It aint' Laid Back...

Some days I really hate John Denver.  Today is one of those days.  I hate it when he so glibly sings about life on the farm being “laid back”.  I wonder what farm he was visiting.  He certainly couldn’t have lived and worked on one.  Not a real one anyway. 

I come from a long, pretty much unbroken line of farmers stretching all the way back before the American Revolution.  There’s a teacher here and there, a couple of soldiers, and a preacher or two, but mostly farmers.  Certainly my extended family in the Cherokee Strip were farmers, although my Father’s siblings, and cousins were beginning to head to town to find other things to do.  I suppose they’d had all the “laid back” life they could handle. 

This morning, for example, was a far cry from that laid back fantasy of Denver’s.  My day started before coffee with the digging of a grave.  That’s not an easy task when the land you live on produces primarily rocks.  But with the help of my son we managed to dig deep enough to lay our good friend to rest. 

He was the Sergeant Major’s friend really.  Her very best one.  He was her constant companion both on the farm, and when we’d go camping.  You couldn’t ask for a better friend.  Big.  Friendly.  Loved people.  Loved being with his “Mom”.  And now he was gone.  We don’t really know why he died, but Great Dane’s are prone to a variety of problems I’m told.  We always expected to outlive him, but we never expected that he would be gone today.  I hurt for the Sergeant Major.  It’s difficult watching her heart break. 

It’s not the first time of course.  And I’m well aware that it won’t be the last.  Sometimes the causes are plain and easy to understand.  A mountain lion, which the game warden claimed didn’t exist, killed a llama, two sheep, and almost got a miniature horse.  The horse was a young foal and thanks to some good luck we reached her in time.  I cradled her in my lap and hung on for my own dear life while the Sergeant Major raced the truck back to the barn where we had medical supplies. We saved her, and I took pictures to show the warden the claw marks on her neck.  It would be years before they’d finally admit the cats were there. 

The tough ones are when you don’t know what is happening.  A young foal was normal one day, then died in my arms the next.  I helped the Vet do the autopsy.  Her blood wasn’t liquid; it was crystals—blood crystals clogging her vessels.  He didn’t understand it either and sent samples to the State University.  If they figured it out they never told us.

I’ve honestly forgotten how many good friends are no longer with us.  Some, like the Sergeant Major’s buddies, Zeus and Harley, left us all too soon and all too mysteriously.  Some, like Sheba Dog, and Sheba Horse, lived to a ripe old age.  It still hurt, of course, but there was comfort in knowing that the Circle of Life was complete. 

Don’t misunderstand.  I’m not whining.  Yes, I’m sad, and just a tad bit angry.  But I chose this life and am much the better for it.  It keeps me mindful that forces bigger than me are in control.  But there is work to it.  It requires a certain resilience.  There is life and death, and joy and pain. 

“Laid back” it isn’t.  If we’re going to let singers tell us how life goes, then I’m going with Adele on this one, “Sometimes it lasts in love but sometimes it hurts instead”.  Sometimes our dear friends last with us for a long time, but sometimes they’re gone without warning—and the hurt is what lasts instead.   

So goodbye Zeus, and Harley, and DiNozzo, and Jethro.  Goodbye Sheba Dog, and Sheba Horse, and Ragtime, and Sister.  Tell Maggie and Tigger and Limkey and Annie we all said “Hi”. 

For now, we’ll continue on much as our people have always done.  We’ll feed the chickens, and the rabbits.  We’ll grain and water the horses.  We’ll put hay in the barn, spray the weeds, and try to keep up with the thousand and one things that have to get done before supper.

And I’ll think about what Mr. Denver sang.  “Laid back”, my ass.

A Classical Education...

Last time I wrote about the difference between what we learned in school “back in the day”, and what seems to be happening in our country today.  I’ve thought some more about it, and have come to the conclusion that when I referred to being educated “back in the Dark Ages before modern history began”, I wasn’t kidding.  I was blessed to have gone to school in a system that could be called “classical”.  Yes.  I think I had a fairly “classical education”.  I was taught with the same methods that Aristotle, Socrates, Plato, John Locke, Thomas Jefferson, and John and Abigail Adams would have recognized. 

It’s called “the trivium” and it has three parts:  Grammar, Logic, and Rhetoric, with each stage, except grammar, being dependent upon those before it.

Grammar begins with “the facts”.  It doesn’t call for opinion, interpretation, or speculation.  “Just the facts, ma’am”, as Joe Friday says in “Dragnet”.  It calls for the student to memorize and repeat bits of information. 

“Two plus two equals four”, says the student.  “Two plus three equals five.  Two plus four equals six.”  At no point does the teacher ask how “Two” feels about being plussed with so many other numbers, nor does she ask the student to speculate as to what “Two” might be feeling about being associated with different integers.  It can’t be easy being “plussed” that much, and “Two” may very well feel embarrassed about it, but the grammar stage is not the time to discuss it.     “Two plus five equals seven” and that’s all there is to it. 

Grammar schools, or as we called them, “elementary” schools, are where this initial learning takes place.  It is a time to gather basic information, absorbing it without evaluation.  It is elementary, to deal with the simplest elements of something.  It is to “begin at the beginning”, which we know from the esteemed philosopher, Maria von Trapp, is “a very good place to start.  A B C, Do Re Mi”.    

Logic comes next.  This is the point where critical thinking begins.  Is it right or wrong?  Is it cause or effect?  What does it mean?  This is where we begin to form our own opinions based on a critical evaluation of the evidence.  The scientific method becomes a useful tool in determining fact from theory.  Question and answer becomes the focus as we begin to draw useful information from raw data. 

Hint:  This can also be a dangerous time as the student begins to question.  “I wonder what would happen if I put an Alka-Seltzer in the aquarium?” can have fatal consequences for the creatures who occupy that aquarium.  (In case you’re wondering, no, it wasn’t me, nor do I know who it was.  All I know is that it happened in the Biology class right before mine.)

Finally, we arrive at rhetoric.  I get to have an opinion and try to persuade you that I am correct. You get to do likewise.  Essays and essay questions become important.  As we develop in this stage we realize that our persuasive efforts are most often, but not always confined to the spoken or written word.  Art and music can also be vehicles for persuasive arguments.  Acceptance and rejection become paramount.  Opinion is internalized to the point that how the student thinks about the subject now causes him or her to alter behavior.  We become the product of our own analysis. 

That is the order of how we were taught.  Elementary school (Grammar), Junior High (Logic), then High School (Rhetoric).  Life, and learning about life, was a progression.  First a foundation was laid.  Then the framework was put up.  Finally, the interior was designed to suit the individual tenant. 

But Classical education is more than just these three pieces.  It also embodies a belief that all knowledge is interrelated.  Chemistry, for example, isn’t just studying chemical reactions, it needs some knowledge of the history of scientific thought to make complete sense.  After all, we learned a lot about what materials react with other materials because certain alchemists were looking for ways to turn lead into gold.  And before that, guys were figuring out that mixing copper and tin made a nice bronze, or that iron with lots of carbon made darn good steel.  And that study leads the student into history.  History is the core around which classicism revolves.   Military history, political history, economic history, and in Western civilization, religious history—the story of the Christian church and the impact of its thought on Chemistry, and Astronomy, and Biology, and Physics, and so on and so on.  All knowledge is related in a classical education, so any serious education system has to include history, science, art, music, and literature. 

Ours had all of that beginning in elementary school where all five of these subjects were required, and continued to be required as we advanced. “Electives” didn’t exist until the last year of Junior High, and weren’t predominant until High School. 

I fear that our deviation from this model—learn the facts, analyze the facts, express your opinion about the facts—is what has led us to today.  We ask first graders how they feel about learning before we teach them how to learn.  We throw logic out into the cold, because “the narrative” is far more hot.  We voice our opinion regardless of whether or not we know anything about the subject.  And we think history started the day we were born, and ends the day we die.

Conformists, Toads, and Snowflakes

I don’t want to stray too far into politics, so for the sake of this post let’s just agree that we’re talking about “Sociology”.  That’s a perfectly respectable topic, even if it’s not a perfectly respectable “Science”.  (I’ll make a note here that my son disagrees.)

What has my attention today started with simple nostalgia.  You know how it works—that longing for an easier, simpler, and sweeter time.  It wasn’t always all of those things of course, but there were moments we can’t forget.

At any rate, once upon a time, way back in the Dark Ages before modern history began, I was a young high school student who enjoyed reading and writing.  So I joined the high school “Creative Writing” club along with a variety of other people.  We’ll call them “creatives” to be nice.

We wrote, and then met to read to each other.  We experimented with thoughts, words, sentences, paragraphs, prose and poems.  We let our imaginations run wild.  I don’t know that we ever deliberately tried to hurt one another, but we (some of us anyway) were certainly guilty of “insensitivity” had there been such a crime in those days.  That there wasn’t is testimony to our resoluteness.  We recognized something that our Fathers called “the way of the world”. 

There is a picture of me with the other members of the club in the yearbook.  I’m wearing a “hoodie” and a somber look on my face as if there were no doubt I’d be the next Jack Kerouac, or Richard Brautigan.  Meanwhile, the teacher who sponsored the club was praying that I would just master “Dick and Jane”.

We called ourselves “Toads”, which we took from a quote by Stephen Crane:

“Think as I think," said a man, "or you are abominably wicked; you are a toad." And after I thought of it, I said, "I will, then, be a toad.”

We were happy being “Toads”.  We liked being “Toads”.  Back then, if you really wanted to insult a person you called them a “Conformist”.  No one wanted to be a “Conformist”. 

I was thinking of this as I watched a news report on students at a university rioting because they didn’t want a speaker who didn’t think like them to be allowed to speak on campus.  What? How does that work?  It’s not possible to be in public with people you only agree with.  And why would you want to be?  The image of all these “Conformists” running for the shelter of their “safe spaces” is a difficult one for me to grasp.  Our “safe space” was where we thought, wrote, argued, and disagreed. And we called each other “Toad”.  And we did it with respect and appreciation.

We had another quaint tradition too.  It was called “debate”.  A moderator would hand you a slip of paper with a resolution on it, telling you which position you would take.  The moderator would then hand another person a slip of paper with the same resolution, but the opposite position on it.  Each of you would then prepare and defend your position.  It mattered not whether you actually agreed with it.  Your job was to determine the best argument for your position.  You were then “judged” on how well you defended your side of the debate.  There was even a “winner”, and a “loser”, a once time honored tradition now limited to sporting events.

Of course, today we don’t “judge”, or “discriminate”, or “discern” either, but that’s probably another post. 

It was considered a good thing to be able to understand the other person’s argument without agreeing with it, or demanding that they quit speaking it.

“Hey man, can you see where I’m coming from?” we’d say.

“Yeah man, I get where you’re coming from.  I’m just not there”, we’d reply.

And it was GOOD!  It was OK!  A best-selling book at that time was titled I’m OK - You’re OK.  Now we’ve arrived at I’m OK - You’re Not So Hot.  Or worse.  That’s not revolution, it’s devolution.  (Sociology remember.  We’re talking about Sociology). 

This seemed normal to us.  I’m sure that’s why when I went on to college I can fondly recall—that nostalgia again—attending speeches by people as diverse as Angela Davis and William F. Buckley, without actually freaking out.  Buckley was, in fact, my commencement speaker.  I shudder to think what that might do to some people today. 

 So what in Heaven’s name is going on here?  Can we get back to that sort of intellectual honesty?  How do we go about doing that?  I don’t know.  I’m just waiting, and hoping that some young and innovative Sociologists can help.