A Native Returns 7

A NATIVE RETURNS #7

The chief wonder of education is that it does not ruin everyone concerned with it, teachers and taught. -Henry James

I tremble a little when I think of putting my ideas in writing because those ideas can always come back to haunt me when I get some new insight into the problem. If we say something that doesn’t hold water later on, we can always say we were misunderstood or misquoted and get off the hook.

In this respect, I feel somewhat the way William James expressed himself in a letter to his brother: “For God’s sake don’t answer these remarks which (as Uncle Howard used to say of father’s writings) are but the peristaltic belchings of my own crabbed organism.”

Antoine de Saint Exupery said, “There is no liberty except the liberty of someone making his way toward something” and “Such a man can be set free if you will teach him the meaning of thirst, and how to trace a path to a well. Only then will he embark upon a course of action that will not be without significance.”

Centuries before, Francis Bacon said, “ It is a pleasure, to stand upon the shore, and to see the ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a castle, and to see a battle, and the adventures thereof below: but no pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage point of truth, and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests in the vale below.”

There is a connection between the ideas of these two very different philosophers. To make education relevant for the young, we must make them aware of “the meaning of thirst”; we must make them aware of the areas of life about which they can be thirsty. In some way we have to lead them or show them how they can find their way to the shore and the castle window. And then when they have seen the panorama of sea-tossed ships and the adventure below and have become excited about becoming involved in some part of that vision, we must in some way make relevant a hierarchy of goals which stand between them and the attainment of that vision.

The understanding and appreciation of literature, past and present, can bring a student to a “vantage point of truth” and give him the opportunity to “see the errors, and wanderings, and mists” in the light of his own experience and interpretation.

The understanding and preparation of written and oral composition, properly and effectively presented to the student, is a way of releasing that young person from the prison of a frustrating inability to comprehend what he is experiencing and to communicate without distortion what he does comprehend to someone else.

Consciously or unconsciously, the student is often saying, “What does all this have to do with me? Antony gave a speech to a bunch of Romans. So what! So I could memorize it? or he is saying, “What in the world do they want me to write about my summer vacation for? I didn’t do anything; it was dull.” And so what he write is dull and uninteresting to him and everyone else.

On the other hand if he can relate Antony’s purpose to the purpose of some speaker at town meeting or the student council, he can find relevance. If he is brought along to look at learning to write as a way of getting his ideas in such an order that he can find answers to a problem and convince someone else to go along with his answers, he will find a reason to select his own topics and a reason for organizing those ideas in a certain way.

Demands for reforms in education date back through the years, and teachers today are just as concerned about finding ways of making learning an interesting and productive process as in the past, and today they are better equipped.

We have to keep in mind, however, that while we are looking for ways in which we can facilitate learning, we must make sure the learning remains in it. Alfred North Whitehead said, “The broad primrose path leads to a nasty place.” At the same time he warned is that “A merely well-informed man is the most useless bore on God’s earth.”

Inert ideas are useless; the student should make the ideas and experiences his own and experience the joy of discovery. When we have succeeded in bringing the child to this realization, the course of study becomes his personal property, and he has been released from the boredom of dull and meaningless pedantry.

The student finds relevancy in the education to which he is subjected only insofar as the teacher has found it before him and then is concerned enough to lead the student to the castle window, the shore, and the vantage point of truth, realizing that the student must find the place upon which to stand that has meaning for him and that he must see and recognize the panorama of “errors, and wanderings, and mists, and tempests in the vale below” as it corresponds to his own experience and imagination.

Then the teacher and students can work together in discovering specific problems, in learning to recognize them, in approaching them and in finding solutions.