Bird Droppings May 2, 2024
Pondering early in the morning in my search for wisdom

I started my day by routinely having a cup of green tea on my back porch, checking bird feeders, running to the corner for a biscuit, and filling up my car. I walked out, checked the outside ambient temperature and air, cleaned up the kitchen, proceeded to get a shower, and got ready for a day of yard work. Three years ago, around this time, I was getting fatigued from just going upstairs to my writing area or after a few minutes of work in the yard. Every few minutes of work outside, I have to rest. Pat wanted me to rule out heart issues since I had some blockage a few years back. After extensive testing of every organ in my body, my heart rate has slowed down. My cardiologist recommended a pacemaker. Now I am enjoying my time, and my heart rate is, most of the time, right at 60 beats per minute, a far better time than when it would drop to 28.  

I was sort of out of sync when I retired from full-time teaching and went part-time. I am t getting into a routine of enjoying part-time teaching. I am seriously ready to get going on yard work, writing, and finishing up several pieces of my research since I have been lazy. I had planned on picking up a few plants to work on in our carnivorous garden, and it seems I will put them off till tomorrow. I sent out a few emails and did my postings on social media, and it was almost time to head out.  

I forget not all people live by my sunrise-to-sunset standard. Later, I will go by my favorite store, Kroger, after we get home to pick up things to grill for supper. Hopefully, between grandson shopping and Kroger, I can get serious about my paper today.  

On the front page of today’s paper, the lead story was how high school graduates are not ready for college. Right next to it was an article on an assistant principal who is still being investigated in a past Atlanta school system cheating scandal. She claimed she did not know they were cheating, only cleaning up eraser marks so testing machines would not err. One comment was essentially that in Georgia, twenty-five percent of the graduates have to take remedial courses in college. As I thought about this pondering as I do, I recalled I, too, took a remedial language art course during my first year in college. I took it twice since the first time; I did not go to class very often. How valid is taking a remedial class in terms of success in school?

Why did I have to take a remedial college course, and yet I was accepted into all three colleges I applied to? My SAT score was a few points too low for the school I applied to for the verbal portion, and yet today, it would be more than enough to get into any college without remedial classes. As I think about my days in High School Literature, except for maybe one or two years, I hated it and could not understand why we needed to listen to a teacher’s opinion on why Herman Melville wrote Moby Dick. As I think back, I was not too fond of Math classes, Spanish classes, and all but one science class. Considering we had math, literature, and science all four years of High School, I was not too fond of high school, and perhaps my GPA reflected this. Even though my SAT scores were what got me into college and, conversely, in a remedial class, my saving grace in education was standardized tests, which I always seemed to do well on. My first set of SAT scores was, in today’s terms, close to 1300 for verbal and Math, which would really get me into most undergraduate schools shy of Ivy League today.

The second time I took the SAT, I decided I would see how fast I could take the test, and in twenty-three minutes, I had completed the SAT and scored only a few points lower than my previous testing. So, where am I wandering today? The conclusion that I came to after reflecting on my own High School experience and that many kids I talk to within High School today is that we are teaching subjects that many consider irrelevant to them, even kids going to college. Some students will strive to get high grades, seemingly acquiring the content that is provided so they can take End of end-of-course tests and do great. But as I look at High school subject matter and even the photo used in explaining how deficient students today are in Math, I looked at the problem on the board behind the teacher being interviewed and in real life, shy of being in physics or math as a job you will never see that material.

Real learning is what is missing from education today. It is about that desire to learn and making it relevant to students who more than likely do not even want to be in that class. So, how do we get teachers who have been brought up in the same system on board? We have taken the passion out of learning. We have stripped learning of imagination and creativity.

“The awakened sages call a person wise when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results; all his selfish desires have been consumed in the fire of knowledge. The wise, ever satisfied, have abandoned all external supports. Their security is unaffected by the results of their action; even while acting, they really do nothing at all. Free from expectations and from all sense of possession, with mind and body firmly controlled by the Self, they do not incur sin by the performance of physical action.” Bhagavad Gita 4:19-21

I can easily substitute learning and wisdom as I read through this ancient passage from a Hindu holy text. It is a matter of who you are with, when, and how you have been told. Is this learning? But as I read this passage, which is many years old, I realized that a person is wise when what you do is done without anxiety about results. You are not concerned about your grade or what college or who has the highest GPA. We sadly live in a competitive world where being number one is even a marketing tool for advertisers. I often wonder if politicians get stressed out, other than around elections, over what they do. I always thought of my grandmother as wise for her understanding of life. As a small child, perhaps, I saw only that her knowledge was what she needed to know to raise her children justly and correctly and how to make really good Grandma Seitz chocolate chip cookies. As I grew up, there was a different understanding on my part of her deep faith and wisdom; maybe one day, I can come close, too.

“This we can all bear witness to, living as we do plagued by unremitting anxiety…. It becomes more and more imperative that the life of the spirit be avowed as the only firm basis upon which to establish happiness and peace.” The Dalai Lama

As a society, we seem to encourage anxiety and stress, often at the expense of our children and grandchildren. Our previous elected government pushed to spread democracy through numerous wars, and our current government has continued and added a war or two to the pot, which has caused tension and insecurity in our children, according to Progressive Curriculum Theorist Henry Giroux. Is it turning to a deeper meaning, a spiritual center as “the only firm base,” as The Dalai Lama states?

“If I have been of service, if I have glimpsed more of the nature and essence of ultimate well, if I am inspired to reach wider horizons of thought and action, if I am at peace with myself, it has been a successful day.” Alex Noble

How many of us take this approach to life? I often use the term being a searcher in that I am always searching. When walking in the forest, I have the urge to check under rocks, which could be the unrelenting herpetologist in me searching for a snake or lizard as I sit or stand in the hallway at school observing, searching for faces, listening, empathizing, and trying to understand.

“To understand reality is not the same as to know about outward events. It is to perceive the essential nature of things. The best-informed man is not necessarily the wisest. Indeed, there is a danger that precisely in the multiplicity of his knowledge he will lose sight of what is essential. But on the other hand, knowledge of a trivial detail quite often makes it possible to see into the depth of things. And so the wise man will seek to acquire the best possible knowledge about events, but always without becoming dependent upon this knowledge. To recognize the significance in the factual is wisdom.” Dietrich Bonhoeffer

I used a statement several weeks back about seeing the bubble in a thousand clear oceans. Bonhoeffer addresses that same issue here. In education, it is about context, not content, that is, being able to apply what knowledge we have, and that can be more significant than an encyclopedia of information.

“I do not want the peace that passeth understanding. I want the understanding which bringeth peace.” Helen Keller

Many times, I will sit and think about people I would like to meet. My biological grandfather on my mother’s side is one, Gandhi another, and Ralph Waldo Emerson, but if I were allowed another, it would be Helen Keller. Few people have overcome such insurmountable odds and then accomplished what she did. The title of the book about her life does not do justice to the real-life situation, The Miracle Worker.

“It is characteristic of wisdom not to do desperate things.” Henry David Thoreau

I need to be more cautious as I write; the other day, Thoreau was searching for calm rather than calm. Spell check does not read minds as of yet. But Thoreau eludes back to that thousand-plus-year-old statement from the Bhagavad Gita,” when all his undertakings are free from anxiety about results.” Being wise is being in tune, so to say, with all around, and borrowing another word, perhaps harmony could be used.

“Science is organized knowledge. Wisdom is organized life.” Immanuel Kant

In education, there are Common Core Standards and points of reference for each subject to attain or to have knowledge of. We in Georgia had a system in place of Performance Standards and, previously, that Quality Core Curriculum, which was every aspect of what the educational committee thought was important in that subject. Teachers were teaching to QCCs, and it was almost purely content. There was excitement as new standards came out, and the school administration’s “curriculum” people got hold of them and unpacked them. Now we have curriculum maps and curriculum pacing, and what was to be wonderful has become a monster. The heart and soul have been stripped out and, in its place, organizational overload.

“Besides the noble art of getting things done, there is the noble art of leaving things undone. The wisdom of life consists in the elimination of non-essentials.” Lin Yutang

I have used my example of a liter bottle several times, and I have three gallons to put in it. How do we do it? A funnel still only fills to a liter, and the rest spills out. I use this illustration to educate special needs kids, and I believe it applies to all children and adults. It has been a few months since my last trip to Mountain City and the Foxfire property. I am heading up in a week or so. If you are in Mountain City, Georgia, take a look. It is well worth the drive up the mountain. The museum will provide a guide to take you around. I recall the late Robert Murray and numerous walks with him around the property; here and there, he would pick a plant leave or three or four, telling them about what they could do and what they could be used for.

As he goes from building to building explaining mountain life, he eventually gets to a shed with a large copper coil sort of device and asks, “So what is it?” and answers run the gambit. Finally, laughing, he explains that it is a condenser for making moonshine. If you have watched the miniseries Hatfield and McCoy’s, you will know. So, how do we fill a liter bottle? We condense and synthesize, and much like making cane syrup, we boil the cane juice down to get the good stuff. Wisdom is knowing what the good stuff is and being able to transcend the frills and extras.

“The perfection of wisdom and the end of true philosophy is to proportion our wants to our possessions, our ambitions to our capacities; we will then be a happy and a virtuous people.” Mark Twain

Make that number five on my list of people whom I would like to meet; somehow, Mark Twain could always have the right words and thoughts. As I meander about today, searching for books and ideas, tilling in my garden, and planting plants, I will end with a line from a founding father and one that maybe our current in-power folks should read.

“I hope our wisdom will grow with our power and teach us that the less we use our power, the greater it will be.” Thomas Jefferson

I hope we will listen to Jefferson. Please keep all in harm’s way on your mind and your hearts, and be sure to always give thanks, namaste.

My family and friends, I do not say this lightly,

Mitakuye Oyasin

(We are all related)

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