We’re All Vagabonds Now and my Father Would Disapprove

               Published in Marietta (GA) Daily Journal, 6/20/21

            No one ever loved their parents more than I loved mine. Both of them worked incredibly hard, my father loving the fields he labored in and my mother preferring the fields with him over housework and cooking. Growing up, I saw my older sisters doing most of the housework while our mother, when not battling kidney stones, was in the fields or huge gardens.

            My father had a high school education which at the time of his graduation in 1910 meant only 11 years of study. The extension to 12 years would come a few years later. My mother made it through the seventh grade. She could read but always had a problem with words that were beyond the “junior high” level. More than once she handed me a magazine or a newspaper to ask how to pronounce a word. More than once she gave up and said, “Why don’t you just read it to me?”

Those times and moments were as precious to me then as they are in my memory now. Teen culture was coming into its own at the time which was the late 1950s. The Four Aces and Perry Como were waning. Elvis and Little Richard were taking over. I enjoyed them all but I was never cool and didn’t want to be. My dear, aging parents who struggled persistently and nobly were my anchor. President Eisenhower was smiling down on the nation and his successor, the young and cultured JFK, afforded the nation an example of class and self-respect.

But something was happening, something that continues to this day if in fact it has not been completed. I’m referring to the loss, or should I say the abandonment, of the cultured life. I know, the very words “the cultured life” sound uppity and pretentious. They remind us perhaps of royalty and social snobbery. But there are other perceptions.

Throughout human history culture has referred to entire civilizations such as Western culture. Today we often speak of sub-cultures such as Southern culture or the drug culture. Pro-lifers often refer to the abortion industry as a culture of death. In short, the word is used widely and differently.

In spite of their station in life my parents qualified for placement with those who sought and lived a cultured life. I base this claim on the definition of culture supplied by the 19^th century British writer Matthew Arnold who still maintains his place in English literature textbooks. Arnold defined culture as an ideal, that being “the best which has been thought and said.” Culture, Arnold asserted, “has its origins in the love and study of perfection.”

 Both of my parents had standards for language, dress, and conversation. You don’t use ugly words. You dress your best and “never go to town looking like a hank” (whatever that word meant).  Also, in conversation you “never talk about people.” That meant don’t gossip or speak unkindly of others.

My father’s bent for perfection extended to the sharpening of hoes, the storing of tools, the straight placement of anything on the mantle, the wearing of ties and “Sunday pants” to church even in the hottest of summers, and enough “hair oil” to control the most stubborn head of hair. My mother was cultured in a different way. Her personal culture personified kindness,  the deepest, unconditional love for her children, and the expert use of the switch whenever it was needed. Neither of my parents gave the word culture a thought and probably never heard of Matthew Arnold, but they still honored his claim that anyone who says he is cultured certainly is not.

The decline of culture in America today is serious. The same is true of Europe. This is not true, we are told, of Asian nations. But here in our homeland, men’s hairy legs and flip-flops are as common in church as white shirts were in 1955. Use of filthy language grows by the day. Social media and politics have no rules at all. We’re all doing that which seems right unto ourselves, including dressing like we’re homeless vagabonds. Where I grew up even the poorest of the poor had more self-respect.

And why does this matter? It matters because like it or not, “No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main.” John Donne was referring to humanity, not government.

Cancel culture is another term we’re using these days. Seems to me culture itself is being canceled, at least the kind that my mother and father pursued. Father’s Day is a good time to start canceling our carelessness and engaging in some profitable nostalgia. We would all be happier.

 

Roger Hines

6/14/21 

 

                     Let Not Many Be Teachers, Or Coaches

               Published in Marietta (GA)Daily Journal, 6/5/21

This column was first printed in May of 2017. In light of COVID and the challenges teachers have faced the past year, please consider it a repeat tribute.

My mind is on teachers. Most of them wound up their year’s work in the last week or two. Believe me, their minds and bodies might be numb. They don’t have and never did have three months off, no matter what their school system calendar might say. For the past half century I’ve had the deepest respect for the teachers with whom I’ve worked.

Teaching is draining work. Teachers are constantly giving. Not just knowledge, but energy, emotions, and every ounce of creativity they possess. The emotional part gets more intense by the year. Weakened homes have made sure of that. 

Teachers of small children particularly need our support. Children can be very demanding; however, teachers of younger children tell me that the number of demanding children is decreasing because so many children come to school sad, unresponsive, and disengaged. This too requires creativity and genuine concern and care on the part of teachers.

Here’s something taxpaying citizens need to know, especially my conservative friends. We can complain about failing schools all we want, but failing schools are often the result of failing homes. There are many children and teens as well who don’t like to leave school when the day is over all because of the help, support, and love they get from their teachers. First-year teachers learn fast why students – even high school seniors – cling to them. Often there’s little help or clinging at home.

Many days teachers leave school deeply troubled because of student needs that are not academic. A school’s chief tasks are, or should be, to provide knowledge by teaching academic content, and to build character by teaching right and wrong, especially regarding stealing, cheating, and respecting others. Nowadays students come with other needs as well.

Today schools are feeding students, clothing them, and providing therapy of all stripes. “Grief counseling” is particularly widespread, an offering which is often simply overdone and teaches students to wallow in grief instead of how to interpret and appropriate it.

Those who claim schools have moved from a knowledge-based institution to a feelings-based one are largely correct. However, schools are not an entity that is disconnected from the larger culture. Schools are a reflection of the culture we live in. What many critics don’t understand is that teachers must teach whoever enters the building, and a large percentage of those entering the building come from brokenness, fighting parents, or absentee fathers. Not all of these are from poverty- stricken homes.

If teachers must spend time training students in matters that parents didn’t attend to (discipline, social skills, lack of encouragement), how can we blame teachers or schools for having to do what should have already been done? Attending to what has not been attended to takes time from academic content.

There is a Biblical injunction that reads, “Let not many be teachers.” It refers to teachers of Scripture, but it also reminds us that schools need teachers who truly desire to teach. Our coaches are teachers too, and some of the best. Few know of the positive impact that coaches have on students, even students whom they neither teach nor coach. In the halls everybody knows “Coach.” Most male coaches are models of masculinity and cheer. Yes, masculinity still matters. Often the best influence on timid high school girls is the jocular male coaches who know how to build self-confidence; however both male and female coaches too often go unheralded. I say may their tribe increase.

Critics of education should back up and become social critics of hearth and home. And then become activists in whatever way they can: working with poor families, taking a next door teen to church or synagogue, showing an interest in all youths with whom they come in contact.

Schools are no doubt doing some things wrong. In many cases, the helping culture it has become is eroding self-reliance. Education’s therapeutic bent assumes that all students profit from words of cheer, yet many students work hard and achieve only with challenges. This bent isn’t the fault of classroom teachers. It didn’t start in the schools. A nation’s schools are downstream from its culture. And from the central office.

The “man for all seasons,” renaissance figure Thomas More, said to young Richard Rich, “Why not be a teacher? You’d be a fine one, perhaps a great one.” Rich answered, “And if I were, who would know it?”

“You, your pupils, friends, God. Not a bad public, that.”

Let’s wish every teacher we know a good summer. We need them back.

 

Roger Hines

6/2/21