Life, Media, Truth

It is not likely that we carry over to daily life what history has taught us about the influence of the means of learning.  We tend to accept what society gives us so to form us personally rather than the reverse – giving to society what it needs to teach for the improvement of our lives.  Our experience is more persuasive than the classroom.  Everything about us teaches us.  We need, somehow, to hook everything up for good.

For several generations in the forming of America the elementary level of education was largely influenced by the McGUFFEY READERS.  Youngsters brought up on them lived to praise their value both as a learning tool for language, and for values in life.  The material was based on biblical concepts of right and wrong in human life.  As education began to lose the sense of obligation to teach values, the McGuffey literature began to fade, and was given death stroke by newer and more sophisticated approaches to life – even for children. The material was made to appear old fashioned.  If old fashioned it should not be burdened with the idea that being old meant it was no longer useful.  Things changed, causing teachers to become persons without the baggage of in loco parentis.  They were to teach the mind and thought processes of the youngsters, and leave the values and morality matters to parents perhaps the church or some related institution, presumably interested in spiritual or values issues.  The loss, or abdication, has resulted in a mechanistic approach designed to prepare persons for occupations, not relationships.   

It is assumed that facts are general property, and so the earlier they are claimed the better it will be for the future generation.  The period of childhood has been narrowed, and the material is dumped on the child without consideration for the full context of thought and value.  Meghan Cox Gurdon drew some attention to the matter of literature to the young students between 12 and 18 years of age in her article, Darkness Too Visible, and her speech, The Case for Good Taste in Children’s Books.  Gurdon holds credentials for her position as the reviewer of children’s books for the Wall Street Journal.  In the speech (3/12/2013), she stated: . . . . too many books for adolescents act like funhouse mirrors, reflecting hideously distorted portrayals of life.  She proceeds to prove her point offering some analysis as she proceeds.  She feels that adults have foisted themselves on the young, and I agree with what I know of her analysis.  Her illustrations are focused.  If her examples were used in a classroom, as they sometimes are, and my child attended that school the child would be removed from the school and I would seek a context in which my (and my wife’s) most treasured possession would be taught not only about the facts of nature and civil life, but the personal belief in values that honor human beings in a culture well elevated above the laws of the jungle.  It is interesting to me that Gurdon refers to the writings of Roger Scruton, the English philosopher, who characterizes the current generation as taking a flight from beauty.  She quotes him that we are in: . . . . a flight from beauty . . . . There is a desire to spoil beauty . . . . for beauty makes a claim on us; it is a call to renounce our narcissism and look with reverence on the world. . . . William Wordsworth wrote: What we have loved /others will love.  And we will teach them how.  (That has been my duty as a teacher/model.)

Happily for us, reality of life’s requirements to achieve victory appears gradually.  Cast it in a positive form that includes problem solving, knowledge and understanding, to wisdom.  It means a progressive approach we call growth that touches not only the physical body, but the human experience – even growth in spiritual life.  I am not what I was, but I am not yet what I shall be. At each juncture of that growth we take move along, and gain what is necessary to understand the personal direction in the contexts to which we aspire.  The good beginning, the positive direction helps me when the ugly, the negative, even the tragic context visits as it does to greater or lesser meaning.  Studies show that if the context of the child is affirmative and well modeled in the parents the likelihood of the better life, rather than the lesser, will be his or her lot in life.  Faith in good comes from the seeds of good, and evil from the seeds of evil.  We ought to have good growth (child orientation in parentage) before the weeds emerge to fight that invasive growth.  One tends to choke the other.  Good wins over evil when education joins maturation in moral context.