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.

Middle School Itch

Middle School Itch

Middle school stinks.  Here I am, one great big hormonal zit, sitting in “junior” high, a person without status or stature. Not a kid, not a teen and certainly not an adult. Stuck in a place where they try to make me learn stuff for no apparent reason. None of this stuff relates to real life. You’re nothing here but a label: jock, brown-noser, slacker, techie, band geek, drama geek, geek-geek.  

Worst of all, they keep testing you!  And it’s not like you hear on TV: This is a test. This is only a test. No, all you hear is “This test is going to affect your grade, your promotion, the rest of your life!  If you don’t pass, you might as well buy a one-way ticket to loser-ville. And you had better do well, or you, the school, your parents, the country and the universe will suffer.” It is all on your shoulders. Me, the middle school brat, the nobody. 

Talk about stress. Not only do I have to do well in my studies, I have to be popular. Popular!  How do I do that? Do I go along with the crowd?  Do I hang out with the right people?  And most importantly, do I wear the right clothes?  Fashion “no-nos” can follow you for life – at least into high school. You will always be the kid who wore the Nikes the day after every else had shifted to ‘Asics or the kid who wore a b-ball cap the day everyone went topless (so to speak.)

And how about at home?  My parents expect me to act like an adult but treat me like a kid. My big sister despises me. My older brother throttles me. My little brothers won’t give me any privacy. Don’t they know I have important thoughts to think and for heavens sake, need my own room?   

Time management is a contradiction in terms for me. How can I possibly manage a schedule that includes chores and homework, band practice and soccer practice? My computer screams answer me! Texts and Tweets pile on top of each other. Video games demand new champions and surfing the net eats hours of my day. I’ve got to see the latest movies and watch the right shows so I can at least appear cool. 

Sleep? I come alive around eight every night and can’t drop off until after midnight. Then they drag me out of bed at six to catch the bus at seven so I can be sitting in class a half-hour later while still in a zomboid state to discuss Shakespeare or divide fractions by percentages. The teacher is collecting homework. Did I remember to bring (or even do) it?  Where’s my folder? Where’s my book bag? Where’s my brain? At home, asleep in my cozy bedroom that still has the Elmo curtains my mother made when I was in kindergarten.

I feel like I am in that rat race the teachers keep yammering on about. Running as fast as I can while stuck in one place. And then my mom yells at me because I’m not cheerful! Cheerful?  I can barely manage civil. Polite? Well that depends. Does she want Sunday School polite or locker room polite?  Can’t I just be me?

Middle school stinks.  

 But here I am, stuck for three years (at least) with a bunch of people who don’t understand me.  I learned in my psych class that the teen-age brain is not fully developed and will not be fully functioning until I am in my twenties. 

Why can’t they cut me a break? Let my brain develop guys! Don’t judge me by the size of my feet but by the size of my brain!  You say you can’t see my brain? Then listen to me. Watch me grow. For heaven’s sake, help me along! That’s what you keep telling me your job is. So act like it. We can all get through this together. 

It’s only three years and then I’ll be a teen. Imagine the fun we’ll have then!

The Aristoi

The Aristoi

Second in Series

During the 2012 presidential campaign, the term the “99 percent” was bandied about. The “99 percent” refers to the income and wealth inequalities perceived in the United States, that is, that the bulk of wealth in our nation is concentrated in only 1% of the population, and that the fate of the many is decided by the few. The term may date to the twenty-first century, but the concept is centuries old. 

Joseph Ellis, in his Pulitzer Prize-winning book, Founding Brothers, refers to “eternal political verities.” One is that there has been and there always will be opposing parties. Another, in the words of Thomas Jefferson, is “that everyone takes his side in favor of the many, or the few, according to his constitution, and the circumstances in which he is placed.” In other words, we are always looking out for “Number One.” 

John Adams and Thomas Jefferson were the best of friends and the worst of political enemies. As delegates to the Continental Congress, they had forged a friendship on the anvil of Independence. As presidential rivals and opposing political ideologues, they had slung accusations across party lines. After many years in retirement, the two were reunited in a correspondence in which they both renewed their friendship and attempted to, in Adams’s words, “explain ourselves to each other.” These letters were not only addressed to one another but to posterity. 

Adams and Jefferson addressed many political questions, including the use and origin of power. Adams had written three books arguing that political power was inevitably concentrated in the hands of a few prominent people and families. This system dated back from the feudal barons of Europe and Asia and the landed gentry of Elizabethan England to the plantation owners of the American south. Adams regretfully acknowledged that history proved that the “many always deferred to the few,” as was “established by God Almighty in the Constitution of Human Nature.” In other words, the one percent ruled in the past, the present, and the future, and the 99 percent will always be in their thrall.

Adams wrote that “as long as Property exists, it will accumulate in Individuals and Families…as a SNOW ball grows as it rolls.” Thereby, we have an inherited or wealth-based aristocracy which makes the decisions which rule the lives of the less-affluent. Adams defined the “Five Pillars” of this aristocracy as “Beauty, Wealth, Birth, Genius, and Virtues” with any of the first three overwhelming the other two at any time.

Jefferson contested Adams characterization of aristocracy. He believed that the artificial aristocracy that was “founded on wealth and birth” could be supplanted by a “natural aristocracy among men” based on “virtue and talent.” Wasn’t the American republic the result of the triumph of virtue and talent over wealth? Weren’t the founders fathers -- men who offered “our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor” for a political ideal -- the very emblem of an aristocracy based on virtue and talent? He conceded that the nations of Europe with their history of an inherited aristocracy limited the economic opportunities of the populous, but argued that in the United States labor and education could raise any one up to a position of prominence.

In separate correspondence, Adams noted the irony of this philosophical argument with Jefferson. Adams was the son of a New England farmer and shoemaker, while Jefferson owned about 200 slaves and 10,000 acres of land – much of it inherited from his father-in-law. Both were elected to the presidency on the basis of their revolutionary credentials – not on their accumulation of wealth and power.  

Jefferson and Adams stood in the one percent of talent and virtue. The nation was birthed and endured because of the character of its founders. If they had craved only wealth and power, the republic would have foundered. Can our nation stand on the character of our current one percent? Will the 99 percent always lose to the will of the aristocracy? Will the virtuous and talented ever supplant the wealthy? 

The answers depend on the character and labors of the 99 percent. The “founding brothers” defined the republic, but it is the American people, the 99 percent, who maintain the freedoms outlined in the Declaration of Independence. If we want “equality and justice for all” we must work for and be worthy of it.

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

The Odd Couple

They were America’s original odd couple -- a tall, reserved Southern gentleman and a short, feisty New England lawyer. Yet together, they were the “head and the heart of the American Revolution.” 

Thomas Jefferson and John Adams met in the Continental Congress. Together, they crafted one of America’s founding documents, served as delegates to France during the Revolution, and as ministers to the English court after Independence. They stood together as the King of England gave America the ultimate insult by turning his back on them. 

During these times, they were intimate friends. Yet not twenty years later, they were bitter enemies. What tore them apart? Party politics. 

In the first American election, political parties were superfluous. George Washington, the ultimate American, was undeniably the only choice for President. Washington stood above the political fray – at least this was the pose he assumed. Scrabbling around him, his advisors were busy forming alliances, taking sides, and promoting their own political philosophies. 

When Washington announced his retirement, these forces got busy. The Federalists, led by Alexander Hamilton, nominally supported John Adams, then Vice-President, for the top seat. The Republicans put forward Thomas Jefferson.

At this time, promoting oneself for office was considered unseemly, so Jefferson, the author of the Declaration of Independence, who was hungry for the office, and Adams, who felt that the honor was his due as the “Atlas of Independence,” retired to their respective homes and waited for the election results. Adams won this first round, becoming the nation’s second president, while Jefferson was appointed vice-president.

Four years later, the battle lines were again drawn. This time, Jefferson’s party, led by James Madison, was slinging mud. Jefferson paid a notorious scandalmonger, James Callender, to publish scurrilous articles about Adam’s unsuitability for the presidency, calling him a “hoary-headed incendiary” who was determined to go to war with France and declare himself “President for life” with his son John Quincy as his successor. Adams lost.

Callendar’s accusations were false, but what hurt Adams most was the loss of his friendship with Jefferson. When Adams held the presidency, he had wanted to create a “bipartisan administration” collaborating fully with Jefferson. Jefferson instead chose his party over his friendship. Abigail Adams wrote that Jefferson had “mortgaged his honor to win an election” and accused him of being a “man of party rather than principle.” 

This legacy continues today. Politicians, who should work together for the good of the country, square off in their respective corners and fight it out, slinging accusations and slugging it out in the public arena. No one wins. Today’s government is more divided along party lines than almost any other time in our history. The last time we were so divided, we had a civil war. 

Adams considered the word “party” to be an epithet, something you sling at an enemy. Jefferson, who denied his connection with Callendar (until Callendar produced letters from Jefferson authorizing the mudslinging), was stung himself by party politics. He later described party allegiance as “the last degradation of a free and moral agent” and claimed that “if I could not go to heaven but with a party, I would not go there at all.”

Several years after both had retired from public life, John Adams was induced by a mutual friend to renew his friendship with Jefferson. He wrote “You and I ought not to die before we have explained ourselves to each other.” For the next twenty years, they corresponded to do just that, leaving us with a treasury of wisdom and history. 

This odd couple discussed their differences and came to the same conclusion: American politics must rise above party for the good of the Republic. So many years later, can we not agree with them? 

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

Dad's Umbrella

Dad’s Umbrella

One rainy summer day, I grabbed an umbrella from the coat rack and strolled out to get the mail. My mailbox sits at the end of a long driveway, so I had time to enjoy the beautiful umbrella protecting me. It was my father’s umbrella decorated with a depiction of the angels in Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. 

You’ve seen these cherubs. They gaze upward on many posters, mugs, and t-shirts, their golden ringlets and colorful wings framing their wistful faces. It’s a beautiful painting. As I walked, I thought about how my father gave me two wonderful gifts – his love of beauty and his protection.

Dad loved beautiful things. He traveled the world for his job and in every place, he sought out something beautiful to bring home. Asian carpets, French paintings, a bit of Italian sculpture, a gossamer scarf, a delicate necklace, or a piece of poetry, anything which captured his eye or his heart, he packed up or shipped home. Nothing expensive – just beautiful. 

Of course, if you asked him what he considered most beautiful, he would not hesitate to answer – Marie, his wife and the mother of his six children who were next in line on his scale of beauty. An amateur photographer, he took every chance to immortalize us in pictures. He photographed our eyes, our smiles, our tears, and our triumphs. His photos evoke memories, laughter, and tears as we remember the beautiful moments we shared.

Dad loved all things beautiful. His rose garden boasted 50 bushes with some varieties of his own cultivation. He named these after his beloved wife or rambunctious children. His record collection included opera, Broadway shows, and Shakespeare. We listened. We sang. We absorbed their beauty into our souls. 

Dad loved poetry and prose. He recited epic poems for us and Shakespeare soliloquies. He introduced us to classic literature – beautiful words which enlightened and delighted us. He shared his love of comedy and drama, giving us laughter and tears. He took us to church where we learned the great mysteries and assurances of faith. 

He wanted us to find beauty in the world, so he protected us from things which were ugly. He steered us away from prejudice, anger, fear, and hatred. He guided us toward acceptance, joy, security, and love. He showed us beauty in his actions and his words. He covered us like an umbrella, sheltering us with his love. 

My father left this world in 2014 but his gifts remain with me still. I see him in the roses in my garden, in rainbows after a storm, in the smiles of my children and grandchildren, in the heart of my husband, and in the love of my siblings. He shaped our hearts.

Dad is still teaching us about beauty. He is protecting us still. Like his umbrella, he left us behind. But when we gaze upward, with wistful glances, we see beauty and feel his love shielding us still.