Education

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" - George Santayana (born Jorge Agustín Nicolás Ruiz de Santayana y Borrás)

I love history and often quote Santayana, a Spanish-American novelist and philosopher, who is said to have remarked that we either learn from history or we repeat it. Those are my words, Santayana's exact words, more harshly spoken, are quoted above.

The current debate on education suggests that America is falling behind the world in educating its young. iIn many large American cities including Detroit, Baltimore, New York, Milwaukee, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Dallas, Denver and Houston, students have less than a 50-50 chance of graduating from high school. Employers grumble about an uneducated work force, colleges set up remedial education classes to teach students what they should have learned in high school, and the army warns that over thirty per cent of possible recruits can't pass the basic entrance examination.

The causes of this crisis in education are many. Suggestions on how to improve the situation just as plentiful. I don't want to get into either cause or solution at this point. No, what interests me is a book that I came across in an antique store. The rather dry title is the Twenty-fifth Biennial Report of the Kansas State Board of Agriculture, Volume 30, 1925 -1926.

Have I lost you already? Well, that proves Santayana's remark - history is so dry and boring that its lessons are lost to us. And, so we are back where we were.

Anyway, I will labor on. The Twenty-Fifth Biennial Report contains 702 pages. Amidst the reports on population, farm products and animal husbandry, is an article on Rural Life and Community Problems by Edgar Mendenhall, of Kansas State Teachers College of Pittsburg. The point of Mendenhall's  article is his claim that students of rural life are gravely confronted with a lack of quality education. The result is a brain-drain, and exodus of rural students to the cities where the quality of education is far superior. Funny, how the tide of human affairs ebbs and flows. Today's students flee the cities for the suburbs.

Kansas in 1925 and 1926 was a system of one-teacher schools in the country and the graded schools in the city. Citing a study by Dr. F.P.O'Brien of the State Teachers College of Emporia, Mendenhall notes that three quarters of all one-teacher schools had teachers who held their jobs less than one year. Another one-fifth of the teachers had been in the school house for one year. This meant that roughly one in twenty teachers had taught for two years.The obvious reasons for the extremely short duration were uncertainty of tenure, salary, conditions, and opportunity.

And, so it was no great surprise that when standardized tests were given to the country student and the city student that a sizable gap in reading ability existed.And the same gap existed when the same arithmetic tests were administered.

I have always been a skeptic of statistics. Isolated statistics often produce skewed results. For instance, if the pairs of country and city students had been measure on the yard stick of animal husbandry or agronomy, I imagine the city student would have come up a little short.

We learn what is taught to us and we learn what is relevant.This is the message of the 1970's movie To Sir with Love starring Sidney Poitier. Sidney Poitier plays a teacher in a inner-city London school. He is black and educated. The high school students are white and working class. he gets through to them by relating literature and math to their lives. For instance he teaches math by explaining the different weight classes in boxing to the testosterone-prone young males.

Getting back to 1925 and 1926, Mendenhall proposes all sorts of measures including the application of business principles to the management of the rural schools. The idea is to focus on the rural school board and provide a measuring stick of 40 points that board members should be measured by. The categories of measurement include personal traits of the school board. Are they fair-minded, honest, straightforward, etc, or reactionary and prejudiced? What is their training, how do they act as board members, are they involved in the community, do they relate to the superintendent and teachers in a positive way?

This interesting approach to education suggests that learning flows downhill from board member to board, to superintendent, to teacher and then to student. The important principle is that if we expect students to be responsible for their education, then board members should also be responsible for setting standards and establishing the means to achieve those standards.

Mr. Mendenhall concludes his article with a portion of a  poem by James Russell Lowell - A Glance Behind The Curtain.

New times demand new measures and new men;
The world advances and in time outgrows
The laws that in our fathers' day were best;
And doubtless, after us some purer scheme
Will be shaped by wiser men than we.
Made wiser by the steady growth of truth...

Mr. Mendenhall suggests that there can be no more "dillydally" about the matter. That educators must learn by yielding some of our old ideas and surrender old prejudices; that is, if we wish to protect the interests of those we hold most dear, the students of public education.

This article is buried in an old book that dates to 1925 and 1926. I doubt that it has been read in more than four score and five years since its publication by more than a handful of people.

I wonder if Santayana was not right.

Read what Houston schools are doing on Facebook or read about the Project Houston Grad, a project to increase graduation rates.

Image from http://www.kansasheritage.org/orsh/gallery/ . Click to see more images of one room schoolhouses in Kansas.

The meaning of Auld Lang Syne

Auld Lang Syne

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

(Scottish poet Robert Burns (1759-1796) transcribed this now traditional New Years Day verse, having heard an old Scottish gentleman recite the lines. Burns admits to adding two lines to the poem. They are the third and fourth stanzas that reference time spent upon the braes and in the burns, or, as we would say, hillsides and streams.)

Chorus:
For auld lang syne, my dear,
for auld lang syne,
we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

(It is for the reader to decide who is drinking, childhood sweethearts or bosom buddies? These days it doesn't matter for friendship knows no gender.

If you didn't already know it, a 'cup o' kindness' is a drink. )

And surely ye’ll be your pint-stowp!
And surely I’ll be mine!
And we’ll tak a cup o’ kindness yet,
for auld lang syne.

(In a Scottish pub, drinks were poured from kegs with pint tankards the standard measure of drink. The stowp was another name for a tankard, or what we might call a 'mug'. Here, each friend buys ('be', the 'e' is long and rhymes with 'ye') their own pint and toasts with a 'cup of kindness'.

This line is the most enigmatic of the poem, for traditional hospitality demands that a friend buy the others drink. My take on this is that the poet suggests that real friends do everything 'even-steven'. True friendship is not a debt of gratitude, but a bonding of souls.)

We twa hae run about the braes,
and pu’d the gowans fine;
But we’ve wander’d mony a weary fit,
sin’ auld lang syne.

(A gowan is a wild flower. 'Pu’d the gowans fine' romantically suggests 'plucking' or more appropriately 'courting' the fine young ladies upon the Scottish hillsides. Of course, it may also mean that the two were picking flowers.)

We twa hae paidl’d in the burn,
frae morning sun till dine;
But seas between us braid hae roar’d
sin’ auld lang syne.

('Paidl’d in the burn' translates as paddling in the stream, something, as a youth, was playfully done from early morning til the setting of the sun. Time and the broad seas have risen and roared, separating childhood friends. Interestingly, Robert Burns himself once thought crossing the 'braid' sea and emigrating to America.)

And there’s a hand, my trusty fiere!
And gies a hand o’ thine!
And we’ll tak a right gude-willie-waught,
for auld lang syne.

(The word 'fiere' comes by way of the French, suggesting a brave and proud compatriot. So, give me a hand my trusty friend and together we'll take a good drought of ale for the sake of olden times.)

Robert Burns is considered the national poet of Scotland. You can read his complete works by going to Robert Burns Country.

The land of the free and the home of the brave.

It is cute when we all work together.

The Star Spangled Banner as sung by our past Presidents.

The World is Made New Everyday

Author Anna Quindlan spoke on the Walt Bodine radio program on May 5, 2010. This inspirational conversation is directed to young girls and women of all ages. Her mother died at age 19. She married and raised three children, meanwhile writing a daily column for the New York Times, and writing best sellers in fiction, non-fiction, and self-help. Anna discusses her need to express herself in writing, the influence of teachers, and the trials and tribulations of life.

Anna quotes the New York Times motto that, "The World is Made New Everyday". Her approach to life is one of curiosity at the challenges that are thrown at us in life. We humans like drama despite the fact that real life is often the mundane.

You can listen to this conversation by clicking on the following link. Anna Quindlan on Walt Bodine.

Graffigny-Chemin

My grandmother Marguerite Chevallier grew up in the village of Graffigny-Chemin, France. The house where she grew up is across the street from the church in this 1905 postcard.

Notice the clothing of the children in the image. Children today are more casual in their dress.

The internet is a useful tool to research family histories. This postcard, for instance, was found by googling French postcards. The website is delcampe.net.You too can search for old images by selecting keywords and letting Google do the work.

Another good source of family histories is the Mormon church's collection of records online.

Verb agreement

There Was a Crooked Man

There was a crooked man,
And he walked a crooked mile,
He found a crooked sixpence
Upon a crooked stile;

He bought a crooked cat,
Which caught a crooked mouse,
And they all lived together
In a crooked little house.

One problem confronting writers is verb agreement. First, verbs should agree with the subject in number.

Sue studies hard.

The singular subject "Sue" agrees with the verb "studies".

Sue and Bob (both) study hard.

The plural subject "Sue and Bob" requires a change in verb form to "study".

Everyone studies hard.

Some subjects which contain more than one individual are singular because they constitute a group. "Everyone" is a group taking a singular verb. There are other words which seem plural but aren't and require a singular verb form. "Family", "all the world" are two examples which require a singular verb form.

My family is big. All the world loves an Irishman on St. Patrick's Day. Is anyone going to go? The staff of the school loves teaching.

A second problem with verb agreement is consistency in the paragraph and the paper as a whole. When we write, we use tenses that reflect when the action is taking place. Present tense for now, past tense for the past, and future for events that have yet to take place. There are also other verb forms such as the passive voice and active voice. Some mixing of tenses and voice are necessary both to reflect the time events take place, but also to make the writing more interesting. But, beware that jumping around too much is confusing to readers.

The nursery rhyme above contains only verbs in the past tense. Suppose we mix it up a little.

There Is a Crooked Man

There Is a crooked man,
And he walked a crooked mile,
He will find a crooked sixpence
Upon a crooked stile;

He had bought a crooked cat,
Which can catch a crooked mouse,
And they all live together
In a crooked little house.

Mixing up the verb forms brings the rhyme to a crashing halt. So, examine your paragraphs and stay consistent in the use of verb forms. But be careful. Sometimes the writer has to be a detective and match subject with verb.

A long list of assignments, chores, tasks and duties intimidates me.

The subject is "list" and not the several items.

Good luck. Your readers will appreciate it.

Springtime in Texas

A Shakespearean sonnet is made up of 14 lines, each line with ten syllables, and written in iambic pentameter. Iambic refers to a pattern of an unemphasized syllable follow by an emphasized syllable. The word "delight" is an example since the stress is on the syllable "-light".

The rhyme scheme in a Shakespearean sonnet is a-b-a-b, c-d-c-d, e-f-e-f, g-g. The last two lines are a rhyming couplet.

Sonnet 98
by William Shakespeare (1609)

From you have I been absent in the spring
When proud-pied April, dress’d in all his trim,
Hath put a spirit of youth in every thing,
That heavy Saturn laugh’d and leap’d with him.

Yet nor the lays of birds, nor the sweet smell
Of different flowers in odour and in hue,
Could make me any summer’s story tell,
Or from their proud lap pluck them where they grew:

Nor did I wonder at the lily’s white,
Nor praise the deep vermilion in the rose;
They were but sweet, but figures of delight,
Drawn after you, you pattern of all those.

Yet seem’d it winter still, and you away,
As with your shadow I with these did play.

Bluebonnet image by Larry Urqhart

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