gat

fry an egg, sew a button, join things, build a house, sail a boat, ride a horse, gut a fish, pound a
nail, or bring forth life and nurture it? Do you believe having those things done for you is the
same? You fool, then. Why do you cooperate in the game of compulsion schooling when it makes
children useless to themselves as adults, hardly able to tie their own shoes?
I learned to enjoy my own company in Monongahela, to feel at ease with anyone, to put my trust
in personal qualities rather than statistical gradations. Anything else? Well, I learned to love there.
Just across the river bridge and over the river hill was open farm country, and anyone could walk
there in thirty minutes. Everyone was welcome, kids included. The farmers never complained.
Mother would walk Joanie and me there in the early morning as mist was rising from the river.
When she was seventy-two, I wrote to her trying to explain what I’m trying to explain now, how
her town had given me underpinnings to erect a life upon:
Dear Mom,
I think what finally straightened me out was memory of those early morning
walks you used to take with me up River Hill, with mist rising from the green
river and trees, the open pits of abandoned coalmines producing their own kind
of strange beauty in the soft silence of the new day. Coming out of the grit and
rust of Monongahela, crossing the clean architecture of the old bridge with its
dizzy view to the river below through the wide-set slats underfoot, that was a
worthy introduction to the hills on the far shore. Going up those hills with you
we startled many a rabbit to flight. I know you remember that, too. I was
amazed that wild things lived so close to town. Then at the top we could see
Monongahela in the valley the way birds must but when we turned away,
everything was barns and cornland. You gave me our town. It was the best
gift.
My best teachers in Monongahela were Frank Pizzica, the high-rolling car dealer; old Mr. Marcus,
the druggist wiser than a doctor; Binks McGregor, psychological haberdasher; and Bill Pulaski,
the fun-loving mayor. All would understand my belief that we need to be hiring different kinds of
people to teach us, people who’ve proven themselves in life by bearing its pain like free spirits.
Nobody should be allowed to teach until they get to be forty years old. No one should be allowed
anywhere near kids without having known grief, challenge, success, failure, and sadness.
We ought to be asking men and women who’ve raised families to teach, older men and women
who know the way things are and why. Millions of retired people would make fine teachers.
College degrees aren’t a good way to hire anybody to do anything. Getting to teach should be a
reward for proving over a long stretch of time that you understand and have command of your
mind and heart.
And you should have to live near the school where you teach. I had some eccentric teachers in
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