« How George W. Bush Lost the War On Terror | miguelitoh2o's Blog | Predation, Landbridges, Technology, Global warming, and the Drake equation. »
Two Scars
I've been visiting my 85-year-old father this week. He reads voraciously, and would be well described as an active and mentally alert gentleman for his age. He is a self-taught student of history and can discuss mankind's various chapters without pause and with great understanding of underlying socio-economic factors. During the course of our many conversations we discussed something I had not considered before. While discussing our extended family, we observed that he had fathered three children, all college graduates, two of whom hold advanced degrees. He is also the son of two college graduates, both educators, and all of his four older siblings have graduated from college. My dad attended a yearlong interior design program following his service during WWII, and later entered the family furniture business. His lack of a college education stood out in contrast to a family so obviously committed to the virtues of higher education.
I inquired as to why he, a man who enjoys reading and learning, of all the people in his immediate family had not attended college. He told me he never really enjoyed school as a child, and when pressed to elaborate he told me a couple of things I'd not heard before. He began his schooling in the early 1930s during the depths of the depression and starting school a year early, found himself in the same class as his older brother throughout his school years. Being a younger kid in his class, he felt like he had to work extra hard to be taken seriously by his classmates. He then related a story which he recalls taking place during his first day of school as a child. As he sat at his desk, one of the other first graders was walking down the aisle past his desk and tripped as he passed my father. The boy's chin was badly cut from the fall, and the class teacher accused my father of purposefully tripping him. She berated and punished him according to her perception of the event. During the course of her harangue of my father, in the spirit of the hard economic times they all shared, she remarked something to the effect of 'business-owner's kids think they can get away with anything'. So my dad, the son of a Republican businessman, as a first grader in a public school felt disenfranchised, much as the working class had been disenfranchised during the presidency of Herbert Hoover, during the years leading up to the stock market crash of '29, and the subsequent economic depression. That one event colored my dad's feelings about school throughout his formal education. When his parents asked him in his senior year in high school if he wanted to continue on to college as his four siblings had before him, my father declined.
My dad ran into the grown man who he had allegedly tripped at his high school class's 40th reunion, and mentioned the prominent scar on his chin. His classmate good-naturedly replied that he had acquired the scar when he was a first grader when some kid had tripped him, but added that he couldn't remember who it had been. Being the scrupulously honest man he is, my dad informed him that he had been the other child, and that whatever had transpired, his 'complicity' had been wholly unintentional. They both laughed about the vicissitudes of life and continued their individual journeys through life on paths they had chosen, and paths that had chosen them. It strikes me how two children were scarred on that fateful day during the depression in a western Pennsylvania schoolroom. One had a cut chin that would bear testimony to his injury for the rest of his life, while the other would internalize a sense that school was a hostile place, and wait patiently till he could be done with it 12 years thence in spite of a love of learning.
Note: Once again, I'm traveling today, so if I will check in here as I am able to.
I inquired as to why he, a man who enjoys reading and learning, of all the people in his immediate family had not attended college. He told me he never really enjoyed school as a child, and when pressed to elaborate he told me a couple of things I'd not heard before. He began his schooling in the early 1930s during the depths of the depression and starting school a year early, found himself in the same class as his older brother throughout his school years. Being a younger kid in his class, he felt like he had to work extra hard to be taken seriously by his classmates. He then related a story which he recalls taking place during his first day of school as a child. As he sat at his desk, one of the other first graders was walking down the aisle past his desk and tripped as he passed my father. The boy's chin was badly cut from the fall, and the class teacher accused my father of purposefully tripping him. She berated and punished him according to her perception of the event. During the course of her harangue of my father, in the spirit of the hard economic times they all shared, she remarked something to the effect of 'business-owner's kids think they can get away with anything'. So my dad, the son of a Republican businessman, as a first grader in a public school felt disenfranchised, much as the working class had been disenfranchised during the presidency of Herbert Hoover, during the years leading up to the stock market crash of '29, and the subsequent economic depression. That one event colored my dad's feelings about school throughout his formal education. When his parents asked him in his senior year in high school if he wanted to continue on to college as his four siblings had before him, my father declined.
My dad ran into the grown man who he had allegedly tripped at his high school class's 40th reunion, and mentioned the prominent scar on his chin. His classmate good-naturedly replied that he had acquired the scar when he was a first grader when some kid had tripped him, but added that he couldn't remember who it had been. Being the scrupulously honest man he is, my dad informed him that he had been the other child, and that whatever had transpired, his 'complicity' had been wholly unintentional. They both laughed about the vicissitudes of life and continued their individual journeys through life on paths they had chosen, and paths that had chosen them. It strikes me how two children were scarred on that fateful day during the depression in a western Pennsylvania schoolroom. One had a cut chin that would bear testimony to his injury for the rest of his life, while the other would internalize a sense that school was a hostile place, and wait patiently till he could be done with it 12 years thence in spite of a love of learning.
Note: Once again, I'm traveling today, so if I will check in here as I am able to.
Advertisement
Great blog. Perception is indeed reality, no matter how we would hope otherwise and despite our best intentions. It can take years to overcome a mistaken first impression, if ever.
This seems a perfect allegory for some of the mistaken assumptions (prejudices) we have all been guilty of at one time or another. Overcoming those traumatic or emblematic experiences can be some of the most challenging things that we, as humans, have to do in the pursuit of enlightenment.
Glad to hear your dad found alternative means to satisfy his hunger for knowledge all these years and passed that trait along to his own children.
January 26, 2009 3:00 PM | Reply | Permalink
Learning is not the same as education. Dylan was signed up for one quarter at my university and never attended classes (the u was free in those days before I got there).
Clemens never went to college. Gates quit after his sophmore year.
Today you had better have a college education if you want a job, if you are hoping to work for someone else and perhaps receive a salary above the poverty level.
But after college, if you really wish to know something, you need to read and relate with others who read.
God, I sound like a would be educator!!!
Good post Miguel. You always add a personal touch. Something from yourself.
January 26, 2009 3:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
What a touching story, amigo. Very touching. How we are scarred by things which no one else might know about. One of my cousins, who was mercilessly scapegoated by a 5th grade teacher (unbeknownst to his parents until a neighbor mentioned her child was upset by what he witnessed every day in school) - this cousin ultimately became a child psychiatrist. I think things we either experience or witness when young may powerfully influence us for a lifetime.
How sad for your dad. But how wonderful that you pressed further. And how wonderful that he did not want his children saddled with the lack of an education.
This post makes me think of barefooted's post yesterday. Take a look at it.
Thanks for this touching memoir. One more reason I love TPM. We can talk about anything!
January 26, 2009 6:02 PM | Reply | Permalink
Miguel is great isn't he? Just tells his own story and relates to something bigger. Like we all are a part of something bigger.
And I am not sad for his dad. His dad has lived to a grand old age and nevertheless, likes to read and learn.
Oh and Miguel, I meant to send you to a newbie. CL. She talks about her father.
January 26, 2009 6:08 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks DD, Thera, and Jason. You are correct in not lamenting my dad's lack of education DD. He has had a rich and varied life, that I suspect he wouldn't trade for anything.
January 27, 2009 12:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks Thera. Part of my telling the story was as a cautionary tale to any of us who are educators, to beware of over-reacting, lest they win the day, but lose the hearts and minds of their proteges.
January 27, 2009 12:55 AM | Reply | Permalink
I used to teach young children. Very taxing. Very rewarding. I still think of some of those children... and that was around 35 years ago. They're all grown up, of course. But I still think of them. When you have children all day long for a whole year, you get very close to them.
January 27, 2009 6:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
Isn't it the truth? The hardest part is letting them go. I still have many pictures of them around. Particularly of the ones who did an extra good job of sneaking in. Usually the troublemakers. ;)
January 27, 2009 8:29 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for the great story piggy...It has me thinking of the many times I, or someone I love have experienced things that seem so small, but have such a lasting impact.
January 26, 2009 6:25 PM | Reply | Permalink
Good story. Worth the time it took to read it.
January 26, 2009 8:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
You have outdone yourself. You are excused from the farmyard for the time being.
It's been duller without your wit, peegalito.
You impressed Renaye. It's a miracle, ¿no?
January 26, 2009 9:51 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks Bwak, Stilli, and... Renaye? I suppose the political content was held to a minimum, so that explains it, maybe. My dad has a dial-up ISP, and I couldn't bear the torment of playing solitaire while the pages loaded this past week. It's good to be back, whether I'm excused from the farmyard or not!
January 27, 2009 12:51 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hey Apple-Picker. Great story. My step-dad got kicked out of school in Grade 10. Yet carried around I Swedenborg & CS Lewis & Toynbee & favourite poets in the pockets of his overalls. Helped build a school, sat on the school board, married a teacher, drove us all to grab a couple of degrees.
The distinction he taught us was that learning didn't necessarily equal school. Sometimes, you COULD learn SOME things in school. But that depended on the kid... their age... the teacher... the subject. Other times, he felt you might as well spend the winter in the woods, working.... or travelling... or talking to the people you met... or just reading on your own.
Sounds corny, but all the encounters I saw him in, he always found an area of conversation with that particular person he could learn from. I've seen him open up mean old bastards working on heavy equipment, and get them talking about working for Capone. Or draw the village drunk into talking about being a German POW following a plane crash. Or any of our family, he'd draw out whatever the latest thing that they'd learned. And not just "book" learning, he liked to hear what they'd learned in life.
By the last 20 years, he had life boiled down to -- laughter, learning & love. That's it, that's all. Which has made more sense to be as a working motto than anything else I've found. He also got it into our thick heads that school may or may not equal a chance to learn, and that learning moves far beyond its walls.
Pleased to hear your Dad sustained his love of learning, school or no. Worth remembering, in an age where we seem to have made 20 years or so inside those walls a prerequisite for doing or saying anything worth listening to. I'm keen on learning. Not so much on school. Be nice if our society would take a slightly wider view on that, as far as I'm concerned.
January 26, 2009 11:22 PM | Reply | Permalink
Toynbee... My dad gave me one of his histories to read years ago. I tried, but found his verbiage impenetrable. I had a particular sentence I used to quote to friends if they wanted a sentence to spend a quiet week in the country dissecting, interpreting, and, (no doubt), researching. My Da sat on a school board, and built a new high school too. Sounds like yours and mine might enjoy each others company.
Sad, the emphasis our current paradigm places on education as opposed to learning, no? I met with a childhood friend over the past week who's a self-taught communications/computer software wunderkind. We graduated from high school together, and after toying with college, he pioneered a local cable access channel in our home town, and went on from there. He was between consulting contracts last year, and was considering taking a contract, that he really didn't want. In the end the company met with him and told him he was by far the best and brightest candidate they had interviewed, but in the end their corporate policy precluded him from being hired since he lacked even a Bachelor's degree. Pretty pathetic.
I suggest a new model in which we utilize all of our people and their abilities to whatever degree we as workers are comfortable being so utilized. Using 'level of education attained' is the easy way out for those too lazy or uninformed to make a hiring decision based on the applicants knowledge. We've seen what the Business schools have been spitting out and their effect on the economy. Someone who can chop wood with a book of poetry in his hip pocket, and find the wisdom in what muses present themselves, (drunk or otherwise), would be a welcome relief. And love, laughter, & learning: What a perfect synthesis to take from a life so obviously well lived.
January 27, 2009 1:32 AM | Reply | Permalink
I love these two comments.
And would like to have known both of your fathers.
That's disgraceful about the man they wouldn't hire. What kind of society puts the value on the piece of paper rather than the knowledge? Values only the end, not the means. Good grief.
You know my most hated phrase used by Obama, all politicians, most school boards, and so on? Fix the schools "So we can compete in a global economy." "Preparing our children to compete in a global economy," the exact words from the WH site. Ugh.
January 27, 2009 8:58 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't like that phrase either Hil. It presupposes learning, (a.k.a. 'education'), has employment and global competition as its sole goal. As if global concepts that change the shape of humanity emanate only from our institutions of higher learning, (see DickDay's comment above re. Bill Gates), and as if learning might not be a goal in and of itself. Most of my own personal insights have arisen from unforeseen, unplanned, and often seemingly fortuitous learning 'events'. I think that our ability to 'compete on the global stage' will often arise in similar fashion. We can certainly plan strategically for global trends, but truly good ideas for me at least seem to originate from leaving oneself open to synthesize in a distinctly nonlinear manner.
January 27, 2009 10:47 AM | Reply | Permalink
Teachers can make a tremendous difference or do tremendous damage. We take the profession entirely too casually, and reward its excellent practice too poorly.
January 26, 2009 11:59 PM | Reply | Permalink
Too true padre. In the case of little kids, we can lose them and their abilities forever.
January 27, 2009 1:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
My brother and I often laughed about our grades. He is obviously the genius of the family, but I maintained the A average while he got C's. The difference between us was simple. I studied to achieve the grade, but he was driven by his curiosity and love of knowledge. This often sent him off on tangents which broadened his mind,while I happily limited myself to what would bring the positive reinforcement. Only later in life did I realize that I cheated myself. I agree with Quinn, learning often has nothing to do with a formal education.
January 27, 2009 1:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hear, hear Bella! My one sis has said similar things about her brother, but having 'skimmed' her dissertation, and other writings, I'll speak for your brother as well here and say, we all have different ways in which we soak up all that information and synthesize it into meaningful insight. We need all of those methods of analysis, and as Q alluded, we need to honor and value them equally.
January 27, 2009 1:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hey, mi hermano, I think you're rewriting history a bit. You were the one with the good grades and the award for best student. Yer over-educated sis was coasting with a B+ average through most of high school and just as bored as you were. Only later did she learn to knuckle under and study. :-)
Lovely post about dad. I remember him reading Spinoza, Toynbee, everything on the US Civil War, everything on the 2nd world war when we were growing up. He is a true scholar and role model. I remember the story about the kid tripping. I have always thought it was a metaphor for all the generally bad educational experiences of any kid who doesn't fit the educational mold and doesn't progress on schedule. It's sad because the world lost a potentially great historian and high school or college history professor (but gained an honest, ethical businessman). How many more such people do we lose from higher education each day?
The teacher's comment about kids of businessmen was also interesting. This is the first time I have heard it. I guess it makes sense against the backdrop of the great depression. Sad that small businessmen were (and may yet be) equated with large corporations and financial institutions. Dad's businessman father contributed in many ways to their community, with both time and money, as did dad. And that was in addition to selling goods on affordable terms, providing 12 month payment plans with no interest, and providing health insurance for their employees back when very few firms did it.
He was and is a good, smart, decent man. Somehow, I suspect there was and is much more about our educational system that deters such people. More than a single incident and a single bad teacher. There is a joy and exhilaration to learning that is somehow squelched, often among the most creative and innovative thinkers. Let's hope we change it soon or we're doomed as doomed can be.
Good blog, bro.
February 4, 2009 9:28 AM | Reply | Permalink
My own first-grade teacher, Mrs. Ricupero, had a profound and life-altering influence on my life too: the difference being that she made me love school. Considering the other influences in my life growing up, I have long known how incredibly lucky I was to have had her as my teacher.
I recently Googled her and found her obituary from 2005. Reading her obit was curious; I never really knew anything about her, yet she understood the essence of me.
January 27, 2009 3:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
That's amazing, and quite a tribute, that you still remember her. I remember most of my teachers, but the one that inspired me the most was a Literature teacher I had in my 3 years of high school. He believed in developing the heart, mind, body and soul to their utmost.
Some old Greek belief...
At any rate, he told me I could do whatever I wanted with my life, up until then I was kind of on an "expected" course.
January 27, 2009 7:16 AM | Reply | Permalink
Sometimes, I think, you can get through a lot of the bad parts of school on the memories/influence of the handful of good ones, if they get to you at the right time.
Kindergarten. Mrs. Babuscio. She was so wonderful, made me love school so much, that that was when I decided that I wanted to be a teacher...when I grew up. (An ambition I carried till college, changed for four years, and have now returned to.) I couldn't give you any specific examples of why she was so wonderful. She just was.
January 27, 2009 8:50 AM | Reply | Permalink
For me it was my third grade teacher as well as my ninth grade biology teacher who made a big difference to me. Something I realized at a fairly young age is that if I found the teacher 'attractive' in the sense of their humanity/intelligence/attitude, I was going to get more from their class. I still remember my college freshman organic chem professor, a Brit, with a smile that seemed to convey the inner humor in all things, (organic chem included!), blithely bouncing from left to right foot as he discoursed on the chemistry of carbon. If I had fully realized the implications of that, I would have previewed professors' classes at university prior to enrolling in the class.
January 27, 2009 11:04 AM | Reply | Permalink
Excellent blog, Miguelito.
One of the most intelligent people I know stopped formal education at the 8th grade level...hated school but didn't hate learning. And learning, he tells me, is a lifelong process. Sounds like your dad knows this as well.
January 27, 2009 9:26 AM | Reply | Permalink
Great post. And I think we all carry scars specifically from that wonderful/terrible place called early childhood education. The worms in teacher's apple...
January 27, 2009 10:37 AM | Reply | Permalink
test
January 29, 2009 5:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Great and moving post miguelitoh2o,
It is a challenge to see when one of those events is impacting someone young [or old for that matter]
I was attending a growth and development seminar where a guy in his early fifties remembered and incident when he was 7. He walked in on his dad and 8 year old brother and saw his dad give his brother a coin. His dad and brother didn't acknowledge the coin and neither did the guy in the seminar. The guy decided his dad loved his brother more that him and withdrew from both of them.
He hadn't talked to his brother since he left home, some 30+ years. This guy hadn't even remembered walking in and seeing his dad give his brother the money, he just remembered that his brother was his dad's favorite.
After he remembered the incident, he called his dad. His dad remembered the day very well, he told his son he could see something had changed but he didn't know what. When his son told him about the money, his dad said that he had given his brother the other half of the last stick of gum he had and his brother saved it for later. Neither dad nor brother thought anything about it. [Gum was wrapped in a foil backed paper then]
Anyway the guy called his brother and flew up to be with him the next weekend and all was well.
You never know what seemingly insignificant thing in one person's life can be a life changing event for another. We have to do the best we can to notice how our communications land "over there" and be certain that we communicated what we wanted to.
February 1, 2009 8:46 AM | Reply | Permalink
.
Wow . . .
This is what is so wonderful about the Cafe . . .
Oh how lucky I am when paddling around on a Sunday eve and I come upon a chestnut such as this.
You've brought fond memories flowing of my own father to the surface of the pond. He'd be 91 this year, yet he succumbed to his long battle with diabetes at the age of 74. Fortunately he had wonderful health care, VA benefits, and UCLA.
He was an Iowa boy who left to join the Navy when he was 15, and was told to go home till he reached sixteen. And, that was to help support his mother sister, and paraplegic brother in Leland, Iowa. The year? 1933. He spent the next 13 years through the end of the war abroad the USS San Fransisco. He saw the world at peace, and experienced the hell of war starting at Pearl Harbor and the historic night battle at Guadalcanal. He made it back, and I was born in September of '46.
He traveled the world. He was a self-made man and was tough but tender to our family. I owe him more than I owe anyone in this world except my mother who married him in '39 and loved him til her end. Fifty-one years.
Thanks for rattling the memory chip here, pig!
May you experience many more days with your dad.
~OGD~
February 9, 2009 2:17 AM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks for your wish and sharing your story too ducky.
February 16, 2009 7:53 PM | Reply | Permalink
Thanks so much for this miguel. You and your sister have posted here a wonderful tribute to what was surely a remarkable man.
I lost my own father just last month at 87 years of age, and your blog caused me to reflect upon him and education and all.
My father was the son of a tavernkeeper, Charlie. Charlie was perhaps one of the gentlest men I've ever met. But he was no pushover, as evidenced even by his physical build. He was short in stature, to be sure, but he was also seemingly as wide through the shoulders as he was tall.
Although kindness and grace were definitely Charlie's most prominent characteristics, Charlie had the tenacity of a bulldog when challenged - especially when confronting injustice, pomposity, or downright cruelty. Some of this probably explains his history as a bootlegger during Prohibition in a small Wisconsin community made up mostly of Polish immigrants. It also explains why every son in town received a fifth of brandy and an invitation to dinner at Charlie's house upon learning that the young man was about to ship out for boot camp and then WWII. (Charlie did the cooking on these occasions, which was itself worth the visit. Man, could he cook!)
Probably one of my favorite photos of Charlie is one in which he is dressed in his doughboy uniform (WWI) surrounded by his four sons, all in the Army uniforms they wore as active soldiers. Charlie, who had no daughters, is by far the shortest man in the photo, but he is the one so obviously most full of pride.
Charlie had no education, yet he kept a journal and also wrote letters nearly every day to his sons when they were abroad. Just short notes, but full of wit and grace and even poetry that invited the reader into some portion of his day or his thoughts for the day.
Upon his return home from the war, my father Ray was encouraged to do better than Charlie in terms of education. So he went to school on the GI Bill to become an accountant, and quickly wrote his boards for his CPA upon graduation. Yet after only a year or so working in this professional capacity, Ray abandoned that career to purchase his own neighborhood tavern, which he ran for over 50 years until his retirement.
I can't say Ray was ever quite as accomplished at being a tavernkeeper as was his father before him. Pretty tough, after all, to compete with the best. Yet Ray developed his own style and his own quirks and eccentricities that served him well. And you can bet he kept the very best books of any gin mill in town!
I now cherish the brief, handwritten notes that Ray wrote which used to arrive in the mail somewhat frequently just to share a bit of his day or his thoughts for the day.
And I would have to say that Ray received a great deal more benefit from the education he received from the "uneducated" Charlie than any college or university could have offered him.
I miss them both. I never took advantage of an advanced education myself, choosing instead to marry and commence raising a family immediately upon graduating from High School. But I've never felt "uneducated" for having been blessed with learning about life and relationships and literature and history and poetry from a couple of Masters.
And I can't help but look each day through the mail, hoping in defiance of reality to receive my next little lesson in an envelope addressed in a familiar scrawl.
February 9, 2009 5:20 AM | Reply | Permalink
That´s a moving tribute sj. Remarkable how those influences live on, sometimes becoming brighter with time. I remember when you let us know about your dad´s passing, and know it is never easy.
February 16, 2009 8:00 PM | Reply | Permalink