Mark Twain and Joan of Arc

Mark Twain! Gah!

Living a Story, Writing a Life

When I was a kid, I read a bunch of Mark Twain. I was fascinated by his humor, his cynicism, and the contradictions so blatantly expressed. He wrote stories making fun of Adam and Eve, religion, social mores. Then, he turns around in apparent contradiction and writes a stunning biography of Joan of Arc. Earlier this week, I was looking for a quote from Joan of Arc, and I found this from Twain. It’s rather long, but in the context of today’s life, I feel like it fits.

“When we reflect that her century was the brutalest, the wickedest, the rottenest in history since the darkest ages, we are lost in wonder at the miracle of such a product from such a soil. The contrast between her and her century is the contrast between day and night. She was truthful when lying was the common speech of men; she was…

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My Story (At least a part of it)

For as long as I can remember, I have been searching for education. I was public schooled until the 6th grade, at which point I began to homeschool and began my search in earnest. First in homeschool groups, then in college. I found glimpses of it, but I was not satisfied. When I was 12, I joined a homeschool group where we read intensely and discussed the ideas in the constitution intensely. I loved it. I never spoke, because I was couldn’t talk to anyone (that’s another story), but I loved the feeling.

We were required to read paragraphs by Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, Benjamin Franklin and others. But it felt different from any other class I have had since for a couple reasons. It wasn’t graded, and in order to come to class, we had to do the homework. We wouldn’t get chewed out, we wouldn’t lose participation points, we wouldn’t get another chance to catch up, we just wouldn’t be allowed to participate. Even though I couldn’t talk I wanted to go to that class so badly that I would read every week so I could attend the class. I loved that idea so much I would do a ton of work just to be there.

I have been searching for something like that ever since. 

After I had been at college a few years, and searched rather futilely for something like that, I started saying to myself (because though I have been afraid of talking to other people, talking to myself has never been a problem), “Ich habe hunger” which translates from German into “I have hunger” (Because in English, it just doesn’t sound that cool). But it wasn’t hunger for ramen or ice cream, traditional staples of college life, but hunger for that feeling. The feeling of epiphanies like electricity in the air. The excitement of ideas and of thinking about things in new ways. I wanted that and I knew it was possible. 

And I wasn’t getting that. The regimented hours, the production of work that didn’t effect anything, and the “discussions” where no one spoke but the teacher and a few loud students (sometimes including me, I’d started to learn to speak at this point), drove me quietly, internally, crazy. Don’t get me wrong, there were a few classes that were the exception, my marvelous Shakespeare class, my Leadership and Humanities capstone course, and a course on the literary aspects of the Bible, but even these were tainted by the feeling that “I have to do this.” And I was a good student. I liked school. Long ago, Before I started homeschooling, I had straight A’s and was the teacher’s pet. (After I started homeschooling, I still had straight A’s…but I graded myself;) )

In my second to last year, I found it. I found what I was looking for. It was called Curiosity Club. We met on Thursdays to discuss ideas and concepts. One of the members would present on something they were passionate about, and then we would discuss it for an hour and a half to two hours. Sometimes until we were kicked out of the building. I’d found it. And it was marvelous. 

One week, one of the members asked a question to start a discussion. It was a question I had previously asked and eventually the question I based my senior essay on. The question was, “What does it mean to be educated?” We discussed, not debated the question, trying to find the meat of it. Ideas flowed in the room, and that electricity of epiphanies sparked. 

After about an hour of intense discussion, a sort of quiet fell on us. The air had changed, the discussion had become heavy . The words in our heads could be felt in the air. Our system of education was ineffective and there was nothing we could do. We were the products of the system and we couldn’t do anything about it. The air felt dead, as though we were stopped. My chest felt heavy and I felt an pain, a fear, that I would never be satisfied, that I would be hungry forever. 

My hunger couldn’t be solved. The ache would never go away. We were doomed. The energy, the excitement in the room that I loved in curiosity club was gone. Why even bother?

Then someone began to speak. I don’t remember precisely who, but they began to talk of what we could do. How we could change the system, how we could be. How we were in charge of our education and we could take it into our own hands, even in little ways, even in our undergrad. I remember the energy lifting, with a different sense of purpose. No longer were we discussing something in the abstract, something we didn’t have control over, but we were discussing a very real aspect of our lives, that we did have control over. That we do have control over. And I felt hope. I felt hope.

 

And I still do. We are the ones in charge of our education. In the end, we are the only ones who do.

What Dreams Make

I was about 16 or 17 years old, and I was sitting in a homeschool coop in the upstairs floor of a rented church in Idaho. One of the dads was teaching math. I don’t remember precisely what wa…

Source: What Dreams Make

What Dreams Make

I was about 16 or 17 years old, and I was sitting in a homeschool coop in the upstairs floor of a rented church in Idaho. One of the dads was teaching math.

I don’t remember precisely what was being taught. I knew it wasn’t like any other math class I had participated in. He talked about the equals sign being equivalent to “is”, and how abstract and concrete concepts work. I do remember the epiphany I received, sitting in the room, surrounded by my peers.

“Everything that exists, was once just a thought.”

For some reason, at 17, this thought completely blew my mind. I kept looking at the concrete objects in the room, the chairs, the tables, my clothes, and thinking that before they had existed in real life, they must have existed in someone’s mind or at least on paper. Though items may change as they are created, at least a breath of them existed in thought first.

We create our realities. Most of what we do, we create, by our thoughts and our beliefs about ourselves and who we are. No one else. We create ourselves, by our choices and beliefs. It is in us to choose who we are. We can blame and escalate, but in the end, our beliefs determine our destiny.

One of my favorite short stories is “The Toynbee Convector” by Ray Bradbury. In it, Craig Bennett Stiles travels forward in time 100 years and comes back to a world to tell them:

“We made it! We did it! The future is ours. We rebuilt the cities, freshened the small towns, cleaned the lakes and rivers, washed the air, saved the dolphins, increased the whales, stopped the wars, tossed solar stations across space to light the world, colonized the moon, moved on to Mars, then Alpha Centauri. We cured cancer and stopped death. We did it—Oh Lord, much thanks—we did it. Oh, future’s bright and beauteous spires, arise!”

You can imagine what the people did. They worked as hard as they could, because they finally had something to work for. And 100 years later, the future is exactly what he said it would be.

On this date, 100 years later, a young reporter comes to interview him. He is still alive, and awaits with the reporter the moment when a tiny blip of an aircraft would fly across the sky. The entire world is looking up eagerly, waiting. They made it. They made it!

As they countdown and breakout champaign, the reporter and Stiles make idle chitchat.

They countdown from 10. When they get to 1, nothing happens. No time machine flies across the sky. Absolutely nothing happens. The reporter turns to Stiles in confusion.

“I lied.”

(From a movie version of the story)

Stiles tells the reporter. He goes on to explain that the entire thing had been an elaborate hoax which had taken him years to accomplish. 

When the reporter asks why, Stiles replies:

“Because I was born and raised in a time, in the sixties, seventies, and eighties, when people had stopped believing in themselves. I saw that disbelief, the reason that no longer gave itself reasons to survive, and was moved, depressed and then angered by it. Everywhere, I saw and heard doubt. Everywhere, I learned destruction. Everywhere was professional despair, intellectual ennui, political cynicism. And what wasn’t ennui and cynicism was rampant skepticism and incipient nihilism”

(And may I add the 90s, 2000s, and 2010s.)

He explains that:

“You name it, we had it. The economy was a snail. The world was a cesspool. Economics remained an insolvable mystery. Melancholy was the attitude. The impossibility of change was the vogue. End of the world was the slogan. Nothing was worth doing. Go to bed at night full of bad news at eleven, wake up in the morn to worse news at seven. Trudge through the day underwater. Drown at night in a tide of plagues and pestilence.”

And finally he declares his belief that-

“Life has always been lying to ourselves! As boys, young men, old men. As girls, maidens, women, to gently lie and prove the lie true. To weave dreams and put brains and ideas and flesh and the truly real beneath the dreams. Everything, finally, is a promise. What seems a lie is a ramshackle need, wishing to be born.”

We now live in a world where to be cynical is considered brave, and to be fearful is to be considered rational, and to be angry is considered moral. But remember that every good thing in the world was made by those who believed in their dreams, who fought for goodness, virtue, and truth, and who would not back down from what they knew to be real.We have created this world. We did. We, ordinary humans, did. Other people may have started it, but we as a race, created this world we live in. Which means we can change it.

We are the architects of our world. Everything that exists was once a thought. Thoughts create our world. If we want a different kind of world, we are going to have to have different kinds of thoughts. In the worlds of Bradbury, “We have to gently lie, and to prove the lie true.” So pick something to believe in. Something good. Not something to fight against, not something to fear, but something to believe in.

Teller of stories

The story I would like to write

Is written in a dream,

bought from a traveling peddler-king

on the road to a sane asylum.

The unwritten words are hidden in

an used bookstore at the center of the universe,

stolen by a word-thief

to buy enough light until morning.

The old man in a purgatorium found the tale

the day after he lost his life instead of his keys.

Two reporters, one, a black-eyed girl eternally thirteen

and the other, a frog who was once a man,

set the words in type to meet a deadline.

A blind man lived for a thousand years

Waiting to ask forgiveness for it.

Split into epiphanies, captured in images,

divided into a thousand and one other stories,

pencil-less glimpses of the edge of a world.

And one line repeated over and over,

“What is the answer to the question?”

But no question is asked.

I am afraid that if I reach for it,

the peddler-king will go mad,

the word-thief will die, and

the thirteen-year-old never will grow up,

Or worse—I’ll find it, hollow and trite—

a puppet-show in paperback

and so I leave it on the shelf

of that old bookstore

waiting for me to become

the story I’m waiting for.

 

Before I moved to Arizona, I never considered myself religious

Before I moved to Arizona, I never thought of myself as religious.

This may surprise some of you, since I have been active in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for as long as I can remember. The reason for this phenomenon, is two-fold, semantics, and definitions.

Semantically, for some reason, whenever I heard the word “religious” as a child, I never associated it with my own religion, but rather with my distorted idea of any other religious sect. My own restrictions, or that of my religion, I didn’t think were weird, because everyone I knew followed them. Also, I think I probably read too many authors who liked God but disliked organized religion when I was young as well.

This leads into my next reason, which is much more complicated. Definitions.

We define ourselves by our differences. Most of the adjectives we use to describe things delineate the differences between objects. Even the colors we see are relational, dependent upon the other colors. When we live with other people with our similarities, we don’t focus on those similarities, we focus on any differences we might have.

We know we are weird, but it is a hypothetical weirdness, because everyone else has the same weirdness. The similarities become a constant, and it is only those differences we talk about.

When you live in Provo, religion is like air, or water if you’re a fish. It’s what you do, it’s what your friends do, and it’s what your teachers do. You can reference wards, stakes, and conference without having to explain what they are. Telling someone you have a feeling about something is a perfectly acceptable reason to do something or not to do something. You blend in, your religion being just like everyone else’s religion. You’re not accustomed to smelling coffee or cigarettes and when you do, it’s unusual.

Even when I left Provo, all four times J, I still was in a primarily Mormon environment. Whether in Cedar City studying leadership, in the Philippines serving a mission, in Jerusalem studying the Bible, or in DC interning with a nonprofit, I always lived with other Mormons.

So how could I define myself by something everyone else was too? Almost everyone I knew was LDS, and those who weren’t, had been around enough LDS people that they almost felt LDS.

There are a couple side effects to this. One can become cynical about the church. One can become inactive while being active. Passively active. Religious because more about degree and less about type. It is easy to just live in it.

Not that I didn’t believe. I don’t want you to think that. I never want you to think that, because I did. I believed and I knew it was true and still do. But I was living in it; it wasn’t living in me. Religious was my surroundings, not my definition. Not that I wasn’t active. I went to church, all three hours most Sundays. I had callings and fulfilled them more or less. I kept the commandments and followed the Honor code.

But I didn’t love it. Not like I should have. It was my life, but I didn’t live it. I was in it, but it wasn’t in me. I didn’t introduce myself that way; I didn’t consider myself that way. But at the same time I was. When I was a kid, I was the kid who know all the scriptures. I loved my seminary class and rejoiced in the wisdom and beauty inherent in the gospel. And I’m still not sure what happened, but I stopped putting effort into it.

Then I moved here, and outside of work, church is my life. Between FHE, Institute, and Sunday, I go to church at least 3 times a week, if not more. There are perhaps 2 pther teachers at work who are LDS, and they work on the other side of the building. For the first time since I was 10, I am developing close friendships with people who are not LDS. Questions have come up that I haven’t come across much. Why I don’t do certain things, why I live the way I do. Now I know this isn’t most of your experience, but it has been mine. When I first went to BYU, and later the MTC, I commented occasionally that I was the most sheltered person I knew. That could be a part of why I didn’t consider myself religious. I hadn’t really experienced any other life. I couldn’t define myself as religious when every other person I knew was also religious.

So, now, it comes down to this, a couple weeks ago, my coworker casually referred to me as religious, and I realized that yes I am religious. And more than that, I want to be. I realized it a while ago, actually, when I was knew I was going to leave BYU. There is more to this gospel, this life, than the mere going through the motions. It can’t just be the title of the group we belong to, it has to be a personal definition. How we define ourselves. I don’t live in it anymore. I want to live it. It’s real. It’s not worth just puttering in it, skimming the surface of it when there is so much more depth to the life we can have. I want to be religious, not because I live in Provo, not because I grow up in it, or because of my culture, but because I myself, want to be religious. I want it to be a part of me, not just be a part of it.

There’s been a lot of stuff going on in the world and a lot of stuff going on in the church. I’ve seen my friends fall away. I’ve seen my family members fall away. I’ve seen myself on the path to falling away. I knew that if I continued on the path I was on, I would eventually end up leaving.

 

This post began as an curious exploration of the word “religious,” and how it pertained to my life, but has transformed into a realization of my religion as a part of my identity. Earlier I said that that an essential characteristic of adjectives is that they define us and divide us. They create a “we” and an “other”.

As I was thinking about these adjectives I remembered another part of speech. I teach English to fifth graders, and we just spent a unit on verbs. The function  of adjectives is to describe, define, and divide. The function of verbs, however is to act, to link, and to help.

When I was a child and was afraid of everyone, but mostly afraid of myself, I memorized a poem by Edwin Markham,

“He drew a circle that shut me out-

Heretic, Rebel, a thing to flout,

But love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle and took him in.”

Adjectives divide us. And they will continue to divide us, whether we want them to or not.

When I began writing this blog post, I wasn’t sure how to end it so I didn’t post it on Facebook for months. Honestly, I still don’t know how it’s supposed to end, because unlike the stories I am attempting to write, this one doesn’t have an ending. It just keeps on going.

What I do know and what I can say is this, I know I am happier when I follow my religion than when I am not. I know there is a difference between a house with the spirit and a house without it. I know it isn’t just a religious organization, but it is true. I know it is the realest thing I am a part of, and that it makes the rest of my life worthwhile. I also know that in the long road, verbs are even more important than adjectives.

On telling stories,

Recently, someone shared with me one of their relationship stories. It made me think of my own stories, the ones I share, the ones I don’t, the ones I am ashamed of, and the ones I let go. After it was over, the feelings we shared were sorrow
I wondered, why do we feel this compulsive need to share these stories? I have stories I must have told over thirty times to different people. At one point in my life I almost felt this was a rite of passage. Only once I had told those stories could I truly be friends with them. I felt people knew me better. They knew one of the central stories in my life, something that framed me and created my perspective on my life.
While I felt a compulsion to share these stories, and was glad of the bonding these stories provided, by the end of it, when it is all over, it is a bit like reliving it. It’s disappointing, that in the telling of it, somehow it still hasn’t resolved. In the years since the story, the pain goes away, people are forgiven, and somehow, things are resolved. Then one night, when you’re swapping stories about your failed love lives, you tell it again, and relive the moments that you spent months or years getting over, and there it is again. Every thing you ever wanted to get rid of, there in black and white for people to exclaim over.
We take a sort of pleasure in these stories. They prove we have lived, that we have had some kind of story. We enjoy telling them for many reasons. We take pleasure in the extraordinary, and many of our stories are extraordinary. Declarations of love occur in rain or airports, people breakup through text message and exes engaged after three weeks. All of these things happen. We have best friends who don’t tell us they get married, breakups, beauty. The best stories are best because they are closest to reality.
We tell our stories because we want to matter, we want to be important. We want to say, “This is what makes me me.” We want people to see the reality of us, whoever that has been, whether we are still that person or not. In order to be human, we have to be noticed.

The worth of a soul: A comparison of Smith, Marx, Bastiat, and Steinbeck

Well, after over a year, I am back on this blog, doing the whole education thing. Teaching and reading way too much. Let’s get started.

In the past three months I have read,

Half of The Wealth of Nations by Adam Smith, the father of modern economics published in 1776 (rather an important year, wouldn’t you say?)

The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx, the father of Communism

“What is Seen and What is Not Seen”, and “The Law”, by Frederic Bastiat, the father of Libertarianism

East of Eden by John Steinbeck, a left-leaning great novelist,

And a host of other things which I am not discussing yet.

Why did I choose to compare these? Mostly because these were what I read, and this is order in which I read them, and these were some of the conversations I had with them.

Adam Smith

Everyone knows Adam Smith is the founder of modern economics (or something), but it feels as though few people (students anyway) actually read him. And with good reason. Certain parts of the book are archaic, dwelling on ancient exchange rates and old laws that have nothing to do with anything we work with. However, other parts of the book are simply brilliant, with a touch of humanity lacking in many economic texts based off of his ideas. The quotes I have drawn from him are those which combine humanity with economics.

Early in the book, he said

“Labour, therefore, is the real measure of the exchangeable value of all commodities.” (60)

It is not money. It is not stuff. The real measure of value is the work people do. In the end, that creates value more than anything else.

Continuing this idea, he addresses money:

“Money is neither a material to work upon, nor a tool to work with; and though the wages of the workman are commonly paid to him in money, his real revenue, like that of all other men, consists, not in the money, but in the money’s worth; not in metal pieces, but in what can be got for them.” (376)

Money is not value. It circulates it, like blood pumping oxygen to the brain, necessary of course, but only as it continues to do its job. (I probably took that metaphor too far. I don’t know that much about blood. New research project). Now, and then, through interest and rent (which Smith explains to be the same thing), money can get more money, but in the end, money is only valuable for what we can get for it.

Though capitalism frequently cites him as a supporter, he has the occasional thing to say against big businesses,

“They (merchants and master-manufacturers) say nothing concerning the bad effects of high profits. They are silent with regard to the pernicious effects of their own gains. They complain only of those of other people.” (137)

He recognizes and describes quite accurately how people wish to raise their own profits and complain of others.

Of course he has things to say about government intervention, or any kind of intervention really,

“To judge whether he is fit to be employed, may surely be trusted to the discretion of the employers whose interest it so much concerns. The affected anxiety of the law-giver lest they should employ an improper person, is evidently as impertinent as it is oppressive.” (168)

I love that last bit, “impertinent as it is oppressive.” I never really thought about the government as being impertinent before.

The next quote is just for fun.

“The common people of England, however, so jealous of their liberty, but like the common people of most other countries, never rightly understand wherein it consists.” (194) This was describing a law which I really didn’t understand which he talked about in some detail. The side comment, though, I greatly appreciated.

Now, the last bit which was fairly early on in the book, slides into the next author.“No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the greater part of the members are poor and miserable.” (110)This and his emphasis on real labour as the source of economic prosperity are what I began to think about.

After I finished Wealth of Nations, I began Marx (I felt like my brain was on a trampoline. It was great.) My copy of Communist Manifesto is 258 pages (not including notes and appendices). The text itself is only 40 pages. Everything else is an extensive introduction, multiple prefaces, and other filler pages. None of which I read. After turning a remarkable amount of pages, and finding the famous work and discovering what a small portion of the book it took up, I laughed. Plus, after reading 500 pages of Smith, I was excited to read something much shorter.

Now, I have studied government and the effects of Communism for a great deal of my life. When I read it, I had already read Red Scarf Girl, Wild Swans, and Nothing to Envy. I had studied Stalin, and cringed at what Marxism did to Russia, China, and other countries. I had seen Ayn Rand’s reaction to it, and than recoiled from that reaction after reading The Passion of Ayn Rand. So, I was not prepared for my reaction to reading this very short book.

As I finally read the text itself, I could see how it could start a revolution. In spite of all I believe, in the moment, it swept the emotional part of me away. The rational part of me sat to the side, smoking a figurative pipe, not believing, but seeing why it happened in spite of myself.

Somewhere in the middle, I felt like getting up and doing something and “Go the proletariat.” Then he started talking about all the different communist parties back in that day, and I became bored. But for that minute, that beautiful minute, you see what people fought so hard for something that ended up destroying so many lives. The line of the movie Scarlet Pimpernel “What once was a dream is now a nightmare” came to mind, and I could see what the dream looked like to those men and women in cafes in street corners. For that moment I understood that hope of a new world. And then I finished the book, and came back to reality. I know it doesn’t work, never will work, and frankly I don’t want it to. I don’t believe in it. But I held someone else’s dream in my hand. Funny, because the dream was already smashed, but I held it, whole and unbroken, the memory of a dream before it became the nightmare.

To connect it with the other books, I’ve brought in a few lines—the first line and the last, and one in the middle. Here’s the thing too, he is right about some things. Man is not meant simply to function as a cog in the economic machine. But if you look at the others I’ve quoted here, they don’t believe that either. Life is for other things besides a 401K and a two weeks vacation.

Karl Marx

The first line reads,

“The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” (219) And it just becomes more and more violent. He is angry, and you can feel the anger. It is one of the most passionate books I have read (besides Wuthering Heights).

“Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack that is required of him.” (227)

“In the conditions of the proletariat, those of old society at large are already virtually swamped. The proletarian is without property; his relation to his wife and children has no longer anything in common with the bourgeois family relations” (231)

Remember Smith, and his “No society can be flourishing and happy if the greater part of the members are poor and miserable”? According to Marx, the proletariat, the common working man, has nothing but himself, not skill, not family, just himself and that is almost animalistic. When I read this and the next lines, I remembered everyone I’ve ever known who has felt trapped, times I’ve felt trapped, and recognized feelings I’ve felt in the text.

The next (rather famous) lines, “All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of the minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-concious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.” (232) He still had me at this point. At least he had the rebel in my head. But when he started talking about property I began to disagree, because I know from experience that we have to have something to work for, something to begin to fight for to do anything. His fight for more than that though, for people outside of their economic value interested me. People should be able to progress, and economics is not the end all be all.

At the end he had lost me, but not himself as he said, “The proletariat have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” (258) It is still violent and beautiful, but terrible, like a dying bird, or a broken dream.

After that I read Bastiat. Again with the trampoline.

Frederic Bastiat might be less known than Smith, Marx, or Steinbeck, but he was very influential in his day, and is a fantastic economic thinker. He loves the free market and hates, hugely hugely hates any attempt on the part of government to restrict it. With all his emphasis on this, what drew my attention again was his attention to the human.

“Nothing enters the public treasury for the benefit of a citizen or a class unless other citizens and other classes have been forced to put it there.” (67) Someone, somewhere has had something taken from him, that he earned for his family. Shouldn’t he be allowed to decide where it goes? He talks about how the government cannot create wealth, it can just decide where it goes. People, of their own free will ought to be able to decide.

“The Law is justice,” he says like fifty times. He really wants to emphasize that.

Back to the emphasis of the individual.

“God has endowed mankind also with all that it needs to accomplish its destiny” (95) Kind of cool from an economist. Or a person. Or just cool in general.

He then becomes just as vehement as Marx. It’s kinda beautiful.

“Away, then, with the quacks and the planners! Away with their rings, their chains, their hooks, their pincers! Away with their artificial methods! Away with their social workshop, their phalanstery, their statism, their centralization, their tariffs, their universities, their state religions, their interest-free credit or bank monopolies, their regulations, their restrictions, their moralizations, and their equalization by taxation! And after vainly inflicting so many systems on the body politic, let us end where we should have begun. Let us cast out all artificial systems and give freedom a change—freedom, which is an act of faith in God and in his handiwork.” (96)

Notice the focus again on the individual.

Now, politically, economically, I’m still trying to figure stuff out. But my focus has never really been on politics (despite my frequent association with those studying it, the fact that I enjoy studying some of it, and my internship in DC), it has been on education. And education, for me, has always been about helping the individual reach his or her potential. Whatever it takes to get there. I don’t believe we were meant to be a cog in a machine, consumerists, or just living for the weekend. That’s why I have these quotes up. Because men and women were meant for more. So to close this insufferably long (albeit belated) blog post and conversation, I include some of the words of Steinbeck.

“Our species in the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and spirit of a man. . . .And this I believe: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I mist fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and what I am about.” (132)

East of Eden hurt me more than many books have hurt me. I felt sick, sicker than I’ve felt in a long time reading it. It was as though I was digging a deep pit, and occasionally, I’d step out of the pit, and throw some dirt in, until the end of the book, where I got enough dirt to be able to climb out of the pit. The story of Cain and Abel, retold three times, showing that Genesis, and by extension every one of our lives are about family, hammered into my soul. Everything about Cathy hurt. Everything about change healed. And the last line, about choice, brought me completely out of the pit.

A couple more choice quotes from Steinbeck.

“A great and lasting story is about everyone or it will not last” (270)

In a discussion about the story of Cain and Abel in the center of the book, a Chinese servant shares his elders’ study of one word in those 16 verses of scripture.

“Don’t you see?” he cried. “The American Standard translation orders men to triumph over sin, and you can call sin ignorance. The King James translation makes a promise in ‘Thou shalt,’ meaning that men will surely triumph over sin. But the Hebrew word, the word timshel—‘Thou mayest’—that gives a choice. . . .Why, that makes a man great, that gives him stature with the gods, for in his weakness and his filth and his murder of his brother he has still the great choice. He can choose his course and fight it through and win.” (303)

Now isn’t that magnificent? We get to choose. We always get to choose.

More words

“You see, there’s a responsibility in being a person. It’s more than just taking up space where air would be” 455

“Now that you don’t have to be perfect, you can be good.” (585)

This last line is near the end of the book, before the marvelous conclusion, and struck me. We are meant to be human. We are meant to strive for perfection, not kick ourselves down for our imperfections, to make those choices.

Steinbeck believes in the power of the human soul. He says it flat out, and then says it over and over in his discussion of various powers and needs of the individual.

But why did I bring all these together? The first three were obvious. The last, well he fits because of the words he said. These economists and this novelist, they were real. They speak of the individual. They speak of choice. No matter how they feel about governments, principalities, powers, they speak of the power of choice and the individual. Not as Ayn Rand did, but something else, that there is more in us, more that can create, more purpose in us to be. We can become. But we have to choose it.

Philosophy of Education – draft

Philosophy of Education – draft.

Book Impression: The Book Whisperer

I haven’t used this blog since I started it… but is anyone really surprised? Assuming anyone was reading it–which I have comforting statistics demonstrating you weren’t. ☺ Not that I’m blaming you. Personally, there wasn’t a plot to this blog before, and I too would have found it boring. However, this past semester I’ve started researching education again and this seems like a reasonably good platform to start testing some ideas on. I make no promises as to regularity, but I will attempt to post something more than once every three months.

This semester I interned in DC and studied education. I attended several panels on reform by various think tanks, and I visited a couple of different schools with various programs and philosophies. While I was doing all of this, I read a book called The Book Whisperer by Donalyn Miller.

First off—fabulous book. If you are a teacher, a parent, a human being, you should read this book. Not only does it teach you how to teach kids to love reading, it shows you why you don’t. And it might remind you why you once did. Yes, you who haven’t read a book in seventeen years, or you English master’s student who steals time to read during Christmas and summer.

When the children were given freedom to read whatever they wanted, and space to read in, they read. They were not “forced” to read. They were given freedom and they took advantage of that freedom.

I often say that I had an unusual education. I was homeschooled, and I chose many of the books I read during my high school years. I read whatever I wanted within reason, and often chose large biographies of notables such as Lafeyette or Marie Antoinette. I immersed myself Montgomery, Tolkien, and Eliot. I found I disliked Dickens and loved Tolstoy. I tried reading David Copperfield three times, never made it more than half-way even with the best intentions. I’ve read War and Peace twice. All this, because I was allowed to read what I liked.

I think that Donalyn Miller has hit on a fabulous secret of education—that children like to learn. Now, I don’t know how to utilize that. I’m not an expert on education or a teacher yet. But I want to explore this resource in education. The freedom to pursue what one wants. I think that might be the most important thing to teach children anyway. If they do not learn early to pursue their education, their happiness in a healthy, safe environment, how will they ever learn to pursue it as an adult. People have unique talents, they just have to be let to find them.

A few quotes from her book before I go. And

“Reading changes your life. Reading unlocks worlds unknown or forgotten, taking travelers around the world and through time. Reading helps you escape the confines of school and pursue your own education. Through characters – the saints and the sinners, real or imagined – reading shows you how to be a better human being.”

“The purpose of school should not be to prepare students for more school. We should be seeking to have fully engaged students now.”

Education should not be something we get in between our schooling.