Thrower Educational Philosophy 101

I want to share a little story with you to start this off.  William Makepeace Thackeray wrote a classic comedy tale back in 1855 called The Rose and the Ring, and the focus of the story was the personages of four young royals in two fictional kingdoms.  The first, Prince Giglio, was the son of King Savio of the fictional kingdom of Paflagonia, but his father met an untimely death and was succeeded by his ambition-driven brother Valoroso.  In the meantime, in the neighboring (and bitterly rival) kingdom of Crim Tartary was the King Calvofiore, who was overthrown in a coup by one of his generals, Padella.   Calvofiore's toddler daughter, Rosalba, in the mayhem of affairs in the palace, was left to basically fend for herself and wandered off into the woods to be raised by wolves.  Soon, at Valoroso's palace in Paflagonia, a strange little girl with a raggedy coat and one shoe shows up, and proves so entertaining that Valoroso's daughter, the prissy Princess Angelica, decides to keep her as a pet until she gets bored (which was rather quickly) and the ragamuffin girl, now called Betsinda, becomes the Princess's maid.  Padella, now installed as King of Crim Tartary, has a son as well named Bulbo, who later plays into the picture.  A key figure linking all these kids together is a mysterious woman called the Fairy Blackstick.  It was often tradition at a royal birth to invite Fairy Blackstick to the palace as an honored guest, and usually the good fairy would bestow some special gift upon the new royal child.  Upon the princes, Fairy Blackstick bestowed the gifts of a rose (for Bulbo) and a ring (for Giglio) - these gifts had the effect of making the boys handsome and desireable to the opposite sex, but imparted no other value; both boys basically became spoiled brats, a fact not unnoticed by the wise fairy.  She finally decided that bestowing these little blessings on spoiled princes and princesses was an exercise in futility, and decided instead to bestow upon the next, Calvofiore's little daughter Rosalba, a gift of a different nature - a little misfortune.  This, of course, did not bode well with the parents of the little tyke, and word spread so that when Valoroso's queen gave birth to Angelica, they banned the fairy from even attending.  So, the Fairy, upon arriving, was greeted by the doorman, an uncouth sort by the name of Gruffanuff, and after he was rather rude to her she turned him into a brass doorknocker, leaving his ugly widow behind - this widow had a thing for Giglio, and wanted to seduce him to gain a place for herself in the kingdom.  However, Giglio was smitten with his cousin Angelica, and gave her a ring, which later she cruelly refused and it got carelessly tossed out the window, only to of course be found by the old widow hag Gruffanuff.  The ring made the old crone beautiful, and she used that to her advantage until finally giving the ring to Betsinda, and then all the affections of the male sex were diverted to her.   At the same time, the two despots Valoroso and Padella decided it was time to negotiate a treaty between their nations, and Padella sent his son Bulbo, with rose and all, as a goodwill ambassador.  The two crooked kings wanted to marry off Angelica to Bulbo in order to seal the alliance, but Giglio was in a jealous rage and gets in a scuff with Bulbo, which in turn gets Giglio banned.  Betsinda (who you may have figured out by now is the Princess Rosalba) is now wearing Giglio's ring, and that causes some jealousy among the women of the palace which gets her thrown out.  She somehow ends up back in her homeland, spending the night at a deposed nobleman's shanty in the borial forest named Spinachy, who has the rest of her things and reveals that she is the true queen of Crim Tartary.   Giglio in the meantime is on a coach rolling out of town, and at a stop a strange lady (the Fairy Blackstick in disguise) accompanies him on the remainder of his trip, giving him a nice meal and a pep talk.  Giglio decides it is time to get his life together, enrolls in the university, and some years later he returns to Paflagonia.  Rosalba by now is leading a resistance against Padella, whom she soundly defeats and takes her rightful place on the throne of Crim Tartary, and soon too Valoroso's misdeeds find him out and his vizier, a shark named Glumboso, rats him out.  Bulbo and Rosalba find out about each other, fall in love, and then the Fairy Blackstick pays them a visit - she explains why they went through a lot, and that a little misfortune motivated them to live up to their potential as they were meant to be.  Although a foiled attempt to sabotage that union was launched by old hag Gruffanuff, Blackstick transforms the knocker back into her missing husband, and then Giglio and Rosalba wed, having a happy wedding.  A happy ending also awaits Angelica and Bulbo, who likewise are wed.  All ends well in the make-believe lands of Paflagonia and Crim Tartary. 

The hideous Mrs. Gruffanuff, an original illustration from Thackeray's classic work

A little misfortune - a good message when you think about it, as what Thackeray was communicating was that often adversity builds character.  I shared that story to say that so much of today's education lacks something - it has even changed since I was young, and that was just under 40 years!  Good literature was meant to communicate good values, as well as honing the comprehension of appreciating reading.  And, I have come to believe that reading is the fundamental root of quality education, as it is where it starts.  When I was a kid, I was exposed to good literature early thanks in part to a wise investment on Mom's part in a set of books called My Book House, which is also where I got the story from, as I have enjoyed it since I was a kid.  The My Book House series was a masterpiece of the late educator Olive Beaupre Miller (1883-1968), and the series itself dates back to 1919, when Miller's company, the Book House for Children, first published them.  The current incarnation of the set is 12 volumes, and the latest ones that I purchased back in 1995 are white covers (the original set I had and lost many moons ago was in dark navy and green alternating).  They are organized according to age, starting with nursery rhymes (the classic Mother Goose ones at that!) in Volume 1 (titled In The Nursery) and progressing to epic stories such as works by Leo Tolstoy in Volume 12 (titled Halls of Fame).   In between is a great collection of Aesop fables, Greek mythology, Bible stories, ethnic folk tales, real-life stories of famous people, poetry, songs, and excerpts from classic literature (a neat chapter of Charles Dickens' David Copperfield is found in Volume 7, which is titled The Magic Garden).  I still actually enjoy reading those volumes even today, as there is something relaxing in reading those stories that stimulates even the imagination of an adult. 

Olive Beaupre Miller (1883-1968), who created the My Book House series

 

This is the inside cover of each of the Book House volumes, which was masterfully done and could spark the imagination of any child.  These beautiful illustrations were found all throughout the series.

 

 

However, the My Book House series was not the only source of quality literature I had.  At one point in time, my mother had contemplated a call to the ministry and I believe even went to Bible school for a short time.  When she pursued this, she purchased a three-volume Bible reference set that included a Bible dictionary, a concordance, and a Bible story book.  The story book I remember well - it had a reddish brown cover and was called Beautiful Bible Stories, published by Southwest Publishing Company.  That book of Bible stories, along with my natural historical curiosity, is largely responsible for motivating me to read the Bible for myself.  And, it was one of the greatest gifts Mom could have given me.

 

 

I had also, when I was around 6 or so years of age, found a small book that provided good basic scientific knowledge for an inquisitive mind as well.  It was published by Child Horizons, and the little book was entitled Questions Children Ask.  I had long ago lost my original copy, but managed to find another one a couple of years back, thanks to E-Bay.  It is a good resource to answer basic questions about how water becomes steam, etc., that a lot of kids ask at certain ages. 

The authors of this informative little book were Edith and Ernest Bonhivert, and it was published in 1967 originally.  It was organized by categories, such as "About Ourselves," which dealt with human biology and opened the book, and covered every category of natural sciences, economics, and history that could be imagined.  Much of the information is still relevant today, although a few things are outdated too. 

As I grew, so did my reading - I was introduced to works like those of Robert Newton Peck, William Saroyan, and others, and they helped me develop better.  As I read, I became interested in other things as well - cooking, music, etc., many of the interests I still possess today.  Now that I gave this overview, let me give you a philosophy of education I have developed over the years.

In order for a child to succeed in his or her studies, their imagination must be stimulated.  Therefore, it is important to realize that they need to be challenged with what they read.  Much of today education is glorified, unionized babysitting, with a bunch of complacent, discontented teachers droning meaningless facts in classrooms in a tone that would make Ben Stein sound hyper.  That, compounded by the short attention spans of many of today's kids (attention-deficit disorder is not an exception, but is the rule nowadays!) as they rot their brains and give themselves carpal-tunnel before they reach puberty with all the texts, tweets, social media, X-boxes, etc.  Many of these kids don't have the patience to sit down and actually read a good book because their educators are too busy either going after a fast buck or messing around with activism rather than educating.  Many kids are masters these days of political correctness, but they are culturally illiterate.  Worse, many have texted their brains out on their smartphones so much that they can't even spell correctly (some even think that "LOL" is an actual word!).  Our kids now can read "classics" like Heather Has Two Mommies as part of the required first-grade curriculum, but heaven forbid you read your kids anything that mentions Uncle Remus!  As for Bible stories, that has become a big no-no - kids are being expelled for carrying a New Testament in their backpacks now, but their teachers hand kindergarteners condoms at whim (what are they going to do with those anyway - prickly, phallic-shaped water balloons maybe?).  We are raising a generation that is, frankly, both sensitive (and not in a good way either!) and stupid at the same time.   Then on weekends kids are sitting there diddling their I-Pods today when back when I was that age I was out catching crawdads, fishing, building forts, and picking berries.  The reason is that these kids today have nothing to stimulate their imagination.   A no-talent twirp like Justin Bieber or an offensive slut like Miley Cyrus have become their role models, and instead of being out building forts and playing cowboys-and-Indians, our boys are subjected to a diet of TV that features a bunch of gay choirboys on Glee or some Kardashian tart's gyrating, half-naked butt that just mysteriously pops up on their Facebook page.  With a decline in good values comes a decline in intellectual development. 

If any of this generation is to be salvaged, it is time to take them back to the basics - make those kids read Hans Christian Anderson's Snow Queen, Dickens' Oliver Twist, and regale them with the great Greek myths of heroes like Hercules, or better yet, Biblical stories of real heroes.  Get those kids off their butts, out of the house, and put them to work - incentives help too.  When I was in school, for instance, we had pretty clearly-defined systems of reward and punishment.  For instance, in my third-grade teacher Mrs. Moran's class, if you got out-of-line, you had to hold up to six large dictionaries in a corner for 20 minutes or you wrote 100+ times sentences stating "I will not______".
But, if you excelled, you got rewarded - one teacher I remember gave us tokens which at the end of the week we could redeem from the Weekly Reader book catalog - the more you read and applied yourself, the more tokens you earned.  However, that same teacher - my 5th and 6th grade teacher, the late Guy Dispanet (1939-1993) -  would make you run laps around the back field at our school (Oh, how I hated that!).   Although it took some work on the student's part, it paid off - you learned character and responsibility that way.   Also, in those days teachers were not shy about applying a little corporal punishment - 5 whacks in the principal's office with a heavy wooden paddle was a good motivation to behave oneself!    And, perhaps if our kids had more role models like Mr. Rogers or Captain Kangaroo (or Miss Sally from Romper Room for the really young tykes - any of my fellow geezers remember these?) they might turn out better than they have in many cases.

Another issue today is this whole deal with entitlement.  People don't want to apply themselves, invest the effort, and enjoy the fruits of their labor - rather, they go to school, take courses in basket-weaving and "How to Love Your Lesbian Dad," and then they think they have a right to demand everything be handed to them on a silver platter (thanks Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton, the two original "plantation pimps" of entitlement!).   Lawrence Welk, an unlettered scion of Volga German immigrants from North Dakota who later became one of the most famous big bandleaders of all time, stated it best in his book This I Believe (Engelwood Cliffs, NJ:  Prentice-Hall, 1979) when he said on page 27 when he observed the following:

"Actually, I believe they (young people) know it instinctively.  Most young people are itching to 'do,' to 'act,' to learn for themselves.  The problem is that we make it unreasonably difficult for them, with our child labor and minimum wage laws.  And we stop them at just the time in life when they learn quickest and best."

Welk wrote this in 1979 - he would be turning over in his grave today if he witnessed what has happened in the 21 years since his passing in 1992!  Phil Robertson, of Duck Dynasty fame, adds a little personal perspective as well when he wrote in his book, Happy, Happy, Happy (New York: Howard Books, 2013) this:  "we didn't have much, but we loved each other and found ways to keep each other entertained.  We didn't have cellphones or computers, but somehow we managed to survive.  As far as I know, none of my brothers or sisters has ever owned a cell phone...I can promise you one thing: you'll never find me on Twitter or Skype.  If anyone needs to talk to me, they know where I live." (pp. 20-21).  Tying those two diverse backgrounds together, here is what I get out of it - young people want to learn for themselves, and can use their time constructively to do so.  However, Corporate America (the bane of true intelligence) has manufactured a number of convenient distractions that stifle this natural inquisitive nature and resourcefulness, and the result has been devastating.  And, parents and teachers alike have encouraged this mental laziness.  So, as our kids sit around getting fatter and stupider, Corporate America fiddles like Nero.   Like Welk also said, we stifle kids' natural self-sufficiency too.   I can relate to all this.  When I was growing up, computers were the stuff of science fiction, and I wasn't exposed to my first one until my 6th grade year in 1983. I didn't even use one until much later, when I was 28 years old in 1998.  I am still more comfortable today with hard-copy and bound books than I am with all these Kindles and such, and if someone sends me something online, it does me little use until I can actually print it out and hold it in my hand.  Many people are even less computer-literate - my mother has never touched one hardly, and she's actually sort of afraid of them!  Computers have sort of become a fact of life now, but my concern is that life is often built around them way too much.  Sometimes it is good to just step away from the computer a while and let the brain do what God created it to do.  Good parents will admonish their kids to do just that.  Reading books is indeed a lost art, and what a tragedy it is too.

Math skills are also not as great among the younger generation.  As a kid, I hated math, and thanks be to God for strict teachers that made me stretch my brain, I learned it fast - one of those teachers that comes to mind is Dorothy Schwer (whose last name in German, ironically, actually means "difficult" - the joke in German class when I was in high school concerning her was "Ist Frau Schwer schwer?")
However hardnosed she seemed to be then, however, she knew how to make students apply themselves.  As I get older, it is ironic that the meanest, strictest teachers I had throughout my formative years (Dispanet and Schwer come to mind!) turned out being the ones I appreciated the best later.  Good teachers don't do what they do to be liked, but rather to make the students learn, which is their job.  Not all good teachers are that strict though - I have had other teachers, such as my high school English teacher, Mrs. Vivian McConnell (1920-2012), whom I kept in touch with for years because she made her lessons come alive and become applicable to their students.  Then, there is Thomas Englemann, a tall (over 6-foot) lanky guy with a long ponytail in honor of his Indian heritage, who gave me a listening ear and tremendous encouragement at a time when I was in junior high school and often looked down upon because I was somewhat eccentric then.  A good well-rounded education needs both the McConnells and the Schwers, the Dispanets and the Engelmanns, because all of these educators contribute something to a kid's development that they need.  Some teachers one may hate at first - doing math problems on a certain type of paper or running laps at recess around a field in your street clothes may not initially endear the educators instituting those measures well at first, and I can attest - but as one does grow older and wiser, reflection brings appreciation when something that teacher said or did 30+ years ago all of a sudden clicks - the classic "AHA!" moment, which I sure you all can relate to.   Take time, therefore, to appreciate your old teachers.  Some of them may no longer be in this life, as they may have passed onto their eternal reward, but you are their legacy, and that is honorable in and of itself. 

I hope you didn't mind indulging me these ramblings tonight, as I have been thinking about this subject for a while and wanted to write about it.  Many of yesterday's kids are now today's parents - have you asked your kids about those teachers they have instructing them, and have you encouraged them to maybe keep a journal or something of those observations?  If not, please do so - I honestly can say I regret not keeping journals earlier than what I have, and what a loss of perspective that was.  Your kids need to chronicle what is important in their life now, and they need to start preserving the legacy they have today.  Good teachers are some of the architects of that legacy, and if we encourage kids to appreciate that more, it might give hope to this generation yet.  Take care until next time.