Men and women of John Gould’s generation, his father’s and grandfather’s were made of much stronger fiber that I could ever hope to match.
I happened to be digging a small trench out in our back yard yesterday – the footing for my concrete-block raised crocus-bed. Only 12” deep, the same wide, and maybe 30’ in perimeter, it took me half a day to dig.
I was profusely sweating and getting eaten up by the chiggers and no-see-ums as I dug. I couldn’t make but a couple of feet of progress without having to stop and chop and saw through a network of tree roots. After about an hour of this, I began to shake my head and wonder “how did they do it?
How were our ancestors physically and mentally able to come into a virgin forest and clear enough acreage to actually grow crops?
When I was in my twenties and going through my “back to the land” phase, I had a similar experience. My wife and I had just bought a couple of acres (already cleared!) where we planned to build a house the following year. In the meantime, I decided to plant a crop of oats there, which I did. When rain was forecast for the next day, I went out there and hand-broadcast 200# of California Red, just like I was Johnny Appleseed. I had a neighbor disc it in.
In the fall when harvest time came, I convinced myself that I could harvest those two acres of oats with a scythe. If my ancestors could do it, so could I. How hard could it be? So I stoned the scythe blade to a razor’s edge and started out.
The first day, I finished a swath about 20’ wide and 200’ long – roughly a tenth of an acre. The palms of my hands were blistered and bleeding, and I couldn’t stand up straight any more. I went to bed without supper. But I went back out there the next morning.
That second morning, an old-timer stopped by out of curiosity to see just who it was that was so stupid to do what I was doing. I asked him if he had ever harvested oats this way, and he said “Yes, a long time ago”. I asked him how many acres he could cut in one day when he was young, and he replied “about two”.
How did they do it?
After Mr. Duval had gone, I went inside and called a local farmer to come finish the job with his tractor, and later had him bale it, too. I knew then that I wasn’t made of the same stuff as a real farmer.
I guess they did it because they had to do it, or see their families starve. They cleared land, built homes, had children, hoed corn, raised animals, built furniture…all that…because they had to.
What we call “Family Values” were necessary just to survive back then. Writers like Gould help us to recall.
You know that you are capable, but you underestimate yourselves.
When George Washington was asked about the secret of his success, and he said, "the straight line," he did not say that you would be successful, nor did he say that you would not by other means.
He said, in his view, which was his from when he was a boy and through all his life, that the worthy path to keep an eye on, and yourself to endeavor to get back to if fallen from, is the straight line.
The greatest difference in our lives, between his time and now, can be summed up in the word, expectations.
The expectations, then, were very different from now, in that, the field of vision was then great, but is now, narrow.
Then, you had the benefit of knowing that there was much that you did not know, and you had to get this knowledge.
Now, it's on the menu.
The essential foundations of education, are in the processes of learning, the getting to the knowing, as much as being there. This is why we time and again rest and review both math and history, many passes over the same material are required, and our writing is something we should learn as a craft, draft, again, draft, again, Pound that shoe, DING!, Pound that shoe, DING!, Heat! that shoe, POPS CRACKS SPARKS!, Pound that shoe, DING!, Pound that shoe, DING!
In all three cases, "reading, writing, 'n 'rithmetic," our "experts with expertise" in education, now ridicule these fundamentals in lieu of "goals ___ < fill in the year > " that are ticked off their job satisfaction charts. (The checkmark says that the topic has been covered. All the boxes that must be checked, in order to be paid, are filled, and thus "education" has happened; wordity is every the accepted empircal evidence. Sign another N.E.A. contract, right here < place your mark if you knows how to write > .)
Whether or not the students have made their progress.
I could go on, but it's all in my book, Electricity Comes from Walls (c)1995; the chapter about how we don't need a war to change things, we only need to turn off the electricity.
To give people time to think.