The Frontier of Knowledge

From the summit of Mt. Ida our little town lies below us like a child’s play village. Main and Court streets intersect at the bank and courthouse. Clay points out the ball field behind our Junior High School. I see myself among a gaggle of friends walking down the steep, concrete steps of the old school, then parading toward Main where we turn right at the bank and invade Roses Five and Dime. It is a coke float afternoon.

Main Street of Marion and Mt. Ida

The soda fountain is a civilized place of clean counters and bright lights. Clay and I have abandoned civilization and summited the wilderness at the south end of Main.  We look down on what we left behind.  Across the low hills, the steeples and smokestacks of our town, Hawksbill, Table Rock and Short-off Mountain form the eastern escarpment the wild Blue Ridge. To the northwest loom the deep purple peaks of the Black Mountains. As twelve-year-old boys of five-foot stature, we stand on high ground and survey the wilderness of our imagination. We are pioneers born two centuries too late.

Black Mountains

Hawksbill

 In the third grade I read a child’s biography of Meriwether Lewis of the famed Lewis and Clark expedition. He was an American hero who broke open the frontier of the national imagination. I wanted to be him, to lead men across an unknown continent.

In the dwindling light Clay and I leave the summit and turn down the southwest slope away from town. We come to an opening in the forest with a view of the landscape on the backside of the mountain – no play village, more forest and a few open fields. “Hey, this is like the frontier,” I say. “I’ll bet no one has been here before.”

“Huh?” Clay looks puzzled.

“We’re the first to walk on this side of the mountain.”

Clay points off to our right.  “I think I see a house down there, and a road.”

My eyes cannot avoid the rooftop and a ribbon of asphalt curving over a hill. Disappointment. “Well, that’s way over there.  We’re probably the first to walk this side of the mountain.”

We walk a few minutes further and come to a large mound of sawdust and a pile of scrap timber – the remnants of a sawmill. Clay looks at me and grins.

“Well, WE’ve never been HERE before,” I say. This is our personal frontier.

We walk back toward the top of Mt. Ida and find a level piece of ground, pitch our pup tent and rake a fire circle. Before darkness settles over the mountain we build a campfire. We unfold the tinfoil our Mom’s had wrapped around frozen patties of ground beef. We slice potatoes, carrots and onion and lay them on the ground beef, refold the foil and place them in the embers at the edge of the fire. The foil packages sizzle in the fire until we guess the meat and veggies are ready to eat. It is an imperfect process, but adequate for 12-year-old pioneers who like their food greasy and accept its burnt and raw variations. We are adventurers capable of cooking our own food on our own fire. We were unafraid of the darkness, until the firewood is gone.

It is a mostly sleepless night. Trees creak and moan in a moonless breeze.  Critters scurry through the dark leaves. We whisper about foxes, bears and snakes. Periodically, we search the forest with our flashlights, but shadows hide the sounds. Late in the night the moon rises. Leaves rustle again only a few feet from my ears. A breeze, or something, moves through the tops of the pines.  Then stillness and silence . . . and then, from the tree canopy above our tent: “Whoo-whoo-a-whooooo”. Nothing moves, not the wind, not the trees, not the shadows or the leaves. Clay and I lie quietly on the hard ground and finally . . . sleep.

The next afternoon we return to our little town, weary and hungry and full of tales to tell of our expedition into the wilderness.

I remember this as if it were yesterday: two boys pushing out the boundaries of the known.

Even in Meriwether Lewis’ time the continent was only unknown to some. The history that children read tells a portion of the continental story. In this case, our history acknowledges the help of Sacagawea but we miss the irony of a young woman carrying her infant and guiding the frontiersmen through the supposed unknown – she so young and tender, they so strong and durable. Trailblazers are born of partial knowledge and help from those who know. Trailblazers fill the informational gap in what the ignorant do not know. Their courage ushers in new knowledge. 

Within each mind there is a frontier. Curiosity, skepticism and courage precede learning.

Moral or Moron Mondays

The term “discourse” is a rather scholarly term, but one worth understanding. At the basic level, it simply means a connected piece of speech or writing; but at a more substantial level, discourse is the orderly, interchange of ideas. The quality of our lives is determined to a great extent by the quality of

Discourse into the Night, William Blades (1891)

our discourse – our exposure to coherent and inspiring instruction, lively conversation with friends and family, useful ideas exchanged in the work place, coherent verbal entertainment and information through the media. Learning and living should include becoming more adept at both delivering and appreciating discourse. As we grow, we should learn how to talk to each other.

In politics, discourse is on a downward slide. There is no better evidence than the Monday protests in North Carolina’s capitol – Moral Mondays as the protesters prefer, Moron Mondays as one of the protested has proclaimed.

If you live in North Carolina and haven’t noticed the protests in Raleigh, then you live in a world of limited, but perhaps more pleasant, discourse. Various citizens (including ministers, professors, teachers and NAACP members) are voicing their displeasure with proposed reductions in income taxes, increases in sales taxes, reduction in unemployment compensation, reduction in spending on education and the rejection of expanded Medicaid eligibility.  The media is making a show of protest leaders being proudly handcuffed and escorted way by the gentle hands of police. The protesters claim that politicians controlling state government are failing their moral obligation to our most vulnerable and needy citizens.  While the protesters claim the moral high ground, the governing powers disagrees. Anger and revulsion are strong on both sides.

In an editorial to a local newspaper, Thom Goolsby, a Republican legislative leader, suggested the title Moron Mondays. Unfortunately, Goolsby’s discourse includes slurring people who disagree with him as clowns, carnival barkers and angry, former hippies. He only vaguely identified the moral counter-argument to the protesters that could be based on self-reliance, self-discipline and fiscal responsibility. He made little effort to engage in discourse.  I simply returned the insult.

In this blog on learning and living, I tread into this discourse tenderly.  But, again, learning and living is about talking to each other.

I generally agree with the positions of the protesters, but I strongly disagree with their titling strategy. Settling our economic and political beliefs should engage our moral sense of how to structure society; but in political discourse, “moral” is a loaded term that causes opponents to dig in their heels and makes potential supporters disengage. Arguing morality in a political forum is nasty business.  If you are a supporter of Moral Mondays, I suggest remembering how you were enraged for decades by the Moral Majority. Whose morality were they claiming? Certainly not mine. There is no greater way to disparage your political opponents than to claim their immorality. And once the claim is offered in a political forum, rationale discourse fades away.

The government in power always pursues its agenda. It gets elected to do that. In this case, the Republicans in North Carolina have been powerless in state government for a long time and they are not going to miss this opportunity to push their political agenda. To argue the morality of their agenda is, indeed, to forget the cronyism and corruption of Democratic administrations.  The best approach available to Democrats, for the time being, is to avoid the morality argument and disagree on more rationale terms. The rejection of the Medicaid component of the Affordable Care is going to cost North Carolina jobs at a time we can ill afford them. It will drive up the medical cost to the state for the 500,000 people who would have been covered by the expanded Medicaid, with less revenue to offset the costs. With a weak and underfunded educational system, the state cannot be competitive in a national and global economy. This more rationale approach to political discourse can be more dispassionately examined, and the morality of it can be inferred without having to proclaim the opposition as immoral.

The Republican approach to state government will undo itself if the loyal opposition does its job of organizing at the city and county level and finding intelligent, articulate and trustworthy people to run for office. Arguing morality on the streets of Raleigh only promotes the people being arrested and detracts from the task of organizing an effective opposition.

Political protests have been an American tradition and, in some cases, have eventually changed the direction of politics.  Done correctly, it can empower the protesters and their ideas. Done incorrectly, it weakens the discourse. Protest if you feel inclined. But if you continue to argue morality rather than economics, too many people will hear you, but will fail to understand the consequences of the current direction of government.

John's Freedom Passage

Once.  

           Then.  

                      Now.  

On a cool November night in 1964, older Boy Scouts orchestrated the drama in the darkness.  I sat on the ground with a group of initiates in a small amphitheater in the edge of the woods above the lake. In the chilled silence, the darkness seemed absolute until a small flame appeared on the other shore of the lake. It drifted slowly across the lake. As the flame approached the shore below the amphitheater it became a torch casting a dim light and revealing a war canoe paddled by eight Indians. Thus began our induction into the Order of the Arrow (an honor society for Boy Scouts, to recognize experienced Scouts and to develop camping craft and instill values like service to others and personal self-discipline).

As the Scouts attired in buckskin and feathers walked into the amphitheater a flaming arrow zipped from above us and into a fire pit, alighting a bonfire and casting form and color into the woodland arena. The Chief among the Indians spoke briefly, borrowing words from the Scout oath: . . . honor . . . duty . . . God . . . country . . . service . . . physically strong . . . mentally awake . . . morally strait.  He instructed us: no talking until tomorrow evening, walk in single file behind the torch and follow instructions.

We followed meekly as the torchbearer led us into the woods. The line of boys shuffled slowly through the darkness and across wooded hills. Deeper into the night, an Indian not much bigger than me grabbed my shoulders from behind, forced me to the ground and said, “Stay here. I’ll be back in the morning.” Then he was gone and I was alone in the cold night with only a blanket. I slept little but learned a few things about myself and about the night.  In the woods, there is no absolute darkness. Starlight filters through a treetop canopy. Movement is discernable as small breezes pass through the forest. Silence is naught. Tree limbs creak. Dry leaves rustle. Train whistles carry through the void between earth and stars. And time creeps like a worm through soft, damp earth.

The next day, I worked alongside my peers on the waterfront and the trails of the Scout Camp.  We dug, cut, raked, lifted and cleaned in silence. Food was meager – a cup of juice, crackers and cheese, an apple and some water. At dusk we were led back to the amphitheater and given our white sash embroidered with a long, red arrow.  We were certain, at least for a while, that we had become someone different.

Much later in life I have wondered about this event. The Indian rituals and the aloneness of the forest are vivid. But the impact on my teenage self seems relatively transient. Within a day or so continued to think of myself far more than I thought of others. I still valued play over work. Like the rituals of church and the admonitions of family and teachers, the rituals of the Order of the Arrow seemed much less significant from only a few days’ distance.

How forceful must a rite of passage be to change us significantly?  How profound?  Are transformations planned or accidental?  Might rituals be more transformative if they match the rigor and purpose of the vision quest, an ancient rite of passage for Native American teenagers? When ready for the quest, an Indian teenager treks alone into the wilderness without food or water. He wanders for several days seeking spiritual energy and self-identity. Deprived of human contact and sustenance, the teenager slowly attunes to the spirit world and comes in contact with a guardian animal or force of nature, possibly through a vision or dream.  At least that is the intent. I wonder how many Native American teenagers actually participate and how often they are transformed into more self-aware and thoughtful people. Can transformation occur so quickly?

Perhaps I should not be so skeptical of either my Order of the Arrow experience or the vision quest. If nothing else, on my quest I learned not to fear the forest at night.  I learned to survive a day without talking and with less food than I thought I needed. Ten years after that experience something motivated me to hike and camp alone for three days in a wilderness area where I slept without a tent on a highland bald and was nearly rutted out my sleeping bag by a big buck whose eyes and antlers glowed in the dark. Now, decades later, though I enjoy the company of friends in the backcountry, I sometimes camp and fish alone. There is something strangely communal about silence that is not silent and darkness that is not dark.

I ponder the influence on my life of these experiences. I recognize several effects of aloneness: very intense and focused solving of basic problems; alteration of time and space; time travel, backward and forward; dreams and visions. Though the wilderness accommodates this kind of experience, it might not be essential. But we must dismiss and ignore what surrounds us to gain freedom.

Freedom Angst

As a teenager I suffered occasional angst regarding infringements on my personal freedom: school, parents, church and adults in general. There were days when the world would not acknowledge my abilities. On those freedom suppressing days, school was a prison; it controlled life by the hour and minute. Beyond school, my father was the Boss.  If I wanted stuff, I had to work for it. The Boss set the parameters for my coming and going. I worked in his store after school and in the summers.  I resented that a portion of my pay had to be deposited at the bank and the church. Why save money for tomorrow when I need it today? The church reigned in my logic.  It insisted that I believe in fantasies and miracles. It provided a weekly dose of guilt.

Where were the Blessings of Liberty? There were days I felt shackled to tradition. Though I lived in the Land of the Free, my teenage self was decidedly unfree.

That was several decades ago.

The freedom angst slowly changes. Learning and living leads to a different perspective. Adults are still plagued by the angst; but it has little to do with school, parents or church.  The adult angst is centered on government and ideology. Our founding fathers did not foresee an intrusive government limiting our independence with a gazillion taxes and fees – income, capital, sales, property, usage and luxuries. Taxes to educate the young, heal the weak, care for the old and subsidize the rich take large chunks of our money needed to do what we want to do and have what we want to have. Ideologically, there is both conservative angst and liberal angst.

Angst leads to fear and fear suppresses freedom. We fear the lack of money. We fear crime, terrorism, immigrants, drugs, the criminally insane, opposing ideologies and the unknown. To move freely and safely, we need a gun. Because we fear that our gun is less deadly than the other guy’s gun, we stock our personal armories. The Land of the Free devolves to the Wild West.

I am striving to free myself of the freedom angst.  I want to attend more carefully to my corner of the world, to the corner of my mind where fear resides. Our government might make us freer than other governments, but it cannot make us free.  If we want freedom, we’ll have to contend with things nongovernmental.  Here are some questions about those other things:

Will I work or will I labor? Work is my exertion to create, to build, to improve and to achieve. It is an exertion that brings short-term weariness but long-term strength. It ignites curiosity, passion and commitment. It involves the mind and the body. It makes me larger, more versatile and more free. Labor is my exertion to sustain. It is temporary.  It dissolves at the end of the day and must be repeated. It is relatively mindless.  Many of us live a life of labor. The most free among us work.

(The distinction between work and labor can be illusive. One person’s labor might be another person’s work. My work is writing and teaching. My labor is keeping things clean and organized. Work is passion; labor is routine. When I find satisfaction in cleanliness and organization, my labor becomes work. When I feel compelled to work to provide for my daily needs, my work becomes labor. One who labors too much cannot be free.)

Will I want what I have, rather than have what I want?  I really want a bigger boat – roomy and stable enough to spend summers off the coast of Maine and winters in the Caribbean. There are other places I want to be and a boat cannot take me there. I need additional modes of transport - efficient, luxurious and environmentally friendly. That is what I want. What I have is a family, home, friends and a small sailboat and a minivan. I’ve seen such a small portion of the world, but perhaps I do not know the value of the small portion I have seen. Sometimes I look and do not see, listen and fail to hear.

Will I be more fearless? I cannot confront what I fail to acknowledge. I should fear aging less, live more for today and less for tomorrow. I should confront those inner things that worry me – personal habits that waste time and reduce the quality of the day. Perhaps I should believe more in the fantasies I tend to reject. Cast out the demons. Ritualize self-control.  A fearful and worried mind is far from freedom.

Freedom

Look and listen 

with more discriminating eyes and ears. 

Balance work and labor.

Fear less. 

Cast out the  demons.

Math 1, Reading 0

At the beginning of a second grade lesson the teacher announced that the daily schedule had been changed. The next lesson was math rather than reading. The children cheered.

I was not surprised. After 30 years of visiting elementary and middle schools, I have seen a pattern: Math and science are often more popular among students than reading and writing. It’s a broad generalization for which I have no data, but much anecdotal evidence.

Why the pattern? Here is my theory: Math and science can satisfy the curiosity of children about the physical world. Reading and its affiliates (writing, grammar, spelling and literature) are tedious and abstract, at least as taught in the testing-crazed culture of modern schooling.

While reading and writing instruction tends to focus on the abstract rules of written language (the sounds of vowels and consonants, the rules of grammar and punctuation), math and science instruction is built on the concrete logical of the physical world. The content of reading and writing instruction involves ideas and events that are often imaginary or unfamiliar. Physical space and objects available to all, regardless of language, culture or region, unify the content of math and science. Butterflies, bugs and blocks are ever present. One bean plus two beans equals three beans, always and everywhere. Math and science provide the intellectual mechanisms for satisfying curiosity. If you want to build a tree house or a dollhouse, it helps to measure accurately. If Mom expects you home for dinner by six, you need to be able to read a clock and estimate how long it takes to walk a mile, or how much longer you could play if you could bike home rather than walk.

Curiosity naturally involves examining, arranging, hypothesizing and testing. The effects of mathematical rules and processes can be visually confirmed. Reading and writing instruction in the fashion of modern teaching, lacks that connection of common experience. Learning the conventions and grammar of standard language defies our native dialects. (Johnny: We was tired. Teacher: No Johnny, we were tired.) Language instruction requires students to trust the teacher is correct and the speech of friends and family is wrong.

While second graders in math instruction use small cubes to learn addition and subtraction, during reading instruction they summarize an unfamiliar story or infer a main idea.  While a second grader can take away one fourth of a pie to leave three fourths of a pie, they cannot point to a particular word or sentence that summarizes or represents an inferred main idea. Summarizing or inferring requires reconstructing what has been encountered – a mental task that can be very difficult for a young mind. Math for youngsters is concrete, thus more accessible and attainable. Language is abstract. No wonder young children cheer when reading is replaced my math.

It does not have to be this way.  Here is my advice to teachers about making reading and writing more enjoyable and successful for children. Make better use of the familiar and the meaningful:

•      Use rhymes, songs and stories that are familiar and memorable.
•      Use invented stories and real observations, discoveries and experiences dictated by children and transcribed by teachers (constantly transcribe children’s speech to text).
•     Dramatize and improvise familiar stories.
•      Use choral reading and reader’s theatre
•      Connect reading and writing to math, science, social studies, sports and recreation
•      Give equal time to writing (learning to write is learning to read)
•       Surround children with their own written language (flip charts, walls of their stories, reports, drawings with captions)

Learning to read and write can be at least as enjoyable as learning math and science if the teacher uses the experienced world as a bridge to the abstract world.

Not Fair. You're Picking on Me

Timothy, a seventh grader, is in trouble with the teacher. He’s talking while his history teacher is instructing.  The teacher pauses for a second and makes eye contact with him.  Timothy stops talking for a minute, then begins whispering again to the girl in front of him. The teacher pauses, looks at him and says, “Timothy, stop talking.” A few minutes later, Timothy is talking to the girl again. The teacher sends Timothy to a seat in the corner of the room. As Timothy ambles his way to the desk in the corner he says, loud enough for the teacher to hear, “This isn’t fair. Carlos talks more than me. You’re picking on me.”

The dilemma illustrated in this anecdote plagues every teacher and parent. What is fairness? What is justice?

There is the possibility that Timothy is right. The teacher may treat some students more favorably than others. If the teacher has favorites, if he has not established an understanding of “fairness” as it applies in the classroom, then the teacher has a problem. Providing justice is more than a momentary problem related to a couple of students. Failure to provide justice creates an ongoing problem that will interfere with the teacher’s authority and the students’ opportunity to learn.

But Timothy is likely wrong to claim he is being treated unfairly.  There are probably circumstances he is unwilling or unable to acknowledge; and therein lies the crux of problem for all.  We struggle to explain or understand justice.

Piaget said that young children are mostly concrete thinkers who understand fairness in a way that is different from adults.  From a young child’s point of view, the one who accidentally spills a carton of milk is in more trouble than one who spills a small glass of milk. The size of the mess determines the size of the wrong. A wiser adult sees it differently.

A young child is more likely to grant an adult the authority to establish justice. If a parent or teacher says a wrong has been committed and a punishment is necessary, a young child is more likely to accept the judgment than an adolescent. A middle school student’s sense of justice is closer to an adult view, but still varies in some important ways. Middle schoolers are likely connect fairness to equality – equal treatment for all. Adolescent also are more susceptible to group norms of justice. Membership in social groups is often determined by standards of dress, appearance and behavior. Adolescent who are excluded from a particular group feel that life is not fair.  It’s a hard lesson, unpleasant at the least. Life isn’t always fair.

Good teachers strive for fairness and can usually achieve it, at least within the walls of their classrooms. They provide a model of fairness and help students move beyond a concrete view of fairness and beyond the reliance on social norms to determine who is in or out or who has power or not. Fairness has to be achieved by the whole classroom community. If the teacher is sole arbiter of justice, then the scales of justice will often be unbalanced.

Let’s go back to the problem of Timothy who thinks he’s being picked on. The fact that the teacher warned him twice doesn’t give him much room to claim unfairness. The teacher should not interrupt instruction to deliver a lecture to Timothy about fairness. It wouldn’t be fair to other students. And, Timothy might be trying to provoke a confrontation that is going to be more disruptive.

If I were Timothy’s teacher, I would talk to him at the end of class. Maybe it would go like this:

Me: Timothy, I’m disappointed in your behavior today. Your talking was interfering with the lesson.

Timothy: But Carlos . . .

Me: Stop. This is about your talking. It is not about Carlos.

Timothy: But it’s not fair.

Me: It’s not fair when your talking prevents other students from learning. I know you are capable of understanding that. This conversation is about your behavior today. I expect better from you. When I pause while I’m teaching and make eye contact with you, it’s all about learning social studies. I’m doing it for you and everyone else. Do you understand what I mean?

Timothy looks down and is silent.  I bend down, make eye contact and raise my eyebrows.

Timothy: Okay.

Me: Thanks, I’ll see you tomorrow.

The classroom is a small space where a teacher can be authoritative and fair and can teach justice as well as the academic curriculum. We can teach students the relationship between classroom rules and ethics, but it cannot be done in a day and we cannot rely on authority alone. We need to bring content and activities to the classroom that help students see the room as their room – a safe place where home, neighborhood and cultural experiences are valued. Elliot Wigginton sent his high school students into their neighborhoods to collect oral histories about families and communities. Those stories became the content for their reading and writing. (Read about it at The Foxfire Fund.) Wigginton gave us a good lesson on teaching reading, writing, history and justice. 

We should not preach responsibility to our students. We should give responsibility by making students our assistants and teaching them to teach others. There are many ways to promote justice in the classroom. Maintaining fairness in the classroom is not easy, but it is possible.