Why Do We Have to Learn This?

Why Do We Have to Learn This?

Before I began teaching in elementary school, I did a stint as a substitute in the local vocational-technical school. This was really a stretch for me, not only because my knowledge of the technical and practical arts is very limited (Bricklaying? Carpentry? Engines?) but also because I was teaching high school courses and not what I had been trained to do. 

One week, I was sent to sub in the geometry class. I had a real belly-laugh about this before I even started. Geometry had been my worst class in high school. I remembered little more than what I had learned in my own elementary school years. I thought I could get by, because the teacher had left good plans and answers for all of the problems. 

During the first class, after I had answered all the questions about who I was and what I was doing teaching their class, one student asked a real stumper, "Why do we have to learn this anyway? What is geometry good for?” 

I was surprised. This class was made up of students who would one day build houses and design machines. Didn’t they realize how useful geometry would be in their future careers? I attempted to explain, giving an example about designing a roof so that the slope would shed rain and snow, but they weren’t buying it. Somehow they could not make the connection between what they were learning in school and real life. 

Tom and Ray Magliottzi, AKA the Car Talk guys, pondered this question many times on their radio show. Both brothers earned degrees from MIT and were well-grounded in math. They often asked callers if they continued to use the math they had learned in school in daily life. Trigonometry? Calculus? Most answered that beyond the four basic operations (addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division) the math classes they took were just dim memories.

In high school, I took lots of math classes too -- two algebras, geometry, trigonometry and calculus. I took more in college. I did pretty well in all (except the aforementioned geometry). Most of the everyday math I use today involves the four basics, decimals and calculating percents. These cover toting up the bill and adding a tip. 

But I don’t regret taking the classes. Even though I don’t remember a lot, I am proud that I was able to hold my own in these difficult courses. And I don’t think they should be subtracted from the curriculum for children today. Who knows which future engineers and scientists may awaken to new possibilities when introduced to higher math? 

For that matter, every course we are exposed to holds the possibility of opening our eyes to something beyond the small worlds we inhabit. Math can lead to music, medicine, or rocket science. Languages lead to travel and a better understanding of the greater world. English and history expose us to the thoughts of the great thinkers of the past and present. Philosophy, psychology, biology, chemistry, physics etc. introduce us to new ideas. Opening children’s minds opens their lives to new worlds. 

In the more than twenty years I taught elementary school, I heard the question often – “Why do we have to learn this anyway?”

“Why,” I would answer, “to be a better you.” 

History or His Story?

History or His Story?

My brother Joseph and I are very close in age. We have many fond memories of our shared childhood. The funny thing is that these memories don’t always match. We were in the same place at the same time but often remember things completely differently. 

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson shared many of our nation’s founding moments. They served together in the Second Continental Congress in Philadelphia; collaborated on the writing of the Declaration of Independence (John thought he should be congratulated for choosing Tom to write it. Adams fine-tuned a bit); worked together in France; and traveled together in England. Both served under George Washington and took consecutive terms as president. They had “been there” but could never agree about what “there” had been. 

John Adams believed that history was messy. During the Revolution, nothing was “clear, inevitable, or even comprehensible” to either those serving in the Continental Congress or on the field of battle. As Adams remembered it, “all the critical questions about men and measures from 1774 to 1778” were part of a “patched and piebald policy” which was improvised, turbulent, confused and riddled with failures. The major players were making it up as they went along and constantly skating on the edge of catastrophe. 

Out of this chaos, Jefferson rose as a literary phoenix. His masterful expression of the inalienable rights of men, as detailed in the Declaration, and his vast correspondence on philosophical issues of the day suggest that America was predestined to win the war against England, establish a republican government, and take its place as a beacon of democracy for the world. Jefferson’s “felicitous abilities” with a pen made his version of history rise out of the ashes which was the reality of the times. 

This drove Adams mad. He struggled for decades to write his history of the Revolution and the forming of America. Unfortunately, his writing style, which Joseph Ellis called “enlightened perversity” in his Pulitzer Prize-winning Founding Brothers, got in the way of his story. His writings are punctuated with circular arguments and angry interruptions. Worst of all, Adams feared that his own contributions to the American nation would be forgotten in favor of Jefferson’s more fluid version of their shared history. 

Adams realized that there is a difference between “history as experienced and history as remembered.” Transforming the events of the Revolutionary period into history would involve fitting events into a “dramatic formula” which could be understood by posterity. Adams lacked this capacity.  In the words of Ellis, “Jefferson seemed predestined to tell the people what they wanted to hear. Adams… to tell them what they needed to know.” 

Joseph Ellis called Adams and Jefferson the “words and music” of the Revolution. The music of Jefferson’s prose outshines the rhetoric of Adams’ arguments. The melodies of his history are easier to recall than Adams’ lyrics. Adams feared that Jefferson’s version would prevail.

Many peoples have made up the history of the United States. How do the Native Americans write the story? How would the Africans brought here in chains write it? Would each immigrant group (“your tired, your poor, yearning to breathe free” as welcomed by the Statue of Liberty) write a different story? What do we know about their “American histories”?  Which stories prevail?

Whose history will prevail after we are gone? Adams warned that the future of America would be written “on the brightest or blackest page according to the use or abuse of its political institutions.” His future is our present. Our present is our children’s future. Which page will they see and remember?

After arguing with Jefferson for decades over the correct version of history, John Adams got the final word. In an almost unbelievable coincidence, both Adams and Jefferson died on the same day – July 4, 1826 --fifty years to the day after the date on the Declaration. Communication was slow in those days, so Adams didn’t know that Jefferson had passed earlier in the day when he spoke his final words, “Jefferson still lives.” The history of that time is largely remembered as the one Jefferson favored. 

Whose history will be remembered in our future? Let’s take great care as we write it today. 

(All quotations from Joseph Ellis’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book Founding Brothers.)

Turn Your Heart Toward Home

Turn Your Heart Toward Home

In 2002, Bob and I toured Ground Zero in New York City with my cousin Stephen an eyewitness to the event that has so changed our world. As we circled the hole where the Twin Towers once soared above the city, Stephen recalled the terror and chaos he’d experienced that day. As we walked with him, I remembered too.

The sky dawned blue and clear and the day began as any other day. At school, we teachers stood in the hallway and sang our good mornings as the students filed in. We greeted them with smiles like any other day.  

About 9:30, the whispering began. Something had happened. A plane had flown into one of the Twin Towers. We shivered but continued teaching. The teachers whispered to each other so the children wouldn’t hear, so we wouldn’t frighten them.  

As I listened to Stephen’s story, I pictured him as he rushed about, trying to locate co-workers, and urging them to vacate their workplace, which adjoined the Towers. Many didn’t realize the danger. Since their building did not seem in immediate peril, several wanted to continue working. Then the second plane hit.

At school, the whispering continued. Two planes had hit; then came word of a third, no -- a fourth. We continued teaching for the sake of the children. We read books and sang songs, added and divided, spelled and played games. We took the kids to recess and watched them run in the sunshine.  

Outside the Towers, everyone was running. Sirens wailed. The clear skies filled with smoke. Police officers shouted “Run!”. Firefighters rushed in. Streams of people flowed away from the danger. Stephen ran. 

Slowly, streams of cars flowed into our school parking lot. Parents were arriving.  On any other day, school was a safe enough place. Today, parents wanted their children home. Teachers called their own children too. We stood in line to use the school phone, wanting to hear the reassuring tones of our loved ones’ voices.  

Those running from the towers turned toward home also. Stephen told me that even in the turmoil, everyone headed in the direction of wherever they lived.  Stephen ran uptown toward his home. Those living in New Jersey rushed to the ferries, which were scooping up travelers and casting off from the docks at record speed. People called home too. The cell phone towers burned as thousands attempted to assure loved ones that they were OK; that they would be coming home.

Fifteen years have passed. Memorials to the victims at the Twin Towers, the Pentagon, and in a field in Pennsylvania remind us of those who did not come home that day. All were frightened. Many were heroes. None are forgotten.  

We have all changed since that day. We have lost the sense of security that allowed us to look up into the clear blue sky and fear nothing but clouds. We hear news of wars in faraway lands and tremble. Terror is no longer a foreign concept.  

But there is one way we have not changed. No matter who we are, no matter where we are or what is happening, we all long for home. All over the world, parents love their children, spouses cling to one another, family groups of all types fill their homes with a love that beckons.     

The world is a dangerous place filled with many people with different beliefs and different goals. But if we can agree that we all love our families and all long for home, perhaps we can work together to make our collective home, the planet we all inhabit, a safer place for us all. 

Look up and see the stars, not the clouds, and aim for a better world.