the consumer is king in the free and open market-place, while Communism is largely discredited and doomed to the trash-heap of history. Economic Communism and socio-political free democracy simply will not cooperate to mutual benefit. Either we will freely decide for ourselves, or government will decide for us, and rob us of the capacity to decide for ourselves.
Who or what decides the purchasing power of the dollar? Most people today would point to the U.S. Federal Reserve Bank and to other financial institutions. But surprise! It is the heart and spirit of the individual person, who decides how many dollars he or she must receive in exchange for a product or service. This decision, in turn, is based on ability and willingness do distinguish between need and greed: how high-off-the-hog do people think they "need" to live? But the answser to this question necessarily includes potential capacity to bless and benefit other people, as well as one's self. It is great for us to have money, so long as money does not have us!
-LKM
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