Putting Away Childish Things

It has taken me way, way too long. And as it turns out, that's on purpose, but not on my purpose.

So. I’m reading Weapons of Mass Instruction: A Schoolteacher's Journey Through the Dark World of Compulsory Schooling. I’m about to get into some of my contemporaneous thoughts; this is not a book review, it’s only what’s going through my head right now. First though I will make clear a distinction between “schooling” and “education;” these are not the same thing, and I will leave it at that for now.

Five Foot Bookshelf

I thought it was a four foot bookshelf, but looking online it seems to have grown to five, or maybe I was simply mistaken. Happens all the time. Regardless, the books if not the shelf are available on Amazon, of course.

Harvard Classics: Five-Foot Shelf of Books

Known as The Harvard Classics, this honored collection encompasses more than 2,000 years of the world's greatest poetry, drama, history, philosophy, scripture, and more. These are the books that have shaped our thoughts, our language...our very lives. The full 50-volume set brings together more than 1,850 works by over 300 masters of thought and letters, and includes Dr. Eliot's Reader's Guide and a General Index containing upwards of 18,000 entries.

Goodreads

For years I’ve meant to get to that, but have not. Still, I have engaged over the years in what Gatto calls “open-source learning.” In other words, I educated myself, and usually this surrounded my “hobbies,” which were really more like avocations.

I will just briefly go through those, pretty much in the order I addressed myself to each:

• Cars & Motorcycles: this started before I even left for the Navy in 1978, and continued into the first half of the 90’s.

• Bicycling: picked this up while in the Navy and stationed in San Diego, first half of the 90’s, and it continued until about 2006.

• Photography: picked this up immediately after the Navy in ‘95, in Tennessee, and it continued until 2006. I had darkrooms in two houses, the first in Fort Collins, CO, the second in Aken, Sachsen-Anhalt, Germany. It was that serious. I still have my darkroom equipment in the attic, all of the cameras, and of course, the books. Maybe again someday, but probably not.

• Health and Nutrition: this had been running through my life since the bicycling days, but really took off when I was diagnosed with Hashimoto’s disease in 2014.

• Homesteading and Farming: This started in ‘13 with the acquisition of our home in southwest Michigan, and really took off in 2019 with our purchase of the property next door, which includes the Farmhouse, now Airbnb.

• History: 2013 or thereabouts, after I found “Prof CJ” and the Dangerous History Podcast, the gateway drug. CJ was on about episode 50 when I found him, he has now publish episode 267, and a “10 Year Anniversary DHP Special.” If you want to re-educate yourself, or educate yourself for the first time (like I did), this is a good place to start, especially if you commute and can listen “to and fro” your job.

• Manhood and Masculinity (the non-toxic version): I picked up this subject in 2013, but it really got a kick in the ass when I read the book No More Mr Nice Guy, by Robert A Glover, which I first purchased in 2020. Not coincidentally, I discovered that I was a prototypical “nice guy,” which is not a good thing in this context. I’m still in “recovery” from the “nice guy” syndrome.

While the Manhood & Masculinity bookshelf is still being built, and includes also being a husband and father, it probably occupies just 2 feet or so at this point, for all of the others I can show you even today, at least a four foot bookshelf on each. That is open-source learning, that is self-directed education. And that is not something you get by being schooled. From Homesteading & Farming and on down the list, the bookshelves are still being populated with new titles, new to me that is.

Schooling

So, what’s the point of all of that, if any? Of all of those avocations, hobbies, interests, call them what you will, perhaps the most impactful are the last two; History and Manhood & Masculinity. What I will write about today is history, and it is the present day, and it will in all likelihood be the future. Unless we can stage a successful revolution inside the form laid down in the Constitution.

But as I wrote above, this is not a book report, it is just going to be a little sharing of what’s going on in my head as I read Weapons of Mass Instruction, and even more specifically what I read this morning.

It’s a Family Affair

Like the military perhaps, teaching seems to be a family affair. My Mom was a teacher, my sister just retired from teaching, aunts, uncles, nieces, a nephew probably somewhere, are or have been teachers. My Great-Great-Great Grandfather Uriah Baker, was a founding father of, and teacher in, Fitchville, OH, before the Civil War. Uriah’s son John Baker, the grandfather of my grandfather and namesake, John Baker, enlisted in the Union Army from Fitchville as a teen. It’s anecdotal I know, but for me teaching and the military go way back in the family lineage.

So. Speaking ill of schooling in general is not going to be easy. But as I was part of a military machine, without knowing why the machine was being put to use, for what purpose, or for whom, I suppose the same is probably true for the vast majority of teachers. ‘Nuf said on that, for now. Here goes.

Realization - It Hurts!

I’m going to share a couple of passages from my reading this morning, and some of the notes I wrote in the margin, and then came the realization, which perhaps was not a stark realization, because I’ve been working toward it, but the final piece required to complete the puzzle, maybe.

The project <to artificially extended childhood and childishness> was brought to its scientific pinnacle in the early decades of the 19th century in Prussia and exported all around the world in the last half of that century.

That’s why I call it the German disease — the artificial extension of childhood…Once sufficiently infected with the virus the disease is progressive. Its victims become inadequate to the challenges of their existence without help, and that relative helplessness makes them manageable.

Weapons of Mass Instruction, 2010, p 133

Aside this passage in the margin I wrote, “What I’ve noticed in young Amish…by 12 they are not children, they are young adults.”

I continued reading…

When as happens with some frequency, I’m asked by parents for a single suggestion for changing the relationship between them and their kids for the better, I don’t hesitate to recommend this:

Don’t think of them as kids. Childhood exists, but it’s over long before we allow it to be. I’d start to worry if my kid were noticeably childish past the age of seven and if by twelve your aren’t dealing with young men and women anxious to take their turn, disgusted with training wheels on anything, able to walkabout London, do hundred mile bike trips, and add enough value to the neighborhood that they have an independent income; if you don’t see this, you’re doing something seriously wrong.

Weapons of Mass Instruction, 2010, p 136-137

My marginal note here was, “See my margin notes on p 133.” Specifically, the age of “twelve” struck me.

There is a reason why puberty happens when it does, and there is a reason why it is such trouble for us as parents. First of all, most of us, nowadays, are still children ourselves; consequently, and with the able assistance of schooling, we have “successfully” extended the childhoods of our offspring well into what should have been adulthood.

It was at this point that I realized, again, that I had been a child, a boy, well into what chronologically should have been, manhood. And that hurts every time, every time that I am reminded of the fact that I wasted so many of my years behaving childishly.

When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things.

1 Corinthians 13:11 King James Version (KJV)

I have to share here, that some of the things my Mom let me do relatively early in life, would simply be unthinkable today, and probably would have been unthinkable for me as a father when I was her age. One of those things was a ~90 mile multi-day canoe trip on the Missouri River in my early teens, with one friend, Eric, and with of course no phone or any other form of communication. It was an awesome experience. And as I’ve gone about what I am now doing, she has remarked with words to this effect, “you’re doing what you should have been doing since you were about 13.” I took a lengthy detour, getting more schooling in preparation for the detour, and yet more schooling while on the detour, for whatever that was worth, which in hindsight wasn’t much.

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All the best, and may God bless you and yours,

John

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