gat

As far as I can figure, any success I had as a schoolteacher came from what my mother, my father,
my sister, my family, friends, and town taught, not from a single thing I remember about Cornell
and Columbia, my two colleges, not from any findings of institutes of child study or directives
from departments of education. If I’m correct, then this insight is more significant than it may
appear. The immense edifice of teacher instruction and schooling in general rests on the shaky
hypothesis that expert intervention in childhood produces better people than might otherwise
occur. I’ve come to doubt that.
A gigantic social investment rides on this hypothesis, one that might otherwise be spent on
reducing stress on family life which interferes with happiness and the growth of intelligence. Had
the small fortune spent on my own schooling been invested instead in my people and my place
directly, I have a hunch I would have turned out better. Whatever the truth of this complex
proposition, as long as you’ve spent your money and time to hear what I have to say, you have a
right to know something about the fountainhead of my school-teaching practice, my growing up
time on the green river Monongahela.
I feel grateful for the luck to have been born in a tiny city with the character of a village on the
river Monongahela in western Pennsylvania. People cared for each other there. Even the town
wastrels had a history. But we minded our own business in Mon City, too. Both are important.
Everyone seemed to understand that within broad limits there is no one best way to grow up. Rich
or poor doesn’t matter much if you know what’s important. Poverty can’t make you miserable;
only a bad character and a weak spirit can do that.
In Monongahela, people seemed to know that children have a remarkable power to survive
unfavorable environments as long as they have a part in a vital community. In the years I grew up,
in the place I grew up, tales of social workers breaking up families "in the best interests of the
child" weren’t common, although on several occasions I heard Uncle Bud threaten to punch out
this man’s lights or that one’s if the person didn’t start treating his wife better. Or his kids. Bud
was always punching someone in the interest of justice.
Over the years any number of students found a way to tell me that what they appreciated most
about my classes was that I didn’t waste their time. I think I learned how not to do that through a
bit of good luck—being born in Monongahela during the Depression when money was tight and
people were forced to continue older traditions of making their own meanings instead of buying
them. And they learned how many very different ways there were to grow strong. What the vast
industry of professional child-rearing has told you about the right way to grow up matters less
than you’ve been led to believe. Until you know that, you remain caught like a fly in the web of
the great therapeutic community of modern life. That will make you sick quicker than anything.
Singing And Fishing Were Free
I went Christmas caroling long before I knew how to read or even what Christmas was about. I
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