Educating for Life

There’s a story of a Vermont Yankee farmer and his son ploughing their field.  Their neighbor’s son was preparing to cut a large tree nearby  his family’s  barn. He had just arrived home from college for the summer and was studying a book to calculate the right angle to begin sawing.  After hours of work the tree finally fell but not in the direction that the student had calculated. The tree landed on the barn. As the  seasoned farmer looked on, he said in his laconic Vermont drawl- “Now son, that’s what I call book smart”. 

Autumn begins September 22 in the northern hemisphere. But Labor Day, the first Monday in September marks the unofficial close of summer in the US.  Students have started classes  with more or less enthusiasm and excitement. For the most part people are returning from vacations and resuming their work routines. It’s  a start of a new year of sorts.  I think of this time as a new year of learning. Education, and work, both of which constitute a substantial amount of time over a life span of activity flow in varied rhythmic patterns. Work, the education and training one undergoes to work well is a broad topic.  There are countless ways to think and write about it and many have done throughout the centuries. Our attitudes about education and work often reflect our understanding and interpretations of meaning, purpose and human flourishing. 

Sherman’s thoughts on education reflected in his correspondence lean towards the practical. He was prone to action, not giving too much thought to theories on how to do something. His education, and  early experiences  gave him a foundation by which he could confront the challenges that came his way throughout his life, There were waves of success and shoals of failures. But this is often true for most of us. It is the lot of the human condition.  How those are measured depends on one’s perspective and values. Athletes and entrepreneurs understand this intuitively. The rest of us learn by in ‘the school of hard knocks’.

Sherman’s early years of education included classes of the three R’s —reading writing and arithmetic. But there was more: He writes 

I continued at the Academy in Lancaster, …We studied all the common branches of knowledge, including Latin, Greek and French. 

WTS Memoirs Vol I

Once classes were out the rest of the day was devoted to typical youth activities; roaming the woods, playing games and completing household chores. Both Sherman’s birth family and his foster family were avid readers. Frequent mention of books being read, requests for more books and gifts of books appear in the letters between Sherman and his family. It seems like they were always reading something.  Maybe this explains why I’m a curious and constant reader. But I digress. 

At age 14 Sherman found work building the canals along the Hocking river in Fairfield County Ohio. He learned surveying and construction skills. He worked alongside  laborers of diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds, including freemen of color. Undoubtedly this would have  been an incredible learning experience, collaborating with teams of people to create  infrastructures of transport in  rapidly  developing communities. The experience launched his lifelong study of logistics. He continued working during the school year with a surveyor:

“We worked during that fall and most spring marking two experimental lines, and for one our work  we each received a silver half dollar for each day’s actual work , the first money any of us had ever earned. “

WTS Memoirs Vol I

Plenty of background knowledge, training and practice go into success in work or other projects of life’s endeavors.  Early instruction in reading, writing and arithmetic may be  insufficient for a complete well rounded education. But they are necessary tools that enable life long learning. 19th century initiatives to educate every child anywhere in America are too many to list. What is common to all of them were teachers and benefactors who were committed to establish schools with or without government support. They made countless sacrifices to teach children how to read, write and carry out the fundamentals of mathematics because they considered them important skills for shaping their future. Most families relied on older children to do chores to maintain a farm, family shop or household and this had to be factored in arranging school schedules and curricula.  Sherman recounts an early remembrance of taking his father’s horse, used for his travels as a circuit judge to the barn. Presumably Sherman would have learned something at a young age of how to care for horses as most of us learn how to keep our cars or bicycles  in working order today. 

Getting back to the story of the beginning of this article; maybe if the guy with the axe spent more time chopping wood in his younger years before he went off to college, he might have  avoided the disastrous fall of the large tree. Or maybe by looking at the tree and surroundings he would conclude it wasn’t  necessary to take it down in the first place.  

The end of the summer and start of an academic year gives us an opportunity to reflect on our attitudes and beliefs about education, work and the rhythms they create in our lives. Work is much more  than the actual ‘job’ for which we may or may not be remunerated. At the risk of a broadly construed definition I would posit that work expands to all  activity we engage in that contributes to a greater good; that which brings people,  families, communities, and nations together.  Sherman and his contemporaries probably didn’t think along those terms. But many of them Sherman included had a clear sense of responsibility of working to create a sustainable future for their families and fledging country. They were convinced that a school education should lead as the etymological root of the word implies—a young person to learn how to also do so. They considered it essential for a flourishing well lived life and even happy life.  Children need someone to care for them. Typically an adult is one who is capable of caring or providing for others. It is presumed that our learning institutions continue to cultivate values of work not as a means of self serving profit and prestige but first and foremost as a means of service for others and creating value in which many can grow and thrive. Similar to a sapling that takes root and grows into a large tree providing shade and sustenance.

We can consider our own role  as educators and/or cheerleaders for students beginning the academic year. Our support gives strength to children and young people to explore their dreams for their future. If we inspire them, they too will be life-long learners and will know how to put that knowledge into practice for a greater good.