February 4, 2010
Tex’s Thought Provokers 014
Learning to Learn
I believe that learning begins from the time we are born and never stops there after. Even once we cross the long swamp into eternal life, we still go on learning. At least, that is how I see it.
I also believe that we go through stages, or learning spurts if you will. As well, there are some things that we learn easier than others. Some folks are numbers people; I am not one of these. There are words people, I’m onboard this train. Then there are the folks that are both numbers and words. There are the creative folks and some are followers and others leaders.
Some people learn much better with the hands on approach, some are more visual. For myself, it depends on what I am trying to fathom as to which style I like better. If we think on this just for a minute, we soon realize that this mumble jumble of ways to learn are a teacher’s nightmare. Therefore, I can understand why some, not all, but some teachers are just bit off center.
I am starting to realize that I am going into the down hill slide of life. The reason I say this, is because I am seeing signs of my circle being completed in my life. This is not to say that I am by any means over the hill, yet I have come to some very important realizations, ones that can attest to the narrowing gap in the arc of my circle.
Once, when I was very young, the world was new and full of adventure. The simplest things held my attention and I loved experiencing them for the first time. Sometimes I liked experiencing them over and over again. For example, cow pies; it did not take me long to learn that they were stinky, usually green, and in my Grand Father’s pasture, they were plentiful. Somehow or another, a part of at least one would inevitably find it’s way to some portion of my person whenever I ventured out into the pasture, which was often. On close inspection, I found that little gold coloured flies love to perch on them. These were special flies, for I never seen them anywhere else. After a certain amount of time had elapsed, the pies would turn dark grey, at least on the outside. Yet the inside always remained green, wet, and slippery. And yes, still very stinky.
Thus here is an example of what I believe Newton was talking about when he said; “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.” Although I think there was a flaw in his thinking. It should have read; “For every action there is a double opposite reaction.” At least where my Mother was concerned. I really don’t think that Newton was considering her in his thought process. For you see, whenever I would come home from the farm, either my sneakers, pants, shirt, coat, hair, and once my nose and face (this is another story), was plastered with remnants of one of my adventures in the pasture. Her reaction was by far more than equal to the action that caused it. It was opposite though. Opposite because it was nothing like I wanted.
Learning was fun then, the way it should always be. Long before the days of gas guzzling giant wheeled lime spreaders that tear across the fields at a horrendous speed, there was the simple way of spreading lime. I can remember Gramps and old buddy Unc and I, heading up to the railway siding near the bottom of Peel Hill in the old blue Chev truck, that we affectionately named the “Arkansas Chug a Bug”, after a cartoon show that used to be on Saturday mornings. There, on the siding was a box car, left by the train, filled with lime. Gramps and Unc would shovel lime onto the back of the old truck and I had a little shovel and would help too. Although, I think I was likely more of a hindrance than a help. After a time the truck was loaded and it was off back down to the farm to spread the lime in one of the many fields. There was a small spreading machine that Gramps and Unc would hook to the back of the old truck and once it was hooked, we would go to a field. Here Unc would put the “Arkansas Chug a Bug” in Jumbo (Low Gear) get the truck rolling and I would slide under the wheel. It was my job to steer the truck across the field while Gramps and Unc would shovel lime into the spreader from the truck. I would do my best to keep the truck straight as it rolled slowly along. This was not as easy as one might think. I had to set on the very edge of the seat to reach the foot feed. I pulled on the steering wheel to help hold me in place and I craned my neck and tilted my head to look out between the steering wheel and the dash. Every once in a while Gramps would holler “a little to the right Ran”, or “a little to the left”, and I would then get back on track. And every once in a while, I would hit a rough spot or a rock, and this would cause my foot to push down on the accelerator too hard and the old “Arkansas Chug a Bug” would belch and jump. This must have been an aggravation to old buddy Unc because he would holler “taker easy young feller”.
After the truck was empty, Gramps and Unc would climb in on either side of me, looking as though they were soldiers from the Confederate Army, covered from head to toe in a grey-blue dust from the lime. Unc would drive and he would shove me to the centre and say the same thing I have heard him say many times over the years. “Git over Ran…let a professional under the wheel.” And we would go off to the siding for another load.
Now then, one might say this was not teaching me anything, but I beg to differ. I was learning what hard work was all about. How to drive at a very young age. Having fun and getting things done was okay. Lime was good for the fields because they were getting too acidy, Lime counteracts acid. And the simple way of doing things was by far the best.
In those days, there were mixed farmers all up and down the Saint John River valley. Everyone grew a few acres of grain, taters, corn, buck wheat; they all had a few cows and horses, some chickens and pigs and the like. The Carleton Creamery Truck would make its run stopping at all the farms driveways, leaving empty cream cans and taking the full ones. All the near by farmers helped one and other and life was just a whole lot simpler.
There were no big gigantic farmers, where one person with the most money and the most pull had it all. There were many farmers each contributing a little from each of their farms.
Then things started to change, new and improved machines, bigger and better everything came along. This caused farmers to grow more taters, because they could harvest more. The little guys soon got squeezed out. This process is still ongoing and it is not just limited to the farming industry.
The forest industry had the same things take place as well as the fishing industry. And so it goes, machines made by intelligent men and women made it so a fewer number of people were needed to work in order to get things done. There are many other industries that have gone through and are going through the same type of thing. Do more with a lot less. This is quickly turning into do a lot less with less.
These machines and technology come with a huge price tag. This drives the cost of things through the roof.
Yes it could be argued that more people are better educated today than ever before. People have higher paying jobs. This is a good thing, or is it?
This do more with less people, with more educated people, has also caused a decline in common sense. There is a world full of people with all sorts of book learning. But there is a huge void where experience is concerned. This do more with less attitude has made a great many very rich. It is a very young concept in the real scheme of things. If we look around things are starting to come unglued. It can not go on and it will at some point fail.
This was all well and fine as long as there were still people with experience around. These people are starting to retire and unfortunately die. You can have all sorts of training, but with no experience in how to make things work when the book says they won’t, you are going to come to a stand still at some point.
Please do not misunderstand me. I whole heartedly believe in sound education. I further believe in technology. But there also must be a happy medium met where both are concerned. This will be hard to ever achieve because of the greed of man. The people with all the power and money will not allow this to happen. Yet, I contend that it will happen with or without them. For again I come back to the circle. Everything goes in a circle.
9All things continue the way they have been since the beginning. The same things will be done that have always been done. There is nothing new in this life. 10Someone might say, “Look, this is new,” but that thing has always been here. It was here before we were. 11People don’t remember what happened long ago. In the future, they will not remember what is happening now. And later, other people will not remember what the people before them did.
Ecclesiastes 1:9-11
Then came the drudgery of school. I longed for to be over even before it got started. Any place on the face of the earth would have been better than setting in that confined school room listening to some one drone on about some place I would never go, or some mathematical genius such as Pythagoras. I would have given anything to be with Gramps and Unc on the farm. To me that work was teaching me practical things that I could use in life. This statement was true, but what I could not see at the time, was I needed the school room too.
It is a funny thing, when I was young; my Dad was the smartest person I knew. Then for some reason about the time I turned fourteen he seemed to become goofy. It seemed that I knew a great deal more than him. By the time I reached eighteen, he had lost his mind completely. Then in my mid twenties he miraculously had started to recover, he was getting some of his intelligence back. By the time I was in my mid thirties, he was actually quite smart. However, no where near as smart I was by that time. Then came my mid to late forties, and I discovered he is once again the smartest man I know. See what I mean about full circle.
I guess perhaps a lot of folks realize this same thing. The thing that is even more odd is when we are at our very best physically; we are at our least mentally. Go figure!
Beginning in the fifties and carrying over into present. The world powers have been in a constant struggle to outdo each other. One built a bomb; the other would build two and so on.
Einstein said; “ I don’t know what world war three will be fought with, but world war four will be fought with sticks and stones.”
Then communism began to collapse, and the threat to civilization became the rouge country that might get it’s hands on a weapon of mass destruction. Then terrorist became and still are the threat to end all threats. Wars and rumours of more wars. Hmmmm, sounds familiar.
Another two edged sword that we are faced with today is the information highway. Through satellite and advanced technology, we have the internet, multiple television stations, multiple radio stations, cell phones, two way radios, all designed to quench our inexhaustible thirst for knowledge. We think we have to have the means to communicate in every circumstance. When I was a kid, we had a party line telephone and snail mail, three television stations, two of which were fuzzy, one or two AM radio stations and no one even heard of FM.
The point to all this is, I look at our kids today, mine included, and they are busy on the internet, with video games, on their cell phones, or in front of the TV. One would think that with all this information, they would be getting more intelligent. However, even with our so called better schools with over crowded class rooms and less time for one on one instruction from their teachers, ask them who our Prime Minister is, who our Premiere is, where is Moose Jaw, spell anything, add 5 plus 5 and divide it by 2 then subtract 5 what do you get without the use of a calculator, Who was Stalin, who was Hitler, what does the Legion stand for, who was Winston Churchill, what county do we live in, and you will see exactly what I mean.
This is fine for now, but these kids are going to become our leaders of the future, if there is one. They are the ones that will look after us. I know, every generation says the same things about the one that is coming next. But I fear that this generation is going to be the one that breaks the tradition. Its not so much that I fear them looking after us, its more who will look after them in their old age? Who will lead them? And what’s more, it is not their fault.
I know you are now saying…hopeless negativity.
I guess I am a dreamer. I think of a community such as the following. One room school houses where morals are taught. Important things like reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, history, science, and most of all the Bible. Small classes where being politically correct is not something on the mind of all comers. Where kids can grow up together as friends for life. Where drive by shootings are people taking pictures from cars as they drive by. Where drugs are something that we take to make us better when we get sick. Where the town in which we live in or close to is big enough to have seven grocery stores, two or three churches, two hardware stores, a shoe man, a post office, Dr.’s office, drug store, car dealer, a jewellery store, four or five restaurants, a clothing store, a couple of barbers, two or three hair dressers, a farm machinery sales depot, a plumbing supply store, an appliance store, a heavy equipment parts depot, a train station, several industries or factories for folks to work in, an electrical supply store, a small department store, a decent fire department, a small police force, water and sewer, a community centre, several garages, an auto supply store, a couple of pool rooms, a theatre, a Legion, a ball field, an arena, and a laundry matt. Where it is big enough to have all these many things and yet still know everyone and you look forward to seeing them again. A place where it was safe to walk the streets at any time. A place where kids play together out doors all day, with no fear of abduction or worse.
Hmmm, I just described Hartland when I was a kid.
Perhaps I dwell on the past too much.
Centralization is a dirty word for me. Somewhere we got the idea that bigger is better. To this I say; if the lawn mower is cutting grass and things are working, why mess with the carburetor?
Change for the better is something I am all for, but change for the sake of change is not usually a good thing.
Why do we think we can never go back and still maintain some of the good things we have learned? We have the power to make choices. We have the technology to do it if we so wished. Why can’t our towns go back to the way they were, only incorporating new technologies, that is, the technologies that are helping not hindering?
We are Canadians, and we live in one of the greatest, if not the greatest country in the world. Each of us deserves to have the same things as the other when it comes to health care and the like. Quite some time ago, the federal government slashed our transfer payments to the provinces. This then started a cut and slash job here in these smaller populated Maritimes. At least cut and slash at the bottom. The top grew. The answer is clear to me, either one of two things has to happen. We need to get our transfer payments back to acceptable levels or we need to combine New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador and make one province.
This sounds radical I know, but something has got to give. We need to also as a world of individuals make some changes. We need to get back to the basics. If we want a country and a free world for our grand kids to come into, we need to start now.
We have to still welcome those that want to come here and live. This is part of what we are all about. But when they come here, they will have to live according to our rules, not the rules they left behind. Many cultures can still be maintained and I believe this is wonderful, but we can neither afford nor accept non-indigenous ways forced upon us.
We need to look at the simple things and quit living like ten cent million heirs.
We need to get back to the foundation that this country was built on, Christianity.
We need to pay an honest days wage for an honest days work. A wage that equals the cost of living. We need a system that gives people in need a hand up instead of an endless hand out.
Crimes need to be addressed in a way that is befitting of the crime, judged upon the intent of the doer. And a penalty given that is befitting the crime.
We have to quit worrying about the rights and feelings of the criminal. What about the rights of the law bidding citizen?
We need to quit wasting tax payer’s money in government on insane things.
With the world going the way it is, we need to get away from this centralization thing. We need to put folks to work. We do not need to be faster and bigger; the cost to this is unreal. We need to produce quality products for less money, with the use of more people. We need to market more wisely. We don’t have to do it in such a hurry. We need to have people buy our products because they are made better, and made so they cost less. We can use new technology to help us do this, but we need to keep the people working. We need to capitalize on resources that we are not at the present time.
I know this almost sounds like I am running for office. I am not. Think about this folks, the current salary for an MLA with no portfolio is $85000.00 per year. This is not including his expenses. Imagine a back bencher making this kind of money, to do what? Do what he is told by the party, not the people he is suppose to represent. These things need to change.
We are now living in a time where there are the very rich and the poor. There is no longer any in between. There is no such thing as average. The average person belongs to the working poor now. Our prisons are full. We are taxed to death. People everywhere are feeling more hopeless every day. Look back in history, our country is a very young one compared to those over seas. Look at and read some history of the old countries and see what happened when the same situations existed as we are seeing now in this country.
But on the other hand, we are still living in a wondrous grand country. It is just that I would like my children’s children to get a chance to enjoy it the same as we have.
We have loaded the tree heavily at the top. The tree is bent over so badly the top of the tree is almost touching the ground. Meanwhile the government keeps scratching around the tree’s roots. Industry has done the same thing. The tree is at a crucial point, if something is not done, one of two things will happen, either the tree’s trunk will suddenly snap, or the roots will tear away from the ground. Either way the tree will come crashing down.
Here is an example of what I mean.
In 1979 the department of Natural Resources had five regions. In each region there were a couple of biologists. That is a total of ten. In our capital city there were three more for a total of thirteen. In the Gordonsville Ranger station in the early eighties, there were sixteen employees. Some were seasonal, but sixteen none the less.
Now in 2008 there are four regions within the province. Each region has at least one Biologist. Some have more than one; however, I will say at least one for a total of four. Our capital city houses some forty or more biologists. Our office now has been combined with the Perth office; Gordonsville and Perth are both closed. Plaster Rock is also in our area. So our areas got huge and when we came over from Gordonsville to Florenceville we had five people. One of these was a clerical position.
So us representing the roots of the tree, and the biologists representing the top of the tree, we can see what is going to happen.
They keep cutting away at the roots and for those that are left, they have restrictions as to what they can do and when.
This is not just happening at our office either; it is through out the province. I have been with the Department for thirty years, so my time is drawing close to an end. So really, it does not matter to me much what effect this has on me. What matters to me is what effect it has on our resources and those new people coming to take on the stewardship of those resources.
Ah yes, but I live in a home, where I am warm and have lots to eat. I have a car to drive to get to work and other places. I have a church to go to, and new roads to drive on. I have a wonderful family and things are just great. I sometimes even have enough money left over to go to a movie or out to eat. What right do I have to complain? I don’t when it comes to me, but what about my kids and grand kids?
As Charles Dickens said in his novel from 1859, “A Tale Of Two Cities” in the opening line … “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.”
The sad fact of the matter is, we even see this in our churches, do more with less. And a church’s health is sometimes judged by the number of members in the congregation. How tall the steeple is. How nice the furniture is. How beautiful the woodwork inside the sanctuary is. The wonderful comfort of the fancy padded pews. The calibre of people that attend.
When we should perhaps be concentrating more on the quality of message. We are busy comparing ourselves to others in the church when we should be concentrating on what the Lord wants us to do. We are busy looking down on others while we don’t consider ourselves and what we are doing that may not be all that pleasing to the Lord. To me it is not quantity that matters, it is quality.
So here I am, and the one thing I have learned is how little I know. It is really strange how it works. Once I loved to learn, which then turned into great distaste for any kind of learning. At that stage I guess I knew just about all there was to know. Then all of a sudden out of the blue, I began to like to learn again. At this stage I started to realize that I had lots left to learn. I was not as smart as I thought I was. This then, turned into a great love for learning. I am still at this stage, and I hope I always am. For now I am very aware that I know very little. Just as it was when I first started to learn; see, full circle.
I have been a very fortunate individual. I have got to witness many things in this life that not many ever have an opportunity to see. I have been to many places and met many people. Yes, I am very fortunate indeed. And though I have left my tracks on many trails in many out of the way places, the trail that leads to my home is the one that always makes my feet the happiest to be on. For as much as we sometimes think other places would be better, there is no place on earth like my Carleton County home.
I will leave you with these:
23 “Only God knows the way to wisdom. Only he knows where wisdom is. Job 28:23
28 Then he said to humans, “To fear and respect the Lord is wisdom. To turn away from evil is understanding.” Job 28:28
10 Wisdom begins with fear and respect for the Lord. Those who obey him are very wise. Praises will be sung to him forever.
Psalms 111:10
7Don’t trust in your own wisdom, but fear and respect the Lord and stay away from evil. Proverbs 3:7
11 Wisdom is better than pearls, and nothing you desire compares with her. Proverbs 8:11
2Proud and boastful people will be shamed, but wisdom stays with those who are modest and humble. Proverbs 11:2
5Trust the Lord completely, and don’t depend on your own knowledge. 6With every step you take, think about what he wants, and he will help you go the right way. 7Don’t trust in your own wisdom, but fear and respect the Lord and stay away from evil. 8If you do this, it will be like a refreshing drink and medicine for your body. Proverbs 3:5-8
12Listen to your teacher and learn all you can. Proverbs 23:12
19Don’t let those who are evil upset you, and don’t be jealous of them. 20They have no hope. Their light will burn out.
Proverbs 24:19-20
We all have learned so much and yet so very little. Following are ten things I have learned.
1. I have learned that my Father is one of the smartest people I know.
2. Hard work at a young age does no one any harm; in fact it is very beneficial. For in the future these people will know what those that are working hard are going through.
3. Taking time to absorb natural things around us just by watching is worth its weight in gold.
4. There is some worth in all people.
5. We can learn something from every person and we can learn something from every situation, because no two are ever alike.
6. Reading about how to do something is never like actually doing it.
7. Every day brings forth an opportunity to do good in some way.
8. A day when nothing is learned, is a day wasted.
9. If all we ever look for is the bad, then that is all we will ever see.
10. There is nothing that is good that God doesn’t have a hand in.
Following are ten things that I want to learn:
1. I want to learn to be nicer and less grumpy.
2. I want to love more than I do now.
3. I want to learn how to listen more and talk less.
4. I want to learn more about how to keep others safe in times of disaster.
5. I want to learn how to become a better leader to those that I am responsible for, especially those that work in harms way.
6. I want to learn how to grow closer to my Lord every day.
7. I want to learn how to write better than I do now.
8. I want to learn how to be a better example to my family and friends.
9. I want to learn as much as I can about the Word of the Lord and what it means.
10. I want to learn how to be more patient.
Until next time, love the Lord with all of your heart soul and mind.
In Christ
Tex
