Hey! What The Hell's Going On Out There!!?? - Jeffery Gregg Craw

Hey! What The Hell's Going On Out There!!?? (eBook)

Jeffery Gregg Craw (Autor)

eBook Download: EPUB

2023 | 1. Auflage
224 Seiten
Bookbaby (Verlag)
979-8-3509-1617-1 (ISBN)

After 77 years of breathing air, I just felt it would be cool to lay out a commentary, responding, as simply as I can, to the avalanche of life's complexities that most all of us are asked to embrace each day. Will my thoughts help you or inspire you? Heck, I can't really say for sure that they will, but as one person noted after reading some selected portions of this book, ' The writing itself is lively and engaging...and friendly...like having a serious, but comfortable conversation with an old friend around the kitchen table.'

My Freshman English Professor at Springfield College assigned our class a Research Paper on whatever subject we chose. I forget what I chose, but that's not the point. In High School, our school Librarian rudely turned me off to a "e;Library's"e; inherently wondrous opportunities for some extraordinary charismatic thoughts and excitement. I was a Football Player, so I was a dumb ..., well you know. For this Librarian, it was like he was the Police Inspector in Les Miserables spotting John Valjean at Bookrack #2! Swat Teams move into action slower than this guy, as at once he was beside me, - confronting me with a look that he seemed to have borrowed from Bette Davis in the movie Jezebel. "e;What are you doing here? What do you want?"e; he asked. I responded that I was just looking around, and he responded with emphatic and impudent disgust, "e;I don't think you belong here!"e; OK, and so I left, never to return. Well, anyway, back to my Research Paper. It was a conundrum for me, for as we now know, I didn't do libraries! So I wrote what I thought was a pretty decent paper, sans the Research. Doc Hesselbarth then wrote on the top of my paper, "e;Excellent! F"e;. He also had a variety of stamps he would use at times for effect: Stamps like "e;Absurdity"e;, "e;Garbage"e;, or simply "e;We need to talk, soon!"e; I was blessed during that year with a Variety Pack of those Stamps on my various papers, and I do still have those papers in my College File. Whatever, I went to see the Doc to ask him what was up with this Excellent F? Nice paper he said, "e;But you didn't give me what I asked for!"e; He had me there, but still, he reached over, crossed out the F, and entered in a D. "e;A gift from me to you"e;, he said. I was ecstatic!Anyway, this book is for you, Doc Hesselbarth, to honor your courageous attempt to enhance the mind and soul of this one time academic neophyte. And please know Doc, wherever you are, that after this effort, "e;Research"e; is my Middle Name! Hey, and I have even challenged my readers to do their own research, basically saying, "e;You don't believe me? Fine. Look it up yourself!"e;I can't really tell if you might like this collection of ideas and expositions, but I will tell you that I had a great time writing it, and that all material was well researched from the written words of more minds than I can count, as well as from more personal experiences than "e;Carter's Got Pills!"e; Now if you do read it, and say, "e;Hey! This guy's nuts!"e; Then please, write your own book! YES!PS: I eventually grew to really love libraries!

AN “EDUCATED” PERSONAL OBSERVATION

(Originally penned sometime in the 1990s, - offered with some slight editing)

This brief “scholarly” effort will attempt to illuminate (or maybe in some cases further obscure) my relationship with our public educational system. First off, I started school a year early, because I guess I fooled my Mom into thinking that I was somehow gifted. Anyway, The Public School System did not see things her way, so I was off to St. James School for Kindergarten and First Grade, an experience that was, as far as I can remember, somewhat less than stimulating. Then, for 2nd Grade, it was on to Public School, where began the epic, years long, futile effort of the system to pound me (a round cylinder) into the school’s preferred vision of an excellent student (a square hole). Not a good fit. I do remember the norm for me being more criticism than encouragement and/or instruction. So at some point I realized that this enterprise was but a game that I was not destined to win. So, although I went off to school everyday, inside I was pretty much shut down, accepting the status of being a below average student in this culture.

Now, my teachers were not bad people, and I did learn quite a bit in school (I guess when they weren’t looking!), and the overall basic paradigm of Public Education (though definitely in need of some strategic adjustments from time to time), was not really all that inadequate. Still, here are a couple of observations I would like to offer.

First off, one must realize that it is not normal for kids to sit at a desk for hours a day and act as though they like it. Thank God for recess! Young people’s energy and thirst for learning are, to put it mildly, “tsunami” like in nature, - overflowing! All children learn at a high rate, but it is what they are learning and how they are learning it that should be of interest to us.

As for myself, I learned that, at least in the classroom, I was more often than not, a failure. I remember in 4th grade we had an assignment to write a one-page paper on any subject we chose. It sounded to me like fun, so I dove into it that night and had fun doing it. My teacher viewed my effort, and then told me it was not very good and that my subject matter was pretty questionable (as I remember, it was about a kid named Jimmie who somehow got in trouble, but with the help of his friends, he got out of trouble). Whatever, it was 25 years before I could bring myself to have fun writing again. So, indeed, it was a bit depressing going off every morning to a place where I knew there was a real good chance I was going to fail, as opposed to excitedly going off to a place where I could have fun learning.

Secondly, in general I don’t remember my teachers demonstrating much passion for their subjects, or for me! In contrast, I always began any class that I led, with: “This is not Rocket Science, but we’re going to cover things that you will probably wrestle with for a lifetime! And years from now, please know that you can still call me or email me with any questions you may have”. Anyway, in the “passion” department I was really spoiled because of my Dad. He was passionate, dynamic, and full of the joy of life, whether he was in or out of the pulpit. William Sloane Coffin, Jr. (Google him) was a close runner up to my Dad. Wow! Passion was his middle name. In the presence of either of these guys, you couldn’t help but come alive.

Teaching without passion can easily morph into hollow boredom that tends to fossilize creativity and imagination. Now I realize that those who teach with passion may often get into big trouble (hey Chuck Robinson!), but when one has a passion for what one is teaching, the “inchworm” of teaching gives birth to the “butterfly” of communication. In short, if the teacher isn’t having any fun, neither will the student.

As I write along here, many, many thoughts are flying into my head like moths to a flame, and I realize that I could write a book if I kept going. So in the interest of brevity, just a couple of more “short shots”.

They used to say, when I was at Duke University, that getting an education here is like trying to get a drink of water out of a Fire Hose. I can dig it! But one must then ask the question, “Does education primarily consist of accumulating facts, or of experiencing life?” A bit of both, I suppose, but remember that, as many have purposed, “Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

And lastly, I offer this VERITAS of an education at Emma Willard School in Troy, New York, where my Mom, my sister, and my niece (as well as Jane Fonda) were educated, “We do exist to encourage and teach young women how to think, rather than what to think.” How cool is that?

***********************************

The Rev. William Sloane Coffin, Jr,

The Rev. Harold “Pappy” Craw

The Animal School - by George Reavis

Years ago, the animals in the forest decided that they wanted to start a school for all their children. Until then, it was the responsibility of parents to teach their children their life skills, but the animals in the forest wanted their children to learn from professional teachers. So they organized a school and hired staff.

The teachers met and decided to provide a standardized educational system to their animal students. So they adopted a curriculum of swimming, running, flying, and climbing. All the animals took all the subjects – because it was very important to them that the children be “well rounded”. To ensure that students were progressing satisfactorily, standardized achievement tests w ere a d ministered to all students.

Here’s what happened. The ducks were excellent in swimming. In fact, the ducks were better than their teacher. But some of the ducks made only passing grades in flying and all of them were very poor in running. Since they were slow runners, they had to stay after school for remedial running practice, - and they had to drop swimming in order to do so. Eventually, all the ducks’ webbed feet became very sore, and they grew very tired. Soon they were only average in swimmers. But average was acceptable in school, so nobody worried about that – except the ducks.

In running, the rabbits started at the top of the class, but they were poor swimmers. Also, the rabbits insisted on hopping around, and the teachers were concerned about their hyperactivity – so they made the rabbits walk everywhere instead of allowing them to run or hop. Now the rabbits had to come in early every day for special swimming class, and many of the younger rabbits developed severe fur problems, because they spent so much time in the pool.

The squirrels were excellent in climbing and running. They were the best! But they wanted to fly by first climbing the tree, then spreading their paws, and gliding to the ground. (That’s the way squirrels fly.) But in class, their teacher made them start on the ground, and the squirrels were not mastering the course material. So every day, the squirrels had therapy. A flying therapist made them do paw exercises to strengthen their muscles so they could fly the right way. The squirrels’ paws hurt so much from this, that some only got a C in climbing.

Now, in climbing class, the eagles beat all the others to the top of the tree, but they insisted on using their own way to get there. The eagles said that clearly it was the goal that mattered, so they flew to the top. The school psychologist said, “The have oppositional-defiant disorder (a actual diagnosis). A very strict behavior modification plan was developed for the eagles.

Now, there are schools who still try to make squirrel children learn to fly by flapping their paws, and who punish eagles for being defiant in their right to be themselves. But, thankfully, there are other schools where children can truly enjoy learning, while respecting the unique creation that they actually are.

And the moral of the story is:

When we try to make everybody the same, nobody is happy. People get hurt and their very best gifts can often go to waste.

As Leo Buscaglia comments: When we try to make everybody the same as everybody else, one soon learns that one’s ability to conform governs their success in the educational scene.

SOME EDUCATIONAL QUOTES

“No man who worships education

has got the best out of education….

Without a gentle contempt for education

no man’s education is complete.”

G.K. Chesterton

“A child educated only at school is an uneducated child.”

George Santayana

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.”

William Butler Yeats

“We are students of words:

We are shut up in schools, and colleges,

and recitation-rooms, for ten or fifteen years,

and come out at last with a bag of wind,

a memory of words, and do not know a thing.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson

“The words of the wise prod us to live well.

They’re like nails hammered home,

holding life together.

They are...

Erscheint lt. Verlag	21.7.2023
Sprache	englisch
Themenwelt	Sachbuch/Ratgeber ► Gesundheit / Leben / Psychologie ► Esoterik / Spiritualität
ISBN-13	979-8-3509-1617-1 / 9798350916171

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