LEARNING EVERY DAY

Book manuscript submitted by

David Wilson, EdDSpringdale, Arkansas

dwnotes@hotmail.com

870 323-1836

Dedicated to my parents,Tom and Carolyn Wilson,

who knew much more than most peopleabout the right way to shape a young life.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface

Introduction: It’s not supposed to be about me!

Chapter One: Lessons for LifeCivilized DiscourseDressing to be SuccessfulSolid AdviceLearning from our EldersA Positive OutlookInsights from a Professional Baseball ManagerLesson on ConductLesson on Life’s DifficultiesLesson on Preparation and Success

Chapter Two: EducationSchools in a Changing WorldTech-Savvy GenerationsLearning about Resistance to ChangeLearning from our CultureLearning by Positive RelationshipsRanking Rock BandsIs College Worth It?How are Schools doing Business?Looking at RealityEducational Insights from my ChildrenWinning the Day, Like John Wayne

Chapter Three: SportsBaseball and AmericaEducational Lessons from College FootballThe Super Bowl and Lessons for SuccessJackie Robinson’s JourneyFootball, Positive Coaching, and LifeThe Super Bowl and Lessons in PerseveranceRemembering Hank AaronSchools could Learn a Lesson from BaseballCoach Tom Landry

Chapter Four: Holidays and Special EventsPicturing the ResurrectionMemorial Day is for ReflectionHonoring the Flag and Dedicating OurselvesIndependence Day and Responsible Living

Lone Survivor and a Tribute to VeteransPilgrims, Character, and ThanksgivingThankful for MuchThanksgiving ReflectionsChristmas Traditions in our CultureChristmas, Stein, and DickensReading about ChristmasReconciliation at Christmas Time

Chapter Five: HistoryHistory Teaches Us to work through ChangeExamples from the Constitutional ConventionLearning from the Battle of New OrleansThe Greatest GenerationPearl HarborPearl Harbor: A Lesson for TodayOmar Bradley and World War IID-Day: Appreciating a Tremendous SacrificeD-Day: What it MeansD-Day: 70 Years Later70 Years Ago: Victory in Europe70 Years Ago: Hiroshima, Nagasaki70 Years Ago: Surrender, and a New Beginning50 Years Ago: An Inspiring Dream50 Years Ago: A Devastating Tragedy

Chapter Six: CultureUsing Facebook ResponsiblyLearning from the Super BowlLearning from Pink FloydLearning about the EaglesYoung People TodayTechnology TodayEconomic Factors TodayNewspapers and EducationA Dropout TodayInsights from The InternshipFive Books Bound to InspireBack to the Future

Chapter Seven: PersonalSimplifyTurning 50Priorities in SchoolsMy Grandparents’ GenerationMy Grandparents’ Influence

My High School CoachMy Dad

Preface

I’ll always be a teacher and a writer at heart. And any time that I teach, or any time that I write, it is done to stimulate more thought in others. I hope this book does that for you.

The following pages certainly have many things to think about— thoughts, insights, trends, history, discussions—all of which originated as newspaper columns. For more than ten years now, I have written a weekly column that has appeared in seven different newspapers, so when it came time to organize this book, there were many from which to choose. All of the selections but one, however, appeared in the Sunday editions of the Jefferson City News Tribune in Jefferson City, Missouri from 2012-2015. I was one of six school principals on the Jefferson City High School administrative team from 2009-2016 and for four of those years the News Tribune ran the piece each week, and it met with some mild accolades. The educational theme emerges often, but the more prominent backdrop is the larger perspective of life in general.

I am grateful to the newspaper and to the community for entertaining the views put forth each week. It felt good when someone sent an encouraging e-mail or complimented me in person. I am also very appreciative of the other administrators at JCHS and those in the Jefferson City Public School District central office. A few of them regularly reviewed the column before each submission, and offered constructive suggestions.

Before finalizing this book, each column was examined again, and when necessary we made a few more modifications. But for the most part, each piece is as it originally appeared in the newspaper.

The administrators and teachers that I worked closely with were a deep source of inspiration. We were engaged in ongoing dialogue about what would work best in schools (and in life) and those conversations were quite meaningful.

Furthermore, I learned a lot from the students, and from my own children. Just because a person is only 16 years old, it doesn’t mean that he or she doesn’t have a real jewel of an insight to pass on, and they often did. And at times, a discussion with a young person was the catalyst for another column. We really need to listen to our children much more than we do.

The columns that follow are grouped according to the following seven chapters or categories: Lessons for Life, Education, Sports, Holidays and Special Events, History, Culture, and Personal.

Admittedly, not every column fits nicely in to only one category. There are some instances in which a piece would fit just as well in the History chapter as it does in Holidays and Special Events. Some in the Culture chapter might also be appropriate alongside the columns in the Education chapter. So while there is some overlap, it shouldn’t take away from whatever value you get from reading. In each chapter, the columns appear in the order in which they were

published (with the original publication dates included for each). In two chapters, however, the columns are organized differently. In the one entitled Holidays and Special Events, the columns appear in order based upon those events (Easter Sunday, Memorial Day, Flag Day, Independence Day, Veteran’s Day, Thanksgiving, and Christmas). In the History chapter, it only makes sense that columns based upon historical events would be in chronological order according to when they occurred.

For years I have benefited from hearing some of the very best thinkers, writers, and presenters in the field of education, and there were times I wrote a column detailing the thoughts that one or more of those individuals put forth. I have refrained from including columns that focused exclusively on one person’s presentation because a book with my name on the cover should not be simply a vehicle for passing on someone else’s thoughts and ideas. But still, I offer the disclaimer that my own education and growth—like yours—is the result of being exposed to others. Insights that did not originate with me often appear in my work, which is probably true for anyone who writes. To be completely above board, however, I give proper credit when I use someone else’s ideas or quotations directly.

But whether I allude to someone else or not, the point here is that my thoughts and views are the result of a lifetime of contemplating ideas and assimilating them in to my own experience in a way that makes sense. In that respect, I’m just like you.

Finally, thank you to the people who read the column regularly, especially those who sometimes said, “Have you ever thought of putting this stuff in a book?”

Well, here it is.

Enjoy!

Dr. David WilsonApril 2017

INTRODUCTION: IT’S NOT SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT ME!

Rick Warren begins his best-selling book The Purpose Driven Life by saying, “It’s not about me.” And within that book he demonstrates again and again how we must have an appropriate perspective of our place in the universe, realizing of course, that the universe does not revolve around any one of us. Our only appropriate response is to have a spiritual understanding that our lives can be in proper harmony only to the extent that they are devoted to God. Warren provides excellent insights in that regard and I fully embrace the idea that “It’s not about me.”

We begin with that thought so everyone understands that while this is a book that I wrote, I hope that it speaks to your journey. In my own experience, I have come to understand a few basic truths in life, and if you look closely, you will see some of them in between the lines of this volume: (1) Everyone must grapple with his or her own standing before the Creator; (2) We should have a considerate and respectful view of others; (3) Respecting authority (whether it be

legitimate institutions, positions, offices, or individuals) is both civilized and practical; and (4) Being responsible is the key to success, the vital ingredient that makes our republic work, and the glue that holds society together.

In addition, I’ve learned that even though I know the cosmos is not about me, when writing a book like this that includes much of my experiences, my education, and my work—all from my perspective—that it can be hard to keep me out of it. Nevertheless, even though this undertaking has much from me and much about me, please know it is done with the intention of hoping to pass on something of value to you.

As we go, you’ll likely see many similarities in my story and yours, and the next few paragraphs are no exception. They will give you a quick overview of my upbringing, allowing us to have a running start right in to chapter one. If you know where I’m coming from, you may get more out of the coming pages.

I grew up in Arkansas and got a very good education in a typical small Arkansas town. We had, in my mind, a good, solid school district and a good community for young people. But in addition to the school, I can see that many other factors came together to contribute to my overall development growing up. Here are some…

1. My parents provided a stable life at home and did little things that are important, such as reading to my younger brother and me when we were very young. Like many parents of that time, they made sure we had a set of encyclopedias to enhance our school work, and made sure we had several other items to read. Somehow we thrived without the internet and we did so in a safe home environment. Today I use the internet frequently just like everyone else, but there is a nice-looking set of the World Book Encyclopedias on the shelves in my living room. It’s a nice connection to my past.

2. My grandparents demonstrated the benefits of working hard on an Arkansas farm, and I contend that if everyone had a familiarity with that paradigm, that we would all navigate life much better. They also provided a great deal of encouragement to all of their grandchildren in a number of ways, such as being present at all kinds of activities, from Little League to school events to church-related endeavors. And they taught, by their example, that family is important.

3. The school library was a fun place for me to explore, from the third grade on up. Like most elementary school children, we had a librarian who read to us and helped cultivate an interest in books. In the third or fourth grade, I remember going on a reading binge in which I devoured a novel or biography every single day of school. Granted, those books were written for ages 10-12, but I became a dedicated reader nonetheless. With that kind of experience early on, I would later be able to handle anything that came my way in the academic world. And although I am done with my formal education, I don’t suppose I’ll ever be done with reading.

4. Newspapers intrigued me at about the same time I got interested in the library. Our small town had a weekly newspaper with lots of information about local people and events, along with things going on in Arkansas culture and politics. In addition, my Dad usually read the Sunday Arkansas Gazette and I soon followed his example. I loved looking at the comics and the sports

pages (Arkansas Razorback football and St. Louis Cardinal baseball became very important to me from 1970 onward), and later I became interested in news throughout the paper. I know that today a person can get more information from the internet than I ever got in the newspaper, but I view the decline of newspapers in society as a sad occurrence. Kids today rarely, if ever, pour over the pages of a newspaper in the living room floor and they are really missing something without that experience.

5. My teachers made a real difference. Most people can name two or three teachers that had a great influence in their lives and I am no exception. Many teachers helped me over the years, but I remember a few in high school that not only made the learning interesting, but had a direct impact on my ACT exam. I scored several points higher as a result of their dedication.

6. As I was growing up, football became a big part of who I was. While I played many different sports in grade school and in junior high, being in a good high school football program was probably the best experience I ever had in my youth. It helped solidify the virtues of hard work, discipline, persistence, and teamwork. At the time I didn’t see it as developing my character; I simply loved the sport and wanted to play. But the benefits went far beyond the football field. Playing football taught me to take a disciplined approach to everything else I have done in life. When I became a father, I never tried to push my own children in to sports, but I always said that if any child enjoys playing sports just half as much as I enjoyed playing football, that he or she had better take part.

7. Good old-fashioned work also shaped me during my young and impressionable years. We used a garden hoe to cut all of the grass and weeds out of rows of cotton (simply called “chopping cotton” in the south) and in late summer we helped harvest watermelons by loading them on trucks in the field and taking them to a melon market where they were shipped all over the country. The entire working-with-the-watermelons endeavor was called “pitching melons.” In addition to that, we mowed lawns, worked in gardens, swept out garages, washed cars, and sacked groceries. Beginning at age 14, I got to do construction work in the family business, especially during the summer. There is something about being involved in productive work that builds dignity and character. And I learned early on that there is great satisfaction with getting paid for work and then getting to decide how to handle one’s earnings. Learning what it takes to earn money was, and still is, a valuable lesson with lifetime benefits.

8. Play time was beneficial as well. Even though there was always plenty of work to do, my brother and I—along with our friends—often had some autonomy to do what we wanted at home or around town. Those times developed a sense of adventure and discovery, and allowed us to pursue some of our own interests. You might be amazed at what my friends and I were able to learn as we pedaled our bikes all over town. There was certainly some occasional mischief to be explored, but for the most part we were playing—and learning about things—as we went.

9. Family trips provided good memories and enriched our learning. I remember our family going to places such as Lookout Mountain in Tennessee and Georgia; Galveston on the southern coast of Texas; and city life in St. Louis. Whether we went far away or went camping and boating in Arkansas on a weekend, the times were special. The experiences helped facilitate the accumulation of further learning down the road.

10. Finally, church was important. My brother and I went to Sunday school and Bible school when we were young and basically “grew up” in church where we lived. Such times are obviously nourishing for the soul and help establish a foundation for one’s faith. But they also deepened our sense of community and cultivated our learning in all of life.

All of those variables played a tremendous role in helping me learn, every day.

As a result, Learning Every Day became a good title for a newspaper column and also a good title for this book. In fact, Learning Every Day is, in part, the story of my own journey through life. But it is also about every last one of us, because as we live out our lives we are all learning.

Every day.

If, that is, we are paying attention.

CHAPTER ONE: LESSONS FOR LIFE

Civilized Discourse

Adapted from a column printed on October 19, 2016in the Washington County Enterprise Leader (Farmington, Arkansas)

During discussions of matters that may be controversial or emotionally charged, it is best if everyone stays calm and rational.

We have all seen how political discussions may veer off in to uncomfortable territory, but it applies to other topics as well.

Everyone gets along just fine during discussions that aren’t controversial, but with any conversation—controversial or not—it is best to approach everything with good cheer.

That’s true in almost any social setting and it’s true in written communication such as this. But sometimes there are difficult issues that need our attention, and in the process of seeking a solution, conflict arises all around. To see an example of this, just turn on the television news. Any day will do.

Having been in education for 27 years (12 as a teacher and 15 as a school principal) I am often drawn to write about education-related matters.

Sometimes news in education may be negative or may border upon the controversial, but I intentionally speak positively about the efforts of educators in the country because I’ve been right there with them, and I know their heart.

Many teachers courageously try to do new and innovative things in class in an effort to best prepare our children for a world that is rapidly changing.

Sometimes they are criticized because some efforts are a departure from traditional approaches.

In addition, I have noticed that whenever there is any negative news associated with a school that it gets out quickly. And it doesn’t even have to be true to gain momentum.

Charles H. Spurgeon, the great British preacher of the 1800s, said, “If you want truth to go round the world you must hire an express train to pull it, but if you want a lie to go round the world, it will fly; it is as light as a feather, and a breath will carry it. It is well said in the old proverb, ‘A lie will go round the world while truth is pulling its boots on.’”

Those insights apply to education as well. Quite frankly, schools usually have to make a deliberate effort to get the good news out, and because good news might travel very slowly, I am glad to lend a helping hand.

But whether I write about education or about any other issue, I want to be positive and inspiring as much as possible.

That doesn’t mean that I am never passionately critical on an issue; it’s just that I try to refrain from coming across that way, hoping that a positive approach is just as effective at making a point. I realize, for the most part, that when I write it is best to keep it between the ditches and provide insights worth further discussion.

When a person tackles the tough stuff, however, even if he means no harm and no offense to anyone, there is always someone, or several someones, who will take great issue with what is said.

That is a shame, really, because if anyone wants to interject clear thinking in to the public dialogue, he or she should be able to do so, but far too often one runs the risk of being lambasted by those who disagree.

The marketplace of ideas should be a safe place to have civilized discourse, but today, with so many people being hyper-sensitive and running on emotion, conflicts break out far too often. And that’s too bad, because when that happens we all lose the benefit of having productive discussions.

And as a society, we need to be able to verbally compare notes and insights so we can address issues with our collective wisdom.

There is a proverb in the Bible that says, “…in the multitude of counselors there is safety.”

Another one says, “Without counsel purposes are disappointed: but in the multitude of counsellors they are established.”

In other words, one might benefit from good advice from a variety of sources. In addition, all of society stands to learn and grow when there is respectful dialog and debate.

Now more than ever, we should regard each person as a fellow pilgrim on life’s journey. I’m afraid that today’s media and many of our leaders don’t see it that way, but instead hope that we fight amongst ourselves because it fuels their own agendas.

But we can do much better than that.

As we enjoy First Amendment freedoms, it is best to do so within the parameters of respect and responsibility.

At times the daily news makes it look as if an atmosphere of friendship and understanding is not even possible. On the other hand, if we look around at the good people we encounter each day, there is cause for optimism. Civilized discourse is right there within reach, perhaps as close as the person next to you.

Dressing to be Successful

February 10, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

In 1983 the rock band ZZ Top sang of how “Every girl’s crazy ‘bout a sharp-dressed man.”

But more importantly, the business world expects young applicants to be sharp-dressed. They must choose their clothing wisely to help make a good impression.

When job seekers fail to do this, they are selling themselves short.

A few days ago I was in a local business where two teenagers were filling out job applications.

Both of the young men showed up for the interview very casually dressed. Their attire might have been fine to hang out with friends on a weekend, but not to sit for any kind of interview.

I’m not criticizing these two young men. In fact, I would venture to guess that no one had ever talked to them about what it means to put their best foot forward and dress for success.

To their credit, I didn’t see any gaudy tattoos or painful-looking body piercings. Such items are becoming more and more common in society, and even in some places of business, but they still aren’t the most pleasant sight to behold on the person who brings you food in a restaurant.

Before I sound too old-fashioned here, let me say this is not stated to be critical with anyone.

In fact, these too young men should be commended for seeking to gain honest employment and learn more about what it means to have the responsibility of a job.

But I tend to agree with something that broadcaster Bill O’Reilly stated on his program years ago when he advised young people seeking a job.

He said, “This is a free country and you can dress as you want. A person can also get all kinds of piercings and tattoos. But you need to understand that the people in this country who are doing the hiring, they don’t like it.”

In short, our young people need to know how to present themselves so they will have the greatest opportunity for success. They need to know how to dress sharp and look neat.

Author George Bernard Shaw once advised, “Better to keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.”

The job of making sure young men and young ladies know how to make themselves presentable has always belonged to their parents.

When parents fail to teach this to their children (as in some homes) it falls upon the schools to do it.

And why should schools teach this? Quite simply, schools have an obligation to help equip students with everything they need to be successful, and that requires a lot more than just academics.

Good character and good communication skills are important. Using a firm handshake is important. Speaking with confidence is important. Sitting up straight and making eye contact is important. Body language is important.

And dressing sharp is important.

Over the years, schools have done a decent job of covering academic content, but we have come to understand that this is not nearly enough. Instead of covering content, schools also must make sure students are practicing and mastering lesson objectives and applying knowledge to address issues and solve problems.

In addition, students need to learn much about personal development to equip them for interaction in the real world.

More specifically, teachers may need, along with the regular lessons, to emphasize the importance of dressing for success in the real world of life and work.

If ZZ Top says looks are important, then who are we to argue?

Solid Advice

February 24, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

Recently I had a good visit with each of my children, and like so many parents, I took the opportunity to give some good advice. And the good part is, I think they listened.

I have two sons in college and a daughter in high school and they are at a crucial age where they need good guidance. As any parent, I naturally care about where life takes them in the coming years.

The advice is summed up below. It’s free. It works. And anyone is welcome to it.

1. First, decide what you are suited for. What kind of work or activity stirs your passion? Some young people (and some older people too) simply make career decisions based upon where the biggest income is. But it is important that a person try to find employment where he or she can use his areas of giftedness. Greater job satisfaction and career advancement usually follow.

2. Set up goals and have a plan to complete your education and training, and how you will transition in to your line of work. You should also consider where you would like to live. So many people just drift through life and see what turns up, but it is wise to map out where you want to go. You can be flexible to allow for changes and for unforeseen opportunities, but one shouldn’t leave the entire process to chance.

3. Take time to make friends, to network with others, and to recognize possible opportunities when they emerge. You never know when an acquaintance might tell you about something that is perfect for you.

4. Be prepared to make it on your own. Be self-sufficient. There’s nothing wrong with getting help from family and friends and there is nothing wrong with benefiting from a business associate or colleague who does you a favor, but you can’t sit around and wait for those things to happen. You need to be on the move and making your own opportunities. Additional help will still materialize as you go.

5. Put your best foot forward all the time—not just when you meet new people—but also when you work alongside people who have known you for some time. You need to look sharp, practice good communication, be pleasant, and be the kind of person others like to be around. This is not something you can turn on when it is job interview time. Be at your best every day.

6. When you are working, no matter if it is a minimum wage job to get through school, or it is the first big step in your career, make sure your employer knows he or she can count on you. Be on time. Be reliable. Be committed. Be loyal. Promotions and pay raises come to people like that.

7. Don’t get side-tracked. Almost anything in life can derail your efforts if you allow it to. The old saying, “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy,” is true. But it is also true that all play

and no work makes Jack destined to a life of poverty. Successful people remember what their priorities are and remain focused on their goals.

8. Also, remember that dating, romance, and marriage is all about timing. It should occur when you are ready, and not before. And it should also have its proper place within your life. Sometimes a young person will make the mistake of allowing a romance to change everything about his or her life, but it shouldn’t. A romantic relationship shouldn’t change who you are; nor should it knock your life’s plans off their course. There is give-and-take in any relationship, but if one person causes another person to completely alter who he or she is, it’s not healthy.

9. No matter where you are in the midst of life, remember to make decisions with your brain rather than your emotions. Go with facts and information and what you know to be true. Emotions change from day to day, and sometimes from one moment to the next. As a result, they aren’t always reliable for making important decisions.

10. Finally, bring the right attitude to life, to work, and to all of your dealings with others. You will feel better and others will value you more. Author Dale Carnegie credited Abraham Lincoln with saying, “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Martha Washington said, “I am still determined to be cheerful and happy, in whatever situation I may be; for I have…learned from experience that the greater part of our happiness or misery depends upon our dispositions, and not upon our circumstances. We carry the seeds of the one or the other about with us, in our minds, wheresoever we go.”

Learning from Our Elders

March 3, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

If we could teach our children to listen to good advice, or to stop and reflect on how a bit of wisdom might apply to their own circumstances, we would be helping them a great deal.

Most of us who have lived a few decades can appreciate what we have learned from life and from others but young people can’t always do that.

That’s too bad, because they would benefit tremendously if they paid attention to the words of their parents, grandparents, or anyone else who has lived before them. That’s not to say that adults have a monopoly on life’s wisdom, because they don’t. In fact, those of us who are older, if we will admit it, still have much to learn ourselves.

In my own experience, I remember how my dad reminded me to appreciate being young and to take advantage of that while I could. I was out on my own, working hard every day, and paying my own bills. I was frustrated that the money didn’t go farther than it did.

My dad simply said, “I would rather be 25 and broke instead of 55 and broken down.”

That simple statement put things in perspective. Just having the physical ability to work long days was a blessing in and of itself. If I hadn’t listened to Dad, I might have missed that. His words helped me to appreciate where I was in life.

One of my college journalism professors taught me another great lesson. He insisted that we do a good job and be thorough in every task before us. He always used to say, “Trust no one; assume nothing.”

Those words sounded cynical to me at first, until I learned that he was teaching us not to believe everything we hear, to take responsibility for our work, and to double-check everything to make sure it was right. “Trust no one; assume nothing.” Those words also reminded me that I have responsibilities and that I can’t expect someone else to come behind me and fix something that I should have taken care of myself.

Over the years I also learned that other people aren’t obligated to give me anything or to make my way easier. It is nice when they do, but no one is required to go out of their way for me. Working hard and making it on our own is sometimes the only option any of us has.

One quote from Mark Twain illustrates this quite well. He once said, “Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first!”

Our world faces many problems today, and many of those are well-documented with each news report. In addition, our schools, our communities, and our families face many challenges. Some issues are with us today that were nowhere to be seen just 20 years ago.

But the consensus of countless generations tells us that we don’t have any concerns anywhere that cannot be addressed by faith, hard work, personal responsibility, good conduct, and a healthy sense of perspective

We should view ourselves realistically in light of all those things.

If we listen to the wisdom of generations long gone, or if we simply listen to our elders who are still living today, they’ll tell us of these important truths.

Are we listening?

A Positive Outlook

December 15, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

In the December issue of a publication called Principal Leadership, one article offered some strategies that should be employed by school principals.

One item that got my attention was the idea that one should stay positive in every way. The author wrote, “Don’t ever be negative about your situation, your school, your district, or education in general.”

The admonition is very practical, not just for educators, but for anyone involved with any organization.

In my own place of work, I am very fortunate to be around a number of people who choose to look at the most positive things in every situation. There are always drawbacks that can dominate our attention if we let them. But it feels much better to assume the most uplifting approach.

Make no mistake about it; in every line of work there are problems to be dealt with, challenges to be overcome, and people who are difficult.

But to be positive and cheerful is to choose to not let circumstances or people define our own happiness and sense of joy.

There are a number of reasons why the positive approach is best.

One is that to be negative casts a poor reflection upon you. Quite simply, people privately assess what kind of person you are by what comes out of your mouth and the manner in which it is said. If you regularly encourage people or pass on a kind word it makes a much more positive image in the minds of others.

Another reason a positive approach is best is that to be negative is bad for your organization, your company, your church, or your home. A person who always complains or cultivates discord brings everyone else down.

I once knew of a person who was dismissed from his job because he wasn’t a good fit. When he pressed for more of an explanation, his boss simply replied, “I’ve noticed everyone is happier when you’re not around.”

Pastor and author Dr. John MacArthur, Jr. had some very strong words of warning about how a negative person can create problems. He said, “You cannot infuse into a group of people a negative person without that person having a very, very serious effect. … If you have a negative person in your organization, fire them. If you can’t fire them, pay them to stay home. If they won’t stay home rent them an office in another building. Don’t let them near your people….People need a model that is positive, a model that is content and satisfied.… Find somebody who is positive, and if you identify a negative person, stay away from them.”

In addition, to be negative can be political suicide within an organization and can destroy career opportunities. Think about it. When it comes time to hire someone for a new position or to promote within a company, do the bitter complainers get considered over the ones who are pleasant, cheerful team players?

Furthermore, to be negative drives away potential friends and contaminates relationships. If you always see the downside, if you always see a glass as being half-empty instead of half-full, if you choose to be miserable and overly-critical instead of upbeat and cheerful, people don’t want to be around you.

Another pastor and author, Dr. Charles Swindoll, wrote about how the positive approach is helpful in our dealings with others. He wrote, “If you laugh often, if you’re having fun in life, if you’re never very far from a smile, you’ll have no trouble infecting people and making friends. People who really enjoy life are always, always in demand.”

Swindoll also wrote “we have a choice every day regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day.”

What outlook are you choosing today?

Insights from a Professional Baseball Manager

March 29, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

The Matheny Manifesto is a very insightful book by St. Louis Cardinal manager Mike Matheny and co-author Jerry B. Jenkins.

If you are interested in good character, or baseball at any level, or young people, or personal growth, you will want to read it for yourself.

Matheny shared his experiences and what he believes, allowing readers to see deeply in to what he is about.

Here are some important items that I gleaned from the book:

1. Matheny believes strongly that we must help young people build good character, leadership, and maturity. He wrote, “…they can all become better men and women if we can instill in them values they can apply in the workplace, in their homes and families, and in their communities.” His message was not simply theoretical; he put it in to action when he began coaching a youth baseball team in 2008. The youngsters were given responsibilities that extended beyond the field of play. As a team they got involved in service projects with the community and during games, even those on the bench were given jobs to keep them engaged.

2. He dealt with faith and life, candidly telling of his own Christian experience. For individuals who grew up going to church, Matheny wrote, they have to at some point determine if they simply inherited some beliefs from their parents of if they have accepted beliefs for themselves. He also talked about how life isn’t fair and that sometimes in the midst of difficulties we find times to talk about faith. It is at those moments that he will talk with another person about his own relationship with God.

3. We learn from our failures. Most of us understand we can learn more from failures than from successes, and Matheny said we need to help our children learn how to work their way through adversity as well, letting them do it on their own if necessary. Sometimes, he said, “we need to step aside and let them fail, and then be quick to help redirect their efforts.” He later added, “the lessons learned by striving to improve and achieve will be skills they can use the rest of their lives.”

4. It is best to approach life with gratefulness and in an appreciative manner. After Matheny wrote of his own setbacks, he said he wouldn’t trade his own journey for anything. “I’m grateful for every obstacle,” he wrote, “because everything I’ve been through has shaped me in some way.”

5. It is important to have a group of friends you can count on for encouragement, support, growth, and guidance. He wrote that he keeps in touch with a few friends regularly and that they share ideas and resources on how they can help each other work their way through life. He also wrote that he is glad to pass on what he has learned, whether he is coaching professional players or whether he is counseling a personal friend.

He concluded his book by writing, “All I want to do is keep learning and growing and helping others do the same.”

That philosophy is a good one to have, and Matheny’s book is a good one to read. I’ll be thinking of both this summer, every time I see Matheny work with Cardinal players in the dugout.

Lesson on Conduct

May 10, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

Students today, just as students in any generation, need clear guidance on how to conduct themselves and on how they interact with others.

My own parents did a good job with my brother and with me, and on any given day as I work with others, I still feel their positive influence.

Today is Mother’s Day, and on this day I can celebrate how both my mother and my dad shaped my life for the better.

When I was in elementary school, I remember there were some occasions in which my temper got the best of me and my parents were always quick to intervene.

Please understand that I was a pretty good kid in school. I don’t want to leave the impression that I was in fights every day and was regularly in trouble. I wasn’t.

But I do recall a couple of times in which my anger got out of hand.

Once after striking out in a Little League baseball game I hurled the bat in to the fence behind the plate.

I was frustrated with myself to say the least, but the matter wasn’t okay with my parents and they made that clear.

I remember my mother in particular saying, “You can get mad at yourself if you want but you don’t ever do something like that.” Both she and Dad made sure I understood there weren’t going to be any more of those displays.

They never said anything about how it embarrassed them as parents, although I’m sure it did. They simply focused on correcting me. And I never forgot.

I also remember how my eighth grade English teacher, Mr. Ted Dove, talked to us about citizenship. At that time teachers gave a citizenship grade as well as an academic grade for each class.

Mr. Dove said, “Parents used to be more concerned about the citizenship grade than they were the academic grade, but that has changed.”

That doesn’t mean that parents today don’t care how their children behave, but there has been less of an emphasis placed on good character, both at school at home.

When I was in elementary school, every student received a grade on the report card in several areas of behavior. One was “practices self-control.” I got a low mark in that category once and my parents wanted to know why. And they didn’t ask the teacher; they asked me. And they weren’t asking me because they believed me more than the teacher. No, they asked me because in their mind, I had some explaining to do.

The expectation in our family was we act a certain way because that’s what people are supposed to do.

So why in the world would I behave in such a way that my self-control was called in to question?

It was not a comfortable conversation.

Dr. Hal Urban has written extensively about character education and how it can be implemented as a part of regular classroom instruction.

In his book Lessons from the Classroom, he wrote, “When I started school…it was made clear to us on the first day that we were there for the same two reasons everyone goes to school: to learn academic subjects and to become good citizens. We were even told that we would be graded in both areas.”

More than two millennia before that time, Aristotle said the purpose of education was to make the students “both smart and good.”

In the first century, Saint Paul instructed Christian families to bring up their children “in the nuture and admonition of the Lord.”

Many of us are good at admonishing young people (correcting or directing them) but we aren’t always as good at creating a nurturing environment in which they can grow.

You might debate whether there should be religious instruction in school or even in the home. But the idea that children should be admonished and guided in a nurturing environment shouldn’t be open to discussion.

The truth is that children need both.

On Mother’s Day I am extremely grateful that both my mother and my dad got it right.

They were not perfect parents, but then no one is. But our home was one in which my brother and I were given clear direction about what was important. And it was also one in which we were able to grow and flourish. And how we acted was just as important—perhaps more important—than our academic grades.

As public schools continue to emphasize character education, it would be most appropriate to borrow a page from the past about expectations and right behavior.

Lesson on Life’s Difficulties

May 31, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

A person can get a solid formal education in this country and also have access to countless resources to continue learning and growing for years to come.

But all of the education in the world often comes up short in dealing with certain questions in life.

We don’t know why bad things happen or why we suffer or why there are inequities and injustices or why evil sometimes seems to go on unabated.

Everyone has to grapple with this at one time or another.

I encountered a quotation years ago that made much sense in that regard. Tom Nelson, the pastor of Denton Bible Church in Denton, Texas said simply, “Don’t let what you can’t understand dilute and destroy what you can.”

It was a part of a sermon he delivered entitled “The Enigma of Life, Inequities and God” from the book of Ecclesiastes.

The message was originally delivered 20 years ago on June 4, 1995.

It was a very candid message in which Nelson explained that life—with all of its troubles—can lead to despair. He also said that, even for the person who leans on God, life can be one of confusion. There are simply times in which we cannot understand why a painful experience happened.

We might all agree that no matter how much we understand geometry, no matter how much we have studied classical literature, no matter how well we might master the intricacies of photosynthesis—none of that equips us to handle some of the difficulties that life may throw our way.

And because of that, people often turn to faith for answers to some of life’s most puzzling dilemmas.

Twenty years ago, in Nelson’s very relevant message, he described Ecclesiastes as taking an honest look at “how you navigate the universe with a deity.”

It was one of the most insightful messages I have encountered on the subject.

But Nelson isn’t a lone voice on how we wrestle with life’s difficulties and pain. Many others have shared insights down through the years.

The great Christian writer C.S. Lewis said pain has its place. He wrote in his book The Problem of Pain, “God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: it is his megaphone to rouse a deaf world.”

Author David Brooks also wrote about the difficulties of life in his current best-seller The Road to Character. He explained that most of us strive for happiness but growth comes during tough times.

And he wrote about how we try to make sense of suffering, especially when we experience it ourselves.

Most people, when dealing with suffering and pain, cope with it best when they view it as a part of a big picture or a larger purpose. Brooks wrote that many individuals, while facing personal anguish, feel it is important to respond well to it.

“It spurs some people,” he wrote, “to painfully and carefully examine the basement of their own soul.”

It also causes people to ask themselves what they are supposed to do in the face of suffering and what they are supposed to redeem out of the experience.

Rick Warren, pastor of Saddleback Church in Southern California, wrote in his best-seller The Purpose Driven Life, “God has a purpose behind every problem. He uses circumstances to develop our character.”

A few pages later he wrote, “Every problem is a character-building opportunity, and the more difficult it is the greater the potential for building spiritual muscle and moral fiber.”

We might contend that no real education is complete until one has at least begun to understand that trials and challenges are inevitable, and we have to cope with them one way or another.

Nelson was 45 years old when he delivered his message 20 years ago, and he concluded it by telling how, even though life can be very difficult, that we can have gladness and enjoy each day.

He recounted the many reasons he had to be thankful and then said, “If I live until 12 o’clock God will have been infinitely more gracious to me than I had right to enjoy.”

Our world is full of problems. Our own lives can often be a pathway of difficulty. But having thankfulness and taking an honest look at ourselves is the only appropriate response in the face of adversity.

We don’t really teach that in schools, and for the most part, we don’t teach it in our homes either. But perhaps we should.

Lesson on Preparation and Success

September 6, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

Years ago I was able to do an extensive study on the leadership capabilities of three well-known generals from World War II: General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Douglas MacArthur, and General George S. Patton.

Their examples might serve us as well as any other.

As graduates of West Point, all of them were serious students of history and of military tactics. They were always looking for more knowledge—not just to give them an edge—but to ensure that their armies were overwhelmingly successful.

All of them were willing to learn from other military commanders (both past and present), and all of them were willing to consider innovative approaches to accomplish their objectives. In addition, all of them had a tremendous proficiency for coordinating efforts and for managing issues of logistics and supplies.

Patton was one of the architects of tank warfare and the rapid movement of troops. He spoke candidly about how the trench warfare of World War I was obsolete and wanted his army always on the move. In 1944 and 1945 he chased the German armies all the way across France and in to Germany itself.

MacArthur understood the Japanese enemy as well as any other. He was familiar with their beliefs, their military commitment, and their culture. And he knew what it took to defeat them. In the end, as the general in charge of the military occupation of post-war Japan, he knew how to take charge as a victor but also how to help the Japanese people transition from a warlike society in to a free country with a strong economy.

Eisenhower was just as well-schooled in the art of military tactics and leadership as the others. But in addition to that, he had a winsome demeanor that brought disagreeing factions together. He also had a great understanding of how to supervise the entire Allied war effort in Europe in such a way that it minimized political difficulties both during and after the war.

Although most of us have never been in a literal war, the example of the generals may very well provide wisdom for any of our efforts.

If we approach our endeavors with a deep sense of dedication, a willingness to be innovative, and with an understanding of what the future holds, it will likely pay off for decades to come.

CHAPTER TWO: EDUCATION

Schools in a Changing World

September 18, 2011Jefferson City News Tribune

In central Missouri and nationwide, American schools are contemplating changes. And change they must, if they want to prepare students for the future.

Those sentiments have been expressed by a number of individuals, most notably from Bill Gates in 2005 when he asserted that American high schools are “obsolete.”

Gates explained that when high schools are working as they should, they still “cannot teach all our students what they need to know today.”

Gates is not the only voice that has called for change in America’s schools.

Robert T. Kiyosaki and Sharon L. Lechter, in their bestselling book Rich Dad, Poor Dad, leveled criticism about the effectiveness of schools back in 1997. They wrote that schools are “antiquated,” requiring students to “study subjects they will never use, preparing for a world that no longer exists.”

A 2011 report by the New Media Consortium said because of the widespread availability of technology and the internet, educators need to examine their own role in the educational process. The report said because information is readily accessible outside of the traditional school campus setting, educators must seek new ways to best serve students.

The International Center for Leadership in Education published a report in April entitled “Best Practices to Next Practices: A New Way of Doing Business for School Transformation.” That report called for innovation, new ways of thinking, and learning that isn’t merely within the walls of the school building. The report stated, “…for effective change to accommodate students in today’s world, educators need to do more than think outside the box or ‘outside the system’—they need to build an altogether new structure in which to spur new thinking.”

Dr. William Daggett of the International Center for Leadership in Education said schools are based on a 20th century model but must change for the 21st century.

Those comments are but a few samples from the growing mountain of evidence supporting the idea of major changes in American education.

In addition, students tell us school is boring and doesn’t have a direct connection to real life. Businesses say many graduates aren’t prepared for the working world. Universities frequently tell us high school graduates cannot successfully begin college level work. And media outlets often report American students are not keeping up with their counterparts in many industrialized countries. Clearly, changes are in order.

The entire picture, however, isn’t bleak. In schools throughout the country, educators have begun to look at research, collect data, and make decisions about practices that will get the best results.

Many schools are becoming more flexible in every area and there is a great opportunity for improvement.

And improve they must.

Making the changes to support what today’s students need will require communities all across the country to support a school model very different from the schools of the last 100 years. The biggest question is, will they?

Tech-Savvy Generations

September 25, 2011Jefferson City News Tribune

If you are an educator, or if you are interested in the future of education, or if you are just curious about understanding younger generations today, you might want to read the book Grown Up Digital by Don Tapscott.

Those of us in our 40s, 50s, or older can easily recall a time in which society functioned without computers or without anything resembling digital technology. Those who were born in 1980 or later, however, have literally grown up in the digital age. That is the main theme of Tapscott’s work. He has done his research, and it is worth a look.

The Net gen, as he calls those 30-and-under, is very proficient in the use of technology, and knows how to navigate through digital technology to get the information they need, something with which many adults may struggle.

Tapscott wrote that there are many positive aspects of students growing up with computers. They have tremendous potential for connecting, collaborating, and solving problems by using digital technology. They use laptops, smart phones, and iPads to get news, to be entertained, to communicate, and complete homework. They don’t just passively observe information with these devices; they interact with it. And they’re not just texting with their mobile devices either. Tapscott wrote, “…young people have a natural affinity for technology that seems uncanny. They instinctively turn first to the Net to communicate, understand, learn, find, and do many things.”

The first members of the Net gen have already taken their place in the workforce, and millions more will join them in the years ahead. Tapscott contends that as the workers, leaders, and business-owners of the future, the Net gen will transform the way society does things, and many institutions will adapt as a result.

He recommended that schools adapt to meet the needs of those who have grown up in a digital age. In what ways, however, must they change?

First, schools will need to do less of the traditional lecture-dominated approach to teaching (which Tapscott refers to as the “sage on the stage approach”) and embrace methods that require more student interaction. He explained that many students learn by collaborating with their teacher and with each other; that means new student-focused models of education are on the right track.

Second, students need school to be relevant, meaningful, engaging, and interesting. They need to see how it connects to the real world in which they live. The number of students dropping out of high schools in America has become an epidemic; a sad reality is many of those dropped out not because they couldn’t do the work, but because school didn’t seem to have anything they needed or anything interesting.

Third, student discovery should be emphasized and student choices about the direction of their learning must be implemented.

Fourth, students naturally gravitate towards technology for answers, and schools would be wise to capitalize on this by planning learning around digital opportunities. The use of online collaboration, smart phones, and digital creations will have to be a big part of instructional practice. In addition, students should have the opportunity to create online video, online presentations, and webpages to demonstrate their mastery of skills and content. Technology will

be embedded throughout the workplace of the future, so it only makes sense that students use it throughout their learning experience.

Tapscott wrote, “The old educational model might have been suitable for the Industrial Age, but it makes no sense for the new digital economy, or for the new generation of learners…. We should change the education system to make it relevant to them. Teachers should stop lecturing. They should instead be mentors to young people who are using this marvelous tool to explore their world. Education should be customized to the individual student. And let them collaborate. That’s how the world will be.”

Learning about Resistance to Change

October 9, 2011Jefferson City News Tribune

Making changes in a school (or anywhere else) is not always welcomed with open arms.

Most leaders want to make changes for the better. But as they do this, they also have to expect resistance and decide in advance how to work through the process.

Michael Fullan, an educational researcher from the University of Toronto who has written extensively on school leadership and school change, explained this dynamic quite well.

In short, he said people resist change in organizations because resisting is easier to do. To embrace a change, it often means people must do more work, more learning, and more planning. It also calls for more commitment.

Fullan wrote, “…it takes less skill to resist than to learn. Resistance comes naturally; learning complicated things in a group setting does not. It is easy for people to avoid or fail to persist in the deep …learning cycles that will be needed to sustain the group’s focus on complex new challenges.”

Resistance to change in a school district is to be expected. In fact, when changes are made, the question is not will there be resistance, but how much.

Furthermore, not everyone who is opposed to change is opposed to doing what is best. Opposition to something new is a natural human reaction. We are all more comfortable with what is familiar than we are with something new.

Harvard professors Ronald A. Heifetz and Marty Linsky explained it this way: “…when you lead people through difficult change, you challenge what people hold dear—their daily habits, tools, loyalties, and ways of thinking—with nothing more to offer perhaps than a possibility…. People push back when you disturb the personal and institutional equilibrium they know.”

All of us need to understand how to best respond to the idea of change in schools, because communities all over North America are discussing how to meet the needs of all students in the midst of a culture that is becoming more complex with each passing year.

Those implementing change must realize that it takes time for everyone to get used to new ideas. Those who are prone to resist must remember that discussions about new ways of doing things are healthy. The two-pronged approach of patience and open-minded reflection is effective. It is the approach used in the late 1700s when great leaders (some of them reluctant, questioning resisters) came together in spirited debate to produce the Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution.

And while most of us do not possess the genius of Jefferson, Franklin, Adams, Madison, or Hamilton, at the very least we can have honest and relevant discussion about what is best for the education of our children.

Learning from Our Culture

June 10, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

To help students like school, to help them find joy in pursuing their own curiosity, to help them appreciate learning, a teacher should find the student’s strongest point of interest and work outward from there.

It is perfectly natural if some high school students are not enamored with an algebraic equation, the history of the Ancient Greeks, the works of Edgar Allen Poe, or how photosynthesis works.

But students are often fascinated with interests such as sports, music, social networking, video games, automobiles, clothing styles, and reality television.

That sounds pretty shallow, and makes us wonder how the next generation will fare in real life.

Today’s young people, however, should not be dismissed as having no potential, and there are a couple of good reasons why.

First, those of us who grew up in the 60s, 70s, or 80s should remember that there was a time when older generations looked upon us with a great deal of skepticism, but for the most part, we seized the reins of responsibility when it was time to grow up.

Second, we can’t give up hope on today’s young people because we don’t appreciate how they focus on trivial matters or seem to want to overdose on entertainment.

They simply need adults in their lives to help them channel their abilities and interests towards crucial areas of learning.

Sometimes we need to select an area that a student finds intriguing, and then have him or her research it to see where it leads.

That is not to say that we should base our curriculum on American Idol or the biggest summer movies. We shouldn’t.

But there is nothing wrong with using student interests as a vehicle to fire up their curiosity and to transport them from something familiar to learning competencies that may not be familiar.

Here are a few examples.

A new Spider-Man movie is scheduled to be in theatres in July. It so happens that the movie is loaded with science and technology—plenty of material from which to make a classroom come alive with student interest.

In the news, Facebook recently started selling shares in the stock market on May 22. (What student doesn’t know about Facebook?) Facebook’s entry in to stock trading (whether successful or not) opens up the possibility of students learning about economics, the workings of the free market, creating wealth, and how money is made in cyberspace.

The 96th Indianapolis 500 was held on May 27. Is it possible that students could research the most recent technological developments in the racing cars?

Would they be interested in knowing how the actual track is constructed and how it is made safe for cars going more than 200 miles per hour? Would they want to learn about the pageantry surrounding the race and about the economic impact the event has on the city of Indianapolis?

All kinds of learning opportunities exist; students could literally take one event and (with the guidance of their teacher) pursue avenues that lead them to the mastery of learning objectives in science, history, English, and math.

When students say they don’t like school, they really aren’t against the idea of learning. More times than not, they are against the idea of being exposed—day after day after day—to information that seems to have no connection to their actual lives.

As educators and parents, we have to help establish that connection.

Learning by Positive Relationships

August 19, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

Orlo Shroyer, once the deputy commissioner of the Missouri Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (DESE), said, “We don’t teach subjects, we teach children.”

His comment represents a shift in thinking that is needed in education.

Many teachers, particularly those in the upper grade levels, have a special affection for a particular subject area and as a result they often focus on that subject more than the overarching idea of student learning.

And student learning is not simply an academic focus. It should also be done within the context of a good teacher-student relationship, and in conjunction with the teaching of good character and life skills.

Those issues are extremely crucial, and in some ways, more important than the mastering of content.

It is vitally important that a student feels good about going to class and that he or she feels like the teacher is welcoming.

Unfortunately, there are times when a student may feel unwelcome by a teacher, and this can happen for a number of reasons.

Sometimes a careless word or a harsh reprimand from the teacher may be the reason.

And as someone once said, “It is hard to teach someone you have insulted.”

It is far better when all teachers can encourage, inspire, and motivate, and that the student can feel very good about working with each one.

In the pages of history we can learn a lot about teaching from the example of the Ancient Greeks.

Socrates taught Plato, who taught Aristotle, who taught Alexander the Great. Each of those teachers had several other students that they influenced, but those were the more noteworthy names.

What is interesting is that each of those teachers spent a lot of time with those students, tutoring them, mentoring them, guiding them, and establishing a connection with them in a special way.

For another good example of this we can look at what Jesus of Nazareth did as a teacher. He is often considered the greatest teacher who ever lived, even by some outside of Christianity.

He taught many people, but spent most of his time setting up a special teaching relationship with 12 individuals.

The teaching connection utilized by the Ancient Greeks, by Jesus, and by others, was important in setting up a very positive relationship between teacher and student, and paved the way for establishing a foundation upon which great learning could take place.

When teachers today are urged to establish encouraging relationships with their students, they are not being asked to do something new. The idea of having a good educational relationship is one that goes back at least 2400 years.

It matters not, however, how long this idea has been in place. What matters are the results it gets, and those results are phenomenal.

Students who like working with their teacher and feel good about being at school have higher achievement levels than those who feel unappreciated or out of place.

In light of that, teachers would be foolish to focus only on content and neglect the powerful potential of positive relationships.

Ranking Rock Bands

January 6, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

A few years ago as my nephew and I were taking a short trip he asked, “Who are the five best rock bands of all time?”

I replied, “Do you mean the five bands that I like the most or the five that I think have had the most influence?”

He looked straight up at me and simply said, “Don’t make this complicated.”

I still laugh when I think about that.

All of us seem to have a natural interest in looking at certain lists about the best musicians, the greatest hitters in baseball, the best movies of the year, or the most popular places to visit. Teenagers are no exception.

In light of that, we should take advantage of that natural interest and on occasion, have students assemble lists as a learning activity.

What if a student decided to make a list of the five greatest quarterbacks of all time? And what if he had to research the findings and defend his choices?

What if a group of girls in class chose to assemble a list of the best places in the country for teenagers to shop?

I once taught at a school in which the newspaper journalism class annually did a feature in its first edition of the school year on what the students felt were the best movies of the previous

summer. The journalism staff asked students vote on the movies and comment on what they thought was the best one and why.

In essence, it was a feature on the list of students’ favorite movies, but it was one that the student body read with great interest.

Whenever educators find that a student or students have a natural interest in an area, they need to utilize that momentum in the classroom.

We know that most of a school’s curriculum doesn’t call for research in to sports, entertainment, or fashion, but if students assemble and defend lists that interests them, we could soon have them compiling similar lists that are directly related to the subject at hand.

Groups of students could use the internet and other sources to create lists and justify their choices. In fact, in the classroom students could debate their selections and provide evidence on why particular individuals, places, or events made their list.

We could have students assemble lists on the greatest novelists, the most influential U.S. presidents, or the greatest scientific discoveries.

If they examined the most important events of the 20th century, what would make their list? What would be left off? Would they include the introduction of Henry Ford’s Model T in 1908? The D-Day invasion of 1944? The dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan in 1945? Neil Armstrong stepping on to the moon in 1969?

If students listed the greatest technological innovations would they include the home computer? The light bulb? Refrigeration? Television? Would they go as far back as the printing press?

Whatever students would choose, if they had to explain their reasoning, it would be an activity in which lot of good learning could take place.

I must confess, however, that on that short trip with my nephew years ago, I didn’t do a lot of research before I answered his question about rock bands.

I merely replied, “AC/DC, Aerosmith, Boston, Def Leppard, and Van Halen.”

Let the debate begin.

Is College Worth It?

August 11, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

Former Secretary of Education William Bennett co-authored a book with David Wilezol called Is College Worth It?

It contains insights that every family and every school district should consider.

They contend that not everyone should attend college; some high school graduates may find a much better fit through another pathway such as vocational training, technical school, or the military.

It reminds me of the words often used by author, financial advisor, and radio host Dave Ramsey when he says, “College isn’t for everybody but knowledge is for everybody,” meaning you must continue learning after high school in some form or fashion. It might mean college. It might not.

Bennett and Wilezol wrote that college has become the expected norm for high school graduates in the United States. We assume that a college degree guarantees a job and a good income but there is no such guarantee.

They wrote, “…our culture pushes college more than any other life path.”

In addition, college tuition has become entirely too expensive for someone who isn’t sure what career he or she wants. If a young person plays around for a few semesters in college without knowing where he or she is headed, it becomes a very costly experiment.

Unfortunately, some students pile up a huge amount in student loans and never finish college. They may spend years (sometimes most of their adult life) repaying a loan for a degree they never got.

“We’re not saying, ‘Don’t go to college,’” Bennett and Wilezol wrote. “Maybe you should go. It all depends.”

On what does it all depend? The following two paragraphs consolidate the authors’ thoughts.

You should certainly consider college if you have at least one of these circumstances in place: (1) You have a definite career path in mind and college will likely improve your chances of success. (2) You have a sound financial plan for paying for college (including family finances, scholarships, and grants). Student loans should be the last resort, and should be used with great discretion. (3) You have a gift and a passion for working in engineering, technology, or any number of high-paying jobs that require extensive training in mathematics. (4) You get a free ride to an elite school such as Stanford, Notre Dame, Harvard, etc. (This doesn’t apply to most of us).

You should think of another pathway besides college if at least one of these describes you: (1) You have a passion for a trade or vocation that doesn’t require a four-year college degree. (Some of these pay very well). (2) You are interested in college but your profession of choice is not expected to be in high demand; you may have trouble landing a job in that field even with a college degree. (3) The only way you can complete college is by taking on massive debt. (4) Your future career will never adequately pay for the time and money you spent going to college; in

other words, you won’t get a good return for your investment in college tuition. (5) You are going to college simply because you don’t know what else to do.

Bennett and Wilezol completed their book by giving a charge to both K-12 school districts and colleges.

K-12 school districts must prepare students for success and should provide extensive guidance about their options.

Colleges and universities must provide a product that will truly serve each student who enrolls.

The authors wrote, “If traditional higher education wants to retain its prestige, its historical significance, and its students, it should reestablish a college education as an investment that serves the heart, the mind, and the checkbook.”

How are Schools Doing Business?

December 8, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

Are schools changing how they do business in the same way as the rest of the world?

Not exactly, especially in the area of technology.

Today’s students are not doing things the way most of us did when we grew up.

Except when they go to school. Many of them enter a school environment that is much like the one students experienced in the 1970s or 1980s.

A couple of years ago my nephew told me that I didn't need satellite or cable television in my home.

"Really?” I asked.

"Nope," he said.  "All you need is Hulu and Netflix.  You can watch about anything you want for free."

He did qualify his statement by saying that not really everything was free, but his suggestion is one that works well for him and for many in his generation.

At other times, I've talked to my children about items in the newspaper. I once jokingly asked, "Don't you guys ever read the paper?"

"Nope," my sons replied.  "We get all our news from the internet."

Hmmm.

Folks, the world is changing.  The consumers of the media in the future will go about it a whole new way than what we have before.

Entertainment is changing.  Information delivery is changing.  Communication is changing.  Business is changing.

On Oct. 20 the Associated Press reported on how customer service is evolving with both Wal-Mart and Amazon.com.

Wal-Mart, the king of actual retail stores, is venturing in to virtual business, or online shopping.  Amazon, the masters of online business, is now setting up more and more physical space for goods.

The AP report said the two giant companies are competing to see who will be the first to gain a nationwide customer base for same-day delivery of groceries ordered online.

The very next day, AP ran a story that originated in the Star Tribune in Minneapolis about how Target is also changing with the demands made through quick customer access to the internet.

Target is trying to capitalize on “showrooming,” the current trend of customers trying out products in the store and then looking for better deals online with their smartphones.

Target isn’t fighting this, but rather embracing it by offering free Wi-Fi in some of its stores. But even as they are making “showrooming” easier, they still hope to make the sell themselves.

Clearly, Americans shop differently than they did just five years ago, and as mentioned earlier, there is rapid change in almost every aspect of our lives.

The youngest generations today are literally growing up with access to all kinds of digital technology.

They have choices on how they make purchases, choices on how they will be entertained, and choices about how they will socially interact with others.

They do not always have that same choice when it comes to their learning.

If students go to school and are required to look up answers in a textbook and write them down on paper, do you think they notice a difference in that and how the rest of their lives work?

They do.

Schools should learn all they can from Wal-Mart, Target, Amazon.com, and all the world of business, entertainment and information. One lesson to be learned is how to keep customers.

Companies know that if they don’t change—if they don’t become more efficient and provide what customers want—that they will lose the customers.

Schools don’t look at it that way, but they should. Most students are not like customers in that they can’t always easily take their business elsewhere, but if schools don’t handle student learning the way the rest of the world handles its business, they will lose students nonetheless.

They may be physically present in the classroom but their minds will be doing business elsewhere.

Looking at Reality

February 16, 2014Jefferson City News Tribune

Challenging issues arise in all walks of life but we cannot simply pretend they don’t exist.

You may remember the homeless lady in the movie Home Alone 2, who spent most of her time feeding pigeons in New York, feeling alienated from others.

“People see me but try to ignore me,” she said. “They prefer that I wasn’t a part of their city.”

No city can afford to turn a blind eye to the problems that exist. Nor can any school be insensitive to students who may need more help and support than others.

In the 1946 Christmas classic It’s a Wonderful Life, George Bailey, played by Jimmy Stewart, advocated for average citizens.

Mr. Henry F. Potter, the villain in the movie, said George Bailey should foreclose on the families that could not make their house payments.

George replied, “I can’t do that. These families have children.”

“They’re not my children,” Mr. Potter replied.

“Well they’re somebody’s children Mr. Potter,” George said.

Whether students are model citizens at the top of the class or whether they struggle academically and behaviorally every day, they’re somebody’s children.

And reaching all children is one of the many challenges schools face.

To help with any challenge, sometimes it takes a straight-talking person with a realistic perspective. Here are a couple of examples.

In the movie Ben-Hur, Pontius Pilate told Judah Ben-Hur (played by Charleston Heston), “A grown man knows the world he lives in. For the moment, that world is Rome.”

In one scene in the movie Gone With the Wind, there was a fevered discussion about how the southerners were going to “whip them Yankees.” At that time Charleston, South Carolina native Rhett Butler (played by Clark Gable) added a candid assessment: “… I have spent the last few years in the North. I have seen many things that you all have not seen. The thousands of immigrants who’d be glad to fight for the Yankees for food and a few dollars, the factories, the foundries, the shipyards, the iron and coal mines—all the things we haven’t got. Why, all we have is cotton and slaves and arrogance. They’d lick us in a month.”

Those two quotations highlight the importance of knowing what you’re dealing with, understanding your surroundings, and knowing your limitations.

In American schools today we all share the responsibility to educate every student, regardless of the unique circumstances we face.

It takes a sober-minded approach, an objective outlook, and a dedicated effort.

It also means we should open our eyes to see clearly what the challenges are.

That can be tough at times, but our children are worth it.

Educational Insights from my Children

April 20, 2014Jefferson City News Tribune

As a part of the discussion about how high schools should change to meet the educational needs of all students, we cannot forget to consult the students themselves.

On March 30 I had a good discussion with each of my children on the subject and it was quite interesting.

I asked them how they feel high schools should change or what would make a better learning experience for high school students.

In their comments, as you will see, they said teachers should employ a variety of efforts so lessons can be much more compelling to students.

My son David is 26. Jared is 21 and in college. Rachel is almost 17 and a high school junior. Each of my children have regularly made more A’s than B’s. All are from the same high school—not JCHS—but one that is trying to be innovative as evidenced by its implementation of career academies about six years ago.

But their high school alma mater, like most in America, is far from perfect and still occasionally utilizes an antiquated classroom structure.

I wrote down what my children said verbatim. I told them I would probably write a column based upon their input, but you should know they spoke their mind without any prodding or coaching from me. All I had to do was ask and then listen. Here are some of their comments.

Jared: “Different people learn differently. You ought to have hands-on learning for some. Some people can’t focus all the time on a traditional lecture.”

Rachel: “I would tell teachers ‘Don’t sweat the small stuff.’ I know we have to have rules but sometimes teachers take it too far. Sometimes I want to say, ‘Why so serious?’” [She laughed].

Me: “Where did you get that ‘Why so serious?’ quote?”

Rachel: “The Joker said it in the movie The Dark Knight.”

Me: “That is good!”

David: “I feel like all through school I was only learning one or two things a week and I was too bored with it. If I could have worked at my own pace I could have been done with it and moved on to better things.”

Jared: “I honestly wasn’t terribly challenged in high school. A lot of the time the teacher didn’t seem interested. They would just throw up a PowerPoint slide and have us copy it down. That was boring and not interesting. I feel like activities to get students engaged more is effective—maybe make a game or something. I know some students don’t care and it can be hard for the teacher to motivate them to learn. I guess they need to just mix it up and keep it more interesting.”

David: “One thing in particular is that pop quizzes are not a bad thing. It would keep you interested and keep you studying the material constantly. It could be for a grade or maybe it wouldn’t be. One day you could come in and the quiz could be a short essay. Another time it could be about ten questions. You wouldn’t have to do it every time, but it would help students stay prepared. One of those pop quizzes could be where you randomly select a student to give a short speech, maybe 30 seconds or a minute long. You could maybe choose the student with a roll of the dice or something. That would keep it fresh.”

Jared: “I think having students do presentations over a topic is great…. A student has to take it upon himself to learn something. In high school the only time I got in front of class was in speech. It would have been better to do one or two presentations in every class. I feel like being

able to get up and talk in front of people is important. I think that’s going to be important in your job, whatever that is.”

David: “Sometimes I felt like class was a waste of time. There were several instances where I felt like I could ace the test if they would just give it to me. But they made me wait and do other things until it was time to test. I could have moved on.”

Rachel: “School is 20 percent learning and 80 percent being baby-sat.”

David: “If I was done with my work and would get something out to work on from another class they would make me put it up. So I would just sit there.”

Rachel: “They tell you to use your time wisely and then they won’t let you.”

Me: “Maybe in this column we should use that ‘Why so serious?’ quote from the Joker.”

Rachel: [Smiling] “I think we’re going to have to.”

Winning the Day, like John Wayne

April 12, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

Rio Lobo was a 1970 movie starring John Wayne. As often occurred in western movies at that time, there was a shootout scene towards the end.

John Wayne and his compatriots were in a cantina firing away at the villains several yards away. One of the good guys on John Wayne’s side was Old Man Phillips, played by Jack Elam, and during the firefight he was shooting through the doorway with his shotgun.

Because the bad guys were far away a shotgun wasn’t the most proficient weapon, causing John Wayne to yell at Elam, “A splatter gun is useless!”

Elam retorted, “You don’t mind if I shoot anyway do ya? It makes me feel better.”

And the gunfire continued all around.

How many times do we find ourselves doing things at work or at home or anywhere in life just because it feels best doing it that way?

Let’s be honest. There are times when we may be deaf to the idea that there may be a better way but we continue with a practice that really isn’t very productive.

Sometimes we prefer to do something a certain way because it is familiar, because it is comfortable, because it feels good at the time, or simply because that’s the way we’ve always done it.

It is human nature to be reluctant to change and it happens in every institution. It occurs in businesses, in organizations, in churches, in families, and in schools.

I am told that the widely-held practice of churches having their regular worship time at 11 a.m. on Sunday began so farmers could milk their cows before Sunday services began. We are long past the day where most church-goers have to milk cows, but the 11 a.m. time slot remains prevalent.

In education most of the school year goes from Labor Day to Memorial Day, mainly because that is the best calendar for schools in an agrarian society. Except that we are no longer an agrarian society.

We have bells and a schedule at school with the intention of mass-producing graduates in an industrial age, except that we are leaving the industrial age.

High school credit is given because of the more than century-old practice of Carnegie units which were put in place to standardize both what students were doing and the workload of the faculty. Today credit is still awarded by using the Carnegie unit, but it may be a measurement of student time in class more than a measurement of learning.

But we keep using the agrarian school calendar and bells and Carnegie units, I guess, because like Old Man Phillips in Rio Lobo, it makes us “feel better.”

Dr. Douglas Reeves, of the Leadership and Learning Center, wrote in a book called Ahead of the Curve that explains how schools must take a candid look at their practices, especially when research indicates that there are alternatives to the status quo that will produce much better results.

Schools, he wrote, must examine “long-held traditions that elevate personal preference over evidence,” and at the same time, they must realize “that effective practice and popular practice are very likely two different things.”

The most successful enterprises in our country get that way and stay that way because they are innovative.

Schools are much slower to change, but change they must.

If they don’t, they’ll be like Old Man Phillips in the movie, feeling good about what they do, making a lot of noise, and maybe even putting some bad guys on the run.

But in the overall effort, antiquated or inappropriate efforts will not do much to win the day.

CHAPTER THREE: SPORTS

Baseball and America

June 17, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

I have always appreciated how baseball is interwoven in our country’s history and culture.

To learn about baseball—its origins, its players, and the great cities that have served as baseball’s stage—is to learn about America.

Not long ago, traveling in southern Missouri, I drove through West Plains and came upon a busy street named Preacher Roe Boulevard.

The name immediately got my attention.

It just so happens that Preacher Roe was an all-star player and one of the best pitchers in baseball in the late 1940s and early 1950s for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

Roe grew up in the small town of Viola, Ark. and retired in West Plains, where he ran a grocery store after his baseball years.

Admittedly, that was all before my time, but Preacher Roe Blvd. caught my eye because I had just finished reading about him and all of his Dodger teammates in the 1972 book The Boys of Summer by former New York Herald Tribune reporter Roger Kahn. Kahn covered the Dodgers as a sports writer in 1952 and 1953.

The book tells about all of the Dodger greats from those days—Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges, Billy Cox—and a host of others.

The Boys of Summer is fascinating, not only because it chronicled a very talented team, but because it provides a clear view of New York and America during a different era.

And the Dodgers of the early 50s, although they fell twice to the New York Yankees in the World Series, were very, very good.

“The Yankees of 1927,” Kahn wrote, “with Ruth, Gehrig and the rest, a benchmark of bating power, scored 975 runs. The 1953 Dodgers scored 955. The Dodgers were measurably superior in the field. They completed 38 more double plays and made 77 fewer errors. The Dodgers of 1953—not the pitching staff but the eight men in the field—can be put forth as the most gifted baseball team that has yet played in the tide of times.”

Kahn, however, wrote not just about baseball players but about the lives of men and the society in which they lived.

“During the early 1950s,” he wrote, “the Jackie Robinson Brooklyn Dodgers were outspoken, opinionated, bigoted, tolerant, black, white, open, passionate; in short, a fascinating mix of vigorous men.”

Paul Horgan of the Book of the Month Club described The Boys of Summer as “a memory of men, places, and concerns which are distinctly American.”

Other books offer similar perspectives of how baseball has been played amid a steadily evolving American culture.

October 1964, by David Halberstam, tells of how the New York Yankees, at the end of their mid-century dynasty, met the up-and-coming St. Louis Cardinals in the World Series. Halberstam took a deep look in to the lives of players like Mantle, Marris, Gibson, Brock, and Flood, and simultaneously examined the social problems that they and all of America faced at that time.

In the same vein Tim Wendel’s book Summer of ’68: The Season that Changed Baseball, and America, Forever chronicled remarkable seasons by the Cardinals and the Detroit Tigers and how they met in the World Series.

One reviewer wrote that the 1968 baseball season was one in which “the game was played to perfection even as the country was being pulled apart at the seams.”

The year included social upheaval, the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Robert Kennedy, and continued controversy over America’s involvement in Vietnam.

It was against that backdrop that baseball turned in one of its finest performances. In spite of the tumultuous times, the 1968 baseball season was simply a masterpiece for the ages.

Such feats remind us that no matter what is going on in the country, we can often have a refreshing respite by turning our attention to the diamond, and in doing so we can remember when life was simpler and that it can be appreciated at a more leisurely pace.

Educational Lessons from College Football

September 9, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

Saturday, Sept. 1 was the first full day of college football, and believe it or not, the games that day contained countless relevant learning opportunities for students in schools.

And we’re not talking about sports.

The day began with an 8 a.m. television broadcast of Notre Dame against Navy from Dublin, Ireland. Seventeen hours later, about 4,600 miles and eight time zones away, one of the final games of the day was finished when Oregon defeated Arkansas State.

Information surrounding those two athletic contests, as well as the games in between, can help students gain an understanding about essentials crucial to their employment success.

For example, might students be interested in learning why Notre Dame and Navy traveled all the way across the Atlantic to play their opening game in Dublin?

Do they have an understanding of how this was both a public relations move and an economic opportunity for the two schools as well as for all of college football?

Would students be interested in knowing how many logistical and travel arrangements were necessary and how many people were employed making sure all the equipment, supplies, players, and team personnel were transported to Dublin for this event?

When the highly ranked Oregon Ducks hosted Arkansas State, it was one of several mismatches on the day. Sometimes those contests are simply called tune-up games.

Why would a smaller school or a weaker opponent submit themselves to a sound thrashing in their first game?

One of the broadcasters in the Oregon-Arkansas State game provided the short answer when he said, “This is not the kind of game that Arkansas State wants to begin their season with, but they came all the way out here to pick up a check for the athletic department.”

There is value in students learning about the business side of college athletics, or for that matter, the money factor in any business.

And while we are on the subject of the Oregon Ducks and generating income, it is worth mentioning the football team’s arrangement with Nike.

If you watch much college football, you may have noticed that Oregon hits the field with uniforms varying from one game to the next. They have some of the loudest color schemes imaginable, including green, black, yellow, gray, and some occasional chrome on the helmet.

We’re not talking about football here, but about business connections and experimentation in textile technology.

Oregon, along with other teams, has sported jerseys with stronger fabric and better ventilation to keep the body cool. They also have additional fabric patterns on the shoulders—not just for looks—but to provide additional strength and thickness where it is most likely needed in a high-contact sport.

But aside from the details, you can be sure that the partnership between the University of Oregon and Nike is one that is good business for both parties.

When economic factors such as these are discovered by students in school, doesn’t it have a tendency to make the lesson more interesting and more relevant?

It certainly does.

Futhermore, shouldn’t students consider other similar questions?

For instance, why did Alabama play Michigan at Cowboys Stadium in Arlington, Texas rather than at one university or the other? Again, it was a business transaction that was likely a lucrative venture for everyone involved.

Why is there a new rule in college football that a player must temporarily leave the game when he loses his helmet during a play? Is this a question for students to learn about concussions, injury, health, and safety?

Tulane University’s game with Rutgers in New Orleans was almost postponed. Why? Because much of the community was still recovering from Tropical Storm Isaac.

Why was there so much attention on the Penn State home opener with Ohio? Again, it had nothing to do with football, but more to do with how the Penn State community was trying to regain its footing after the most tumultuous off-season ever.

Why are some games becoming available online through such new networks as ESPN3? Is that another business opportunity? If students learned about this, they would be learning more about the dynamics of media, how technologies are merging, and communications of the future.

As we look at such learning possibilities, we see how lessons could be developed (or at least supplemented) around history, geography, business, travel, media, health, economics, textiles, weather, and current events.

We could look at any Saturday as simply a big slate of football games. Or, we could view the events as being much bigger than sports with ample real-world learning opportunities for all. The latter perspective has the greatest potential to enrich student learning.

The Super Bowl and Lessons for Success

February 3, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

Bill Walsh coached the San Francisco 49ers to three Super Bowl championships in the 1980s and laid the foundation for them to win two more after he left his coaching duties.

In his book The Score Takes Care of Itself he wrote about the importance of building an organizational culture of teamwork, high standards, commitment, and of striving to get better.

He wrote, “The leader’s job is to facilitate a battlefield-like sense of camaraderie among his or her personnel, an environment for people to find a way to bond together, to care about one another and the work they do, to feel the connection and extension so necessary for great results. Ultimately, it’s the strongest bond of all, even stronger than money.”

He also wrote, “An organization filled with individuals who are ‘independent contractors’ unattached to one another is a team with little interior cohesion and strength.”

Walsh was writing about what it takes to have a successful football team, but he was quick to point out that certain principles are important for the success of any team, whether it is an organization, small business, or huge corporation. Those principles apply to building a healthy school culture as well.

Now, six years after Walsh’s death, the San Francisco 49ers have returned to the pinnacle of the National Football League, as they face the Baltimore Ravens at 5 p.m. today. If they win, they will have a sixth Super Bowl trophy for their franchise.

The sports pages have thoroughly documented how Super Bowl XLVII features two brothers—John Harbaugh of Baltimore and Jim Harbaugh of San Francisco—facing each other as head coaches in the big game.

But each year there is a more prevalent theme that can be identified in the days leading up to the Super Bowl, and that is the theme of how players and coaches tell how they got there.

They always make comments such as, “We’re a team. We play together. We care about each other. We’re close. We’ve been through a lot together. There’s a lot of love on this team. We don’t care who gets the credit.”

No team ever gets to the Super Bowl making comments such as, “We don’t get along. We have too many prima donnas on this team. We fight among ourselves. We have too many selfish individuals on the team. We have some major differences about how we should approach a game. We have too much individualism and too much self-centeredness.”

No, teams don’t get within a game of an NFL championship saying those things, because teams who have those issues never get close to a Super Bowl.

Talent is important. There is no doubt about that. But talent coupled with a healthy organizational climate is the key to success in football. Or in business. Or in a school.

Author Daniel Lapin wrote that organizations and businesses, to be successful, must induct individuals into the desired organizational culture. He wrote, “without this…employees will never participate fully as members of a team…”

Schools with a climate of high expectations and good camaraderie tend to have greater success. Schools with the most positive learning environment have students who feel good about being there. Schools with a culture of teamwork tend to have students who achieve at high levels.

In short, schools can learn a great deal from winning organizations. Those who are the most innovative, with a willingness to collaborate, with the best attitude, and with the best work ethic, tend to rise to the top.

In football, Super Bowl champions are awarded the Vince Lombardi trophy. In education, schools of excellence produce successful students who change the world.

Tonight the football world will crown another champion and the winning team deserves all the accolades that come their way.

But there are greater champions among us. They are the teachers in our schools who practice teamwork, professionalism, collegiality, and commitment. And they try to instill the same values in our children.

Our teacher-champions don’t get nearly as much attention as the Ravens or the 49ers will this evening. There will be nothing for them that resembles a Vince Lombardi trophy or nothing like a Super Bowl ring.

But their job is far more important and their influence is far greater. They inspire young minds today and in the process, they build a better future for all of us.

Jackie Robinson’s Journey

May 5, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

Many Americans have enjoyed the movie 42, based upon the true story of Jackie Robinson getting his opportunity with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947, as the first African American to play in major league baseball.

It is a worthwhile movie even for those who may not be fans of baseball because it demonstrates not only how America began to work through a troubled time, but also how each of us must examine his or her own soul concerning what we believe and how we act.

It serves as a tool for introspection and teaches the valuable lesson of perseverance against cruel circumstances.

The setting was 1946 and 1947. America in those years, and in the early 1950s, was one of great optimism and great opportunity. The country felt good after fighting forces came home victorious after World War II. From some vantage points America was still innocent and pristine, but at the same time it harbored ugly injustices.

All of this was evident in 42.

Jackie Robinson, played by Chadwick Boseman, got his opportunity to play when the Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey, played by Harrison Ford, gave him a contract and the admonition to control his temper and not fight back when taunts and injustices came his way.

Rickey, in an interview years later, was asked about his role in breaking major league baseball’s so-called “color barrier” by giving African Americans the chance to play.

Rickey said he shouldn’t be given any credit for that.

He replied, “You ought to understand and the world ought to understand there isn’t any human being in America that’s entitled to any credit whatever for giving another citizen of our country…a chance to make a living at the thing that he can do the best. No credit should come to me or anybody else about that…. Jackie Robinson deserves credit. The man that carried the load…was Jackie himself.”

Rickey went on to explain that it wasn’t in Jackie Robinson’s nature to silently take the mistreatment that came to him as the only black player in what had always been a white man’s game. He said that Robinson seemed to understand that he had to endure it not just for himself, but for all black Americans.

Roger Kahn, a sports writer who covered the Brooklyn Dodgers for the New York Herald Tribune, wrote about Robinson in his book The Boys of Summer: “Of all the Dodgers, none seemed as able as Jackie Robinson to trample down the thorns of life. Indeed, the thorn bush became his natural environment.”

The movie showed these struggles quite well. It is not to be watched merely for entertainment or to learn about baseball, but to understand how America searched its own heart and how that search played out on the baseball diamond.

The movie is also a story about character.

Years later, Rickey said about Robinson, “He has great character, in that he was able to impose upon himself the restrictions necessary to carry that load for his race. He sensed that. He realized that. And he did it. And nobody knows what he had to take. He’s a wonderful person, that fellow.”

In 1990 columnist George F. Will wrote in his book Men at Work, The Craft of Baseball, that all of baseball has a way of giving good character a chance to rise to the surface.

“The connection between character and achievement,” he wrote, “is one of the fundamental fascinations of sport. Some say that sport builds character. Others say that sport reveals character. But baseball at its best puts good character on display in a context of cheerfulness.”

Robinson died in 1972 at the young age of 53 in Samford, Conn. Rickey died in 1965 in Columbia, Mo.

Both men are members of the National Baseball Hall of Fame. For both, their influence lives on.

Football, Positive Coaching, and Life

September 1, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

Another football season is upon us and many fans are turning their attention to the college and professional ranks.

But there are many young men who play junior high and high school football who will never reach the college or professional level; yet their lives and their contributions are just as important.

That means coaching them is an extremely important job. Young men throughout central Missouri and around the country will learn valuable lessons this fall as they participate in high school and junior high football.

It is crucial that they have a good football experience so they can develop character, discipline, hard work, team work, perseverance, confidence, and a sense of accomplishment.

That’s true in football and in all of high school activities and athletics.

We all know that in major college games and in NFL games the monetary stakes are astronomical. But no one can place a monetary value on the importance of one young man’s life.

So the football experience for students in grades 7-12, with its capacity for shaping young lives, is extremely important in the entire scheme of things.

Dr. Rick McGuire, Director of Sport Psychology for Intercollegiate Athletics at the University of Missouri, spoke to Jefferson City Public School administrators on June 13 about how everyone should engage in positive coaching of young people.

He said that good coaching is just helping people be better at what they do and that it should be done in a supportive, caring, and respectful manner.

He made it clear that any coach who screams, curses, embarrasses, and berates a player is going about it the wrong way.

“Coaching,” he said, “is about guiding, leading, modeling, serving, and inspiring.”

Bobby Bowden, who coached Florida State football from 1976-2009, is known for taking the positive and supportive approach with players.

He wrote in his book The Bowden Way: “We coaches take the time to explain to players why we make certain demands and follow certain procedures. We try to show how they can become better football players…. We also try to show how certain virtues demanded of football will also help them succeed in life…. Good coaching requires us to make intense demands while building morale, team spirit, and an appreciation of the value of disciplined effort.”

Bill Ragens, who played safety for Florida State from 1987-1990 spoke about Bowden’s guidance: “Coach didn’t just tell us how to act, he showed us. If we messed up he’d sit you down and have a good talk with you. Coach did as much fathering as he did coaching. He discussed your religion, your path in life, what it takes to be a real man, etc. He was coaching life as much as football.”

Bowden wrote about how he gave players a second chance and took an interest in how they turned out in his book Called to Coach. He wrote, “Kicking a boy off my team or taking away his scholarship was often my last resort when it came to discipline. I just did not want to throw a boy back on the streets with no structure or direction in his life…. I was a boy myself one time. If people had not forgiven me for some of the things I did when I was younger, I never would have made it in life.”

Bowden saw the big picture.

There is no doubt that winning games is a job expectation for coaches (especially at the level Bowden coached). But helping young people successfully advance in life is a far greater cause.

If you have a son, daughter, grandson, or granddaughter who has the good fortune of working with a coach that understands this—that athletics is about more than just wins and losses—be thankful.

Helping young people through their struggles and helping them grow as a person is more important than winning the game. But the good part is, the two often go hand-in-hand.

The young person who practices good character, who works hard, who respects himself and others—that young person is usually a winner—in athletics and in all of life.

The Super Bowl and Lessons in Perseverance

February 2, 2014

Jefferson City News Tribune

This evening the Denver Broncos and the Seattle Seahawks will square off in the 48th Super Bowl.

For the winning team, it will be an illustration of how perseverance and hard work pay off. For the losing team, it will be a time of extreme disappointment, a lesson on dealing with difficulty, and an eventual opportunity to reevaluate all they’ve done.

The very first Super Bowl that I watched was Super Bowl V, televised from Miami on Jan. 17, 1971.

I had just turned nine years old and had been following football on television very closely for more than a year. And I had developed quite an emotional attachment to the Dallas Cowboys.

Their story, in their early years in particular, is one of perseverance.

Super Bowl V was their first Super Bowl and mine. The Cowboys had not won a championship; nor had they become known as “America’s team” as they would be later. But they were my team and that’s all that mattered.

The Cowboys had completed an impressive season with a strong defense, allowing only ten points in two playoff games on the way to the Super Bowl. Their opponent would be the American Football Conference champion Baltimore Colts.

I don’t know of a kid who was more excited than me.

On game day I woke up greatly anticipating the 1 p.m. kickoff. (Super Bowls back then were played on Sunday afternoons rather than Sunday evenings).

During the Sunday morning sermon at church, I had to ask my Dad about the Cowboys’ upcoming game, and he frowned at me. Certainly a young man shouldn’t have been thinking about football during church, but I was.

Super Bowl V turned out to be a sloppy game but one in which the Cowboys never trailed.

Until the end.

A Baltimore field goal with five seconds remaining gave the Colts a 16-13 victory and I was very disappointed.

But I wasn’t as upset as the players themselves. As I would learn later, the Cowboy loss in Super Bowl V was another in a growing list of disappointing defeats.

Dallas had fielded some very good teams in the late 60s, but they had lost playoff games in 1966, 1967, 1968, and 1969. And now, after the 1970 season, they had lost Super Bowl V.

Dallas defensive lineman Bob Lilly was so angry when the Colts made the winning field goal that he threw his helmet half the length of the field.

The team was certainly tired of coming up short of a championship.

Tom Laundry, who coached Dallas from 1960-1988, wrote in his autobiography, “We’d lost again. Yet I saw reason for hope. The way the team pulled together at the end of the ’70 season had been the most rewarding experience I’d ever had as a coach. When someone made a mistake, everyone else on the team worked even harder. Because no one else believed we had a chance—not the writers, not our fans—our players realized they had to believe in themselves. We had won seven straight big games just to make it to the Super Bowl. So despite the loss to Baltimore, I thought maybe, just maybe, we’d broken through the mental barrier that had kept us from being champions. If so, I believed 1971 would be our year.”

As fate would have it, 1971 was indeed their year, as Dallas returned to the Super Bowl and soundly defeated the Miami Dolphins 24-3.

Altogether in the 1970s, the Cowboys went to five Super Bowls, winning two. For 20 consecutive seasons (1966-1985) they had a winning record each year. During that same time, they made the playoffs 18 out of 20 seasons.

Their rise to prominence, like that of any championship team, was a lesson in perseverance and character.

Landry wrote, “That strength of character so crucial to the 1970 Cowboys who rallied from almost certain failure to go on to the Super Bowl was forged through those difficult years when we couldn’t win the big one.”

In sports there are always lessons to be learned about reaping the rewards of disciplined efforts and a steadfast focus.

I would like to think that during those years as a young football fan I picked up on some important traits that are crucial to success, such as a hard work ethic, study, commitment, excellence, and of course, perseverance.

A don’t-quit attitude is beneficial to any one of us and should be modeled for young people both at home and at school. Perseverance is going to pay off for one team tonight but it will pay off much more often for individuals in life. Average people like you and me.

Remembering Hank Aaron

April 13, 2014Jefferson City News Tribune

Telling stories from the past is a great way to engage our children and to enrich their learning experiences.

I have one childhood story to pass on now, but first, let me tell you about a reminder I have of the event.

I still have a Sports Illustrated dated April 15, 1974. It’s hard for me to believe that the magazine is now 40 years old.

On the cover is a smiling Hank Aaron in an Atlanta Braves uniform. He is holding a baseball high above his head and is surrounded by a crowd of reporters.

The cover simply reads “715.”

I can show the magazine to any young person and tell them I remember watching on television when Hank Aaron broke Babe Ruth’s home run record of 714. I was only 12.

I can tell them how on April 8, 1974 I saw the historic event with my dad and my brother in our home on our first color television set, which was not quite four years old.

I can tell them how I remember sports caster Curt Gowdy’s words: “It’s a long drive…the ball’s hit deep…deep…It is gone! He did it! He did it! Henry Aaron, is the all-time home run leader now…”

I can tell them that the celebration that followed the homer included fireworks, cheers, Hank Aaron’s name up in lights, with video projections in the Atlanta Fulton County Stadium saying “move over Babe.”

I can remember them saying how Babe Ruth was a class act in baseball and had he been there he would have been the first to say, “Way to go Hank.”

I could tell how the Sports Illustrated had a cover price of 60 cents and what I might could do with two or three dollars in 1974.

I remember learning in the years that followed how Aaron’s pursuit of the career home run lead was one of great tension for him and his family.

It was a relief for the record to finally fall, and Aaron’s face showed it.

I can tell how I was finishing the sixth grade and about to play my fourth year of Little League Baseball when Aaron hit the historic homer. I looked up to players like Aaron, Lou Brock, Bob Gibson, and many more.

I could tell them I knew the home run record was big, but that I wasn’t old enough to fully appreciate its significance for baseball and for America. Nor did I know of its importance to history.

The truth was, I had lots yet to learn about baseball, about history, and about life, but witnessing such an event and contemplating upon its meaning was special. And even though I didn’t realize it, it was an event that increased my ability to incorporate more learning experiences in to my life.

Now another baseball season is upon us and there are more records to fall and more stories to be told. Not all records are as significant as Aaron’s, but each story from our childhood that is passed on to younger generations is.

Stories are powerful and my Hank Aaron experience is one such example. They catch our interest, are easy to remember, and are a strong vehicle for conveying important lessons.

We need to be sharing more of them.

Schools could Learn a Lesson from Baseball

July 20, 2014Jefferson City News Tribune

The St. Louis Cardinals won the World Series in 1982 over the Milwaukee Brewers. In my opinion, they should have also won the Series in 1985 and in 1987, but they lost each in seven games.

There were some very good Cardinal teams in those days. You may remember that they won a lot by stealing bases with blazing team speed.

It was exciting to watch them on defense and on the base paths.

The Cardinals don’t steal bases like that today. For that matter, no team does.

But what if they tried to recapture the philosophy of stealing bases in St. Louis today?

Suppose St. Louis manager Mike Matheny announced, “We are going to return to the speed game that made the Cardinals so successful in the 1980s. We are going to steal every time we get on base and we aren’t going to let up. The other team had better be ready. We are always going to be in scoring position. It worked in the 1980s and it will work now.”

I’ll tell you what would happen. The Cardinals would soon be looking for his replacement.

Why?

Baseball is still baseball isn’t it? It doesn’t matter if it is played in the 1940s, the 1980s, or now. You still have to pitch, hit, run, play defense, and steal.

But it’s not that simple.

The truth is, while baseball is still baseball and the overall philosophy is still much the same, teams cannot steal bases like they did back then.

The game has changed somewhat. Stadiums are smaller and with more home runs no one needs to steal as much. Catchers have pretty good arms and players get caught stealing more. Many playing fields are now grass instead of a faster artificial surface.

So while baseball is still baseball, teams have had to adapt over the years. The same can be said for professional football or other sports.

And the same can be said for schools.

Have you ever heard that what we did in schools in the 1980s worked fine then and will work fine now?

I have. But just as it’s not that simple in baseball, it’s not that simple in education either.

Students are still students, parents are still parents, and teachers are still teachers. But our society has changed drastically and today we deal with cultural issues that were not nearly as common then.

We read a lot and hear a lot about the breakdown of the traditional American family. That breakdown tends to complicate a young person’s life and can influence how he or she interacts with other adults. And that’s just one issue. We also have more widespread instances of poverty, illiteracy, drug-use, teen pregnancies, abortion, child abuse, sexual assault, mental illness, and family violence.

We can’t create student learning opportunities based upon the assumption that every student comes from a home that looks like the one that Wally and Beaver lived in on Leave it to Beaver.

It’s not reality. Educators are still called upon to teach but in recent decades the game has changed in education just as the game has changed in baseball and in all of society.

This doesn’t mean that all the basics should be thrown out. Nor does it mean that a strategy that worked 30 years ago will not work now.

It just means simply that professional educators have to adjust with changes the same way people in every profession do.

The good old values of honesty, discipline, and hard work will always pay off, but we need to rethink how we prepare the younger generations for their future.

They have grown up in a different world and will face a future that is vastly different from anything any of us have seen.

We can’t just steal bases like it was 1985. Some strategies have to change.

Coach Tom Landry

August 31, 2014Jefferson City News Tribune

Twenty-five years ago, as the football season began in 1989, the Dallas Cowboys took the field for the first time without Tom Landry as their head coach.

Landry’s dismissal after 29 years at the helm was controversial. He was one of the winningest coaches ever. He led the Cowboys to 20 consecutive winning seasons, to five Super Bowls, and to two Super Bowl championships.

He was also held in high esteem for being a man of high ideals and exemplary character. The word respect didn’t quite capture what many felt for Landry. Revered might be more accurate.

Bob Lilly was a Hall of Fame defensive tackle who played for Landry on the Cowboys from 1961-1974.

Lilly described Landry as a thorough student of the game, a good teacher, a firm believer in the team concept, and a man of perseverance, integrity, and trust.

“Everybody on the team respected him and most loved him,” Lilly wrote about Landry, “because he was totally consistent, he respected them as men, he did not play favorites and he always emphasized team.”

Landry was a good example then and his legacy is a good example for all of us now. He always demonstrated grace, dignity, and class.

“In my opinion,” Landry once said, “character is the most important determinant of a person’s success, achievement, and ability to handle adversity.”

Landry’s own convictions were put to the test when he was terminated as the coach after so many years of success in Dallas.

It did not seem fair. In fact, it wasn’t fair. But in spite of that, no one heard Landry complain.

President Harry Truman once wrote, “The way in which you endure that which you must endure is more important than the crisis itself.”

Those words rang true in Landry’s case.

I remember one interview in which Landry was asked about his firing and how he felt about it. He didn’t criticize anyone. I simply remember him saying something like, “When the new

leadership took over for the Dallas Cowboys, in their haste to make changes, they forgot about people.”

Maybe those words could be categorized as critical but we’ve all heard worse. I think his words, which were given in a gracious manner, did more to put an unpopular decision in the best possible light.

Landry wrote about how he intended to approach life after football in his autobiography a year later.

The closing comments in his book were about character and how his own faith gave him peace and security.

He wrote, “It’s that belief, that faith, more than anything else, that enabled me to last twenty-nine years on the sidelines of the Dallas Cowboys. It’s that faith that has allowed me to keep my perspective and not feel devastated or bitter about being fired. And it’s that faith that gives me hope for whatever the future holds for me outside of professional football.”

Landry was known to have told his team that his priorities were “faith, family, and football.” He made it clear that there was much more to life than simply the game he loved.

I think he got it right.

PART FOUR: HOLIDAYS AND SPECIAL EVENTS

Picturing the Resurrection

April 5, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

Our brains have a tremendous ability to imagine and to visualize.

When a person invites you to use that ability he or she is using a powerful teaching technique.

A speaker may use words to paint on the canvas of our mind; we may be invited to imagine how something looks, or perhaps how it appeared.

Dr. Peter Marshall, a well-known minister in America in the 1930s and 40s, was especially gifted with this ability.

As the pastor of New York Avenue Presbyterian Church in Washington, D.C. from 1937-1949, he always used word painting during his sermons so that he might “turn the ear into an eye.” He

gave highly descriptive narratives of biblical stories and scenes, a characteristic that became known as “sanctified imagination.”

And hundreds and hundreds listened intently during each message.

After his death, Dr. Marshall’s wife Catherine wrote in his biography, “Pictorial preaching is the most effective because it is easier to get at the average mind by a picture than by an idea.”

In a message about Christ’s resurrection called “The Grave in the Garden” he provided one such highly descriptive scene:

“…Then came Sunday morning. The first rays of the early morning sun cast a great light that caused the dew drops on the flowers to sparkle like diamonds. The atmosphere of the garden was changed…It was the same garden…yet strangely different. The heaviness of despair was gone, and there was a new note in the singing of the birds.”

“Suddenly, at a certain hour between sunset and dawn, in that new tomb which had belonged to Joseph of Arimathea, there was a strange stirring, a fluttering of unseen forces…a whirring of angel wings, the rustle as of the breath of God moving through the garden.”

“Strong, immeasurable forces poured life back into the dead body they had laid upon the cold stone slab; and the dead man rose up, came out of the grave clothes, walked to the threshold of the tomb, stood swaying for a moment on His wounded feet, and walked out into the moonlit garden.”

Good speakers, like good teachers, can transport our minds to another place and time.

Today is a central component of the Christian faith and an important time for Christian believers. For many, we can be grateful that it is a time of renewal and of new beginnings.

And we can also be thankful that Dr. Marshall—being a skilled word-painter and an extremely effective teacher—helps us see the detail and the significance of the biblical account.

The story is from 2000 years ago and Dr. Marshall’s sermon is almost 70 years old. But the descriptive scene is fresh in our minds. And its impact resonates in our spirit.

Memorial Day is for Reflection

May 24, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

Memorial Day, D-Day, Flag Day, Independence Day.

It is a patriotic time of year in which we can appreciate our country’s history and the honorable actions of our veterans.

We should also learn from their example.

For instance, they have taught us time and time again that some situations call for individuals to step up and make a decision or take action.

One such example is the D-Day Invasion on June 6, 1944, in which the United States, Britain, Canada, and other Allied forces invaded France to liberate it from Germany’s grip. It was a great turning point in World War II.

According to historians Gerald Astor and Stephen Ambrose, one of the deciding factors in the outcome of D-Day was that Allied forces at the forefront of the battle had autonomy to make prompt combat adjustments while the German defenders seemed paralyzed by indecision.

Lives hung in the balance on the northern beaches of France, as many Americans were under heavy fire. But their willingness to make decisions and take action saved the day, as well as many of their own lives.

On the other side, German officers knew they needed more military reinforcements but couldn’t get them, because important decisions came from places as far away as Berchtesgaden, Germany, where Adolf Hitler spent much time residing in the safety of his “Eagle’s Nest.”

Hitler was sleeping when the D-Day invasion began and no one woke him to ask for his orders.

According to Ambrose, German panzer divisions (made up of armor and infantry) couldn’t be utilized by German officers who wanted to mount a counterattack because they were not released by Hitler. “It was madness,” Ambrose wrote.

Irish-American journalist Cornelius Ryan, in his book The Longest Day, quoted one German general describing the situation as “the chaos of leadership.”

Astor wrote that there were mishaps, confusion, and a breakdown in the chain of command on the American side as well, but there were individuals who took the initiative and made a difference as “handfuls of determined men with the most junior people in charge.”

Ambrose described D-Day in bonus footage provided with the movie Saving Private Ryan. He said of the Americans on the beaches: “This was a battle in which there was no retreat. There wasn’t any way to go back. So you either stayed there and got killed or you did something about it. What happened was—that over here a captain, over here a second lieutenant, down there a sergeant—who had men around him, he didn’t even know their names the confusion was so great. He said, ‘Screw this. I’m gonna get killed here. I’m going up that bluff and I’m gonna take some Germans with me now who’s with me?’”

It took great courage for those men to fight their way to victory. But it first took great resolve to do their job even when their own ranks were already decimated.

Ambrose summed it up well in his book D-Day June 6, 1944: The Climactic Battle of World War II. He wrote, “The men fighting for democracy were able to make quick, on-site decisions and act on them; the men fighting for the totalitarian regime were not.”

We can never repay our military heroes for how they carried out their duties. Perhaps the best we can do is follow their example where we can.

Most of us will never find ourselves in a situation as dire as lying face down on a beach with bullets flying inches over our head, but we do have opportunities almost every day to make a difference by doing what’s best for everyone involved.

Most of our combat veterans, both living and dead, would tell us that we should strive to make a better world within the parameters of the freedom they helped preserve.

So while you or I may never see combat, at the very least we should faithfully honor our own responsibilities and commitments, even at those times when we must do so in the face of adversity. On any given day, any one of us may need to step forward and make a decision or take action, much like American heroes did on D-Day more than 70 years ago.

We owe that to them, to our families, and to our country.

Honoring the Flag and Dedicating Ourselves

June 14, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

Old Glory. The Star-Spangled Banner. The Stars and Stripes.

All are titles often connected to our country’s flag, a flag that is revered in many ways.

June 14 is a day set aside to honor the flag and its importance.

It’s not that the actual fabric in the flag is more special than any other fabric and it’s not that the colors are sacred.

It’s just that, when the colors and the fabric are arranged in to the pattern we recognize as the nation’s flag, something special happens.

With the stars placed on the blue background and the stripes aligned in 13 rows, the pattern becomes a very, very powerful symbol.

It’s not magical in and of itself, but the power it has to evoke great emotions, well, that’s something that approaches the realm of magic.

The familiar red, white, and blue banner is an incredible expression of our republic, of our freedom, of our opportunities, of our security, of our strength, of our pride, and of our home.

The United States has been called a great experiment in self-government but even the most patriotic among us will admit that it is an experiment that has had imperfections and instabilities along the way.

In spite of any American shortcomings, however, the flag stirs passion and gives us a chance to come together in appreciation for all that is good in the country.

And while there are many things that may divide us, there are far more issues that can bring us together.

Reconciliation, cooperation, and a spirit of brotherhood—traits that should exist among freedom-loving people—have marked much of America’s history.

In spite of America’s challenges the flag remains a strong symbol of unity, a rallying point, and a reminder that citizens of this republic must be responsible and honorable.

In all of our dealings with each other and with the institutions that make up America’s culture, we must be considerate and dignified.

In short, we have a national commitment to each other—articulated in the Constitution—to respect the law and our fellow citizens.

If we don’t do those things, the American flag will wave over a country that is only a faint shadow of what it was meant to be.

Independence Day and Responsible Living

July 1, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

Independence Day—the 4th of July holiday—is not as much about good barbeque and fireworks displays as it is about the ideals of liberty and responsibility.

A lot is said about American freedom and our individual civil rights, but the idea of individual responsibility is emphasized far less.

In character education efforts in area schools, however, the teaching of responsibility is a focal point in helping young people develop and practice good citizenship and good character.

Viktor Frankl, holocaust survivor and author of Man’s Search for Meaning, wrote, “… I recommend that the Statue of Liberty on the East Coast be supplemented by a Statue or Responsibility on the West Coast.”

That would be powerfully symbolic, because for America to work, both liberty and responsibility are crucial.

America’s 236th birthday is on Wednesday, and if her citizens could be committed to living in a way that is responsible, respectful, considerate, law-abiding, and unselfish, it would be a great birthday gift.

An argument can be made that the Founding Fathers expected that most Americans would live in such an appropriate manner; otherwise, such a sweeping tide of freedom could not be extended to any citizenry.

James Madison, the “Father of the Constitution” and our fourth president, is credited with a comment concerning how Americans must conduct themselves.

The quote reads, “We have staked the whole future of American civilization, not upon the power of government, far from it. We have staked the future of all of our political institutions upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves . . . according to the Ten Commandments of God.”

Historians have not confirmed this comment in primary sources but they have conceded that the quotation is consistent with Madison’s ideas concerning government and religious practice.

Does the Madison sentiment mean that one has to be Christian or Jewish to be a good American? No, it doesn’t. But it does mean that, at the very least, all of us should practice responsible living to make America great.

When individual Americans are constantly motivated by selfishness with little concern about their neighbors, when they think only of their own interests and never the interests of others, when they are at odds with each other and fighting over what they stand to gain or lose, then this great experiment that we call America doesn’t run nearly as efficiently. It gets sluggish, bogged down in the mire of millions of self-centered perspectives.

One could make the case that when the population continually demands personal liberty in every area, even at the expense of others, it has detrimental consequences. In essence, it is like an overdose on individual rights.

That does not mean that our individual rights are insignificant. On the contrary, those rights should be appreciated, cherished, and practiced. But none of those rights play out very smoothly in real life if they are pursued without any concern for others.

Dr. Peter Marshall, chaplain of the United States Senate in 1947-1948, once said in a sermon, “In a democracy, citizens have to be self-disciplined, or the country goes down, defeated from within by moral rot….”

Dr. Marshall died in 1949, but his son, Peter Marshall, Jr. worked as a minister, author, and historian until his death in 2010.

The younger Marshall once said, “The Constitution of the United States is a secular expression of the second great commandment: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.’ We’re called in to a national covenant to care for our neighbor.”

For America’s birthday, America’s citizens should be committed to living responsibly, and we have to be committed to teaching our children to do the same.

In the long run, it’s the only way America will work.

Lone Survivor and a Tribute to Veterans

November 10, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

In 2005 Marcus Luttrell was a part of four-man U.S. Navy Sea, Land, and Air (SEAL) team that went on a mission in the mountains of Afghanistan to apprehend an al Qaeda leader.

The mission went afoul when the four SEALs encountered an armed Taliban force of 160-200 and ended up fighting for their lives.

Only Luttrell survived.

The four SEALs killed about 80 of the Taliban forces on the mountainside before being overcome by larger numbers.

The details are in the book entitled Lone Survivor, written by Luttrell and author Patrick Robinson. (It is also scheduled to be released as a movie in late December).

Tomorrow is Veterans Day, and on that day we honor those who fought in other lands and those who never came home from the battlefield. But we must never forget that many serve and protect the United States on this very day, and they do it by choice.

Luttrell is a surviving veteran who deserves our gratitude. He has been given a hero’s welcome on more than one occasion (even once visiting the Oval Office, where President George W. Bush decorated him with the Navy Cross), but Luttrell made it clear in his book that his fellow SEALs—Matthew Axelson, Michael Murphy, and Danny Dietz—are heroes that should be forever remembered for their bravery.

Each fought to the death against the Taliban on that mission eight years ago.

Luttrell wrote about the bravery of each, including one description of Dietz in particular, of how he kept fighting even though he was severely wounded: “…Danny was shot again. Right through the neck, and he went down beside me. He dropped his rifle and slumped to the ground. I reached down to grab him and drag him closer to the rock face, but he managed to clamber to his feet, trying to tell me he was okay even though he’d been shot four times. Danny couldn’t

speak now, but he wouldn’t give in. He propped himself up against a rock for cover and opened fire again at the Taliban, signaling he might need a new magazine as his very lifeblood poured out of him. I just stood there for a moment, helplessly, fighting back my tears, witnessing a brand of valor I had never before been privileged to see.”

The book contains other similar descriptions of courage and also how fate allowed Luttrell to elude the Taliban forces who were trying to track him down. His survival made it possible for him to tell his story and also the story of his fallen brothers-in-arms.

It is a fitting tribute to those who are committed to protecting their country through military service.

Pilgrims, Character, and Thanksgiving

November 20, 2011Jefferson City News Tribune

Schools must teach good citizenship, help young people grow in character, and at the same time, help students appreciate America’s history and culture.

We get a lesson in all of these at Thanksgiving time by looking at the example of the hardships and successes of the Pilgrims.

All of the attributes that make America great—faith, industriousness, the ability to overcome hardships, a desire for self-government, and a healthy outlook that includes genuine appreciation and gratefulness—were embodied in the Pilgrims.

And aren’t those the attributes we want to instill in our own children? Aren’t these the kind of character traits we want to be emphasized in schools?

Certainly we want students to learn their algebra, do well in chemistry, and master their language skills, but at the end of the day, we also want them to be young men and young women who practice decency and work hard, and are considerate in their dealings with others.

We are fortunate that schools throughout Central Missouri emphasize character education, and with Thanksgiving upon us, we can learn a lot about being people of great character by remembering how the Pilgrims approached life and its challenges.

In their own Mayflower Compact the Pilgrims wrote they came to America “for the glory of God and advancement of Christian faith.”

No doubt, the Pilgrims were people of strong faith, and that faith was tested on a regular basis as they endured various difficulties. The Pilgrims believed strongly that God led them America, but the winter of 1621-1622 stretched them to the limits of their faith and resolve.

During that winter, the Pilgrims’ only means of nourishment came from an allotment of a mere five kernels of corn a day for each person. The drastic cut in rations was necessary to give all a chance to survive.

In addition, during that same harsh winter, some of them had to bury their own children. It takes a strong faith to begin to comprehend a sense of mission and a dead child at the same time, but that is the faith the Pilgrims practiced.

At times they must have questioned what they were doing, and as many people often do during trying times, they may have said, “Why God?” It would have been understandable given their circumstances.

If any of us had relocated in a foreign, inhospitable land because we believed that is exactly what God wanted of us, and then we had to bury one of our own children, we may be inclined to ask, “Why God?” ourselves.

The Pilgrims also believed in self-government and in submitting to that government, as articulated in the Mayflower Compact. They wrote they were joining “together into a civil body politic” whereby that they would issue just laws and abide by them for the good of the colony.

The Pilgrims, 150 years ahead of the Declaration of Independence, were already establishing ideals that made America great.

In addition, the Pilgrims set up a method of farming based on the free enterprise system. In 1623 Pilgrim Governor William Bradford decided to implement a second planting of crops. That second planting parceled out lots for the private use of each planter.

Needless to say, with this establishment of free enterprise, the Pilgrims—wanting a good crop and a good profit for themselves—approached their work with a renewed vigor and industriousness. The colony’s production drastically increased, and they never again faced starvation. In short, the Pilgrim’s experiment with capitalism saved their colony.

Finally, the Pilgrims practiced genuine gratefulness, which was manifested in regularly offering thanks to God. This culminated in their declaration of the first day of public Thanksgiving, a story we all know well, and one that has become a modern American tradition.

Governor Bradford summed up the Pilgrim experience best when he wrote, “…all great and honorable actions are accompanied with great difficulties, and must be enterprised and overcome with answerable courages. It was granted that the dangers were great, but not desperate, and the difficulties were many, but not invincible…and all of them, through the help of God, by fortitude and patience, might either be bourne or overcome …”

When we offer our own thanks on this Thanksgiving, we can include our thankfulness for the Pilgrims. Their lives and their example are part of what makes America great.

Thankful for Much

November 24, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

Each year when Thanksgiving approaches we focus our hearts and minds on the things that matter most—the things for which we are most thankful.

In 1936 Connecticut Governor Wilbur Cross issued a Thanksgiving proclamation which read in part: “Time out of mind at this turn of the seasons when the hardy oak leaves rustle in the wind and the frost gives a tang to the air and the dusk falls early and the friendly evenings lengthen under the heel of Orion, it has seemed good to our people to join together in praising the Creator and Preserver, who has brought us by a way that we did not know to the end of another year.”

The proclamation went on to say they should give thanks for “the blessings that have been our common lot…the yield of the soil that has fed us and the richer yield from labor of every kind that has sustained our lives…”

Bear in mind that this proclamation—an expression of gratitude for food and for the opportunity to engage in honest work—was issued during the heart of America’s Great Depression, at a time in which most households were in no way feeling financially prosperous.

But there was still much to be thankful for.

And so it is today. We face troubles, for sure, but there are also countless blessings to be remembered and appreciated.

Thanksgiving is a time to cultivate thankfulness to God in our own hearts—something that is appropriate every day—not merely at the end of each November.

We think of Thanksgiving as a holiday, but it is really an attitude of the heart.

To always be grateful for what one has is part of having a healthy outlook and the right frame of mind. It’s just simply the right way to approach life.

I have a feeling that Governor Cross and the good folks in Connecticut understood that in 1936.

It was a simple time in which each day could be both productive and appreciated.

Our day is much more complex, but our minds are refreshed when we disengage from the complications, the worries, and the issues, and with a simple expression of thankfulness, embrace life one day at a time.

When troubles come and the challenges are many, thankfulness remains the best response.

In addition, going through tough times with a thankful heart has a way of reducing one’s wish list to only the things that matter. It has a way of refining one’s focus in life.

The Pilgrims, at the time of America’s first Thanksgiving, approached life no differently.

Today, with Thanksgiving upon us, we would do well to emulate their example by being thankful for the basics of life.

Anything else is prosperity, blessing, and cause for more thanksgiving.

And even during times when the American economy slows, we still have plenty of each.

Thanksgiving Reflections

November 23, 2014Jefferson City News Tribune

When individuals are asked what they are most thankful for at Thanksgiving time, they usually mention good health, family, and loved ones.

Others are grateful for what their faith means to them.

Some might express gratitude for the great amount of liberty afforded in this country.

When you get right down to it, none of us needs a very long list. When we simplify life to that which matters the most, we can focus on a few items and be content.

Think about it. A faith that gives life meaning. A feeling of security provided by Providence. A country where we can pursue happiness, life, and work as we see fit. Relationships with others that provide support, stability, and an emotional sense of well-being. And good health to enjoy all of life’s benefits.

A life without these finds only discouragement, disappointment, loneliness, despair, uncertainty, pain, and a journey that doesn’t seem to have any meaning.

It’s no wonder that we consider those few life essentials to be the most important, and the objects of our most sincere gratitude.

Some of us can appreciate the good fortune of having a new car, a comfortable house, a satisfying job, or our choice in clothing.

But those items aren’t in the same category as the essentials of faith, family, freedom, and health.

The Pilgrims, in their first Thanksgiving in 1621, practiced a simple faith that demonstrated gratefulness for those basic essentials in life.

Their faith was important. Their relationship with each other was important. And the very food on their plate was not to be taken for granted (in the severe winter in 1621-1622 they were allotted only five kernels of corn each day).

Those hard times were not forgotten, even after a very bountiful harvest in the fall of 1623. It was then that the Pilgrims had their second Thanksgiving celebration with a tremendous feast that featured corn, plums, grapes, fish, nuts, pork, chicken, turkey, and deer.

But the meal’s first course on Thanksgiving of 1623 was simply a plate with five kernels of corn, to make sure they remembered all that God has brought them through.

No doubt their hearts were moved as they sat down with their Native American guests on that Thanksgiving.

And this year at Thanksgiving time all of us, like the Pilgrims so many years ago, can contemplate and appreciate the simple blessings of life. And each of us, even if we have very little in the way of material pursuits, can find our own hearts overflowing with gratitude.

Christmas Traditions in our Culture

December 25, 2011Jefferson City News Tribune

During our history as a nation, particularly in recent decades, we have heard the words “separation of church and state” to the point that some have developed beliefs calling for the separation of all religious expression from public life.

Most of us do not hold such a view, but some do, and it is evident when we hear of efforts to eliminate any idea of Christmas in public schools.

We can be grateful that in many communities such as Jefferson City, Christmas traditions are allowed to flourish as a part of the local culture.

When the Jefferson City High School choirs, bands, and orchestra presented Capitol Caroling on Dec. 13 in the Capitol rotunda, their performance included songs such as The First Noel, O Holy Night, Silent Night, and Handel’s Hallelujah Chorus.

Capitol Caroling, now a 74-year-old tradition in Jefferson City, is a shining example of how Christmas and Christmas traditions are incorporated in to public education, allowing the students to benefit from the educational and cultural experience.

In communities far and wide, most Americans have no problem with such a tradition.

That leads us to ask, can our schools truly be void of any references to Christmas or any influence of Christmas? And more importantly, should they?

While public school districts like those in and around Jefferson City respect students and families of other cultures and religions, the school districts acknowledge that religion—Christianity in particular—has had a great impact on our history.

Christmas is a part of our culture and heritage as much as freedom, duty, and patriotism are a part of the national fabric. Furthermore, in our culture there is often no clear distinction between the sacred and the secular (even though some want to draw definite boundaries).

In our public schools, when students learn about our history, our culture, and how to be a responsible citizen, to ignore Christmas and the influence of Christianity is to leave out a key ingredient to our understanding of how we got where we are today.

To appreciate both the sacred and the secular is a dichotomy of sorts, but our country has benefited from both Christian traditions and religious diversity.

Schools, always a reflection of the communities they serve, must simultaneously respect Christianity and all other religious beliefs.

That’s not always an easy task, but school administrators everywhere are called upon to make it work, and when they do, we have an example of how the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution continues to serve all of us well.

Happy holidays and Merry Christmas.

Christmas, Stein, and Dickens

December 23, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

Each year Dec. 25 and the days leading up to it are something very special, even magical.

For some the experience includes deeply religious and heartfelt convictions.

For others, it is a special part of our culture in which goodness and giving are brought to the forefront.

For some it is a social time in which friends and family wish each other well as they gather in celebratory fashion.

Even though people view Christmas in different ways, the overall feeling about the holiday season is it generates a lot of goodwill.

While most Americans look at it as a time of giving, a time of celebrating, a time for reflection, or a time for worship, there are a few who are troubled by public expressions of Christmas.

Author, attorney and commentator Ben Stein is not one of those; he happens to be Jewish but speaks highly of Christmas.

Stein often provides his expertise and commentary on political and economic issues on television, but many remember him most for portraying a boring economics teacher in the 1986 movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. (Remember him calling roll and saying, “Bueller…? Bueller…? Bueller…?)

At any rate, in a recent interview he said even though he isn’t Christian he appreciates what the Christmas season brings and said he honestly doesn’t see a need for anyone to oppose the good that comes with each holiday season.

“The central message of Christmas is ‘Peace on earth, good will toward men,’” Stein said. “Why does anyone want to take issue with that?”

Stein went on to say, “There's nothing wrong with having this be the predominant holiday in a predominantly Christian country.”

The United States has become more diverse with each passing decade, and in many ways the population has made accommodations to try to be respectful of a variety of beliefs. But Stein’s words plead for tolerance towards a holiday season that has been established for quite some time and practiced by the vast majority of Americans.

Christmas doesn’t need defended; nor does it need attacked. In fact, to quarrel about its place is to go against the entire spirit of the season.

All one needs to do is appreciate it for the influence it has had in our lives and in our culture.

For many years, a number of people have valued the story entitled A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens. Within that tale, you may remember the words of Ebenezer Scrooge’s nephew when he spoke to him about Christmas:

“…I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come around … as a good time: a kind, forgiving, charitable, pleasant time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow-passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys. And therefore, Uncle, though it has never put a scrap of gold or silver in my pocket, I believe that it has done me good, and will do me good; and I say, God bless it!”

We couldn’t say it better than Dickens, but we can wish each other well. This year, may Christmas continue to bring peace, goodness, warmth, and meaning to you and your family.

Reading about Christmas

December 22, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

Do you remember the animated Christmas special called “A Charlie Brown Christmas”? The 30 minute story, which first aired in 1965, featured Charlie Brown’s quest to find out what Christmas was really supposed to be.

You may remember that the cartoon, with all of the endearing characters from Charles Schulz’s Peanuts gang, has a touching closing scene when Linus quoted the biblical passage of the very first Christmas.

As December approached this year, I had a modest quest of my own. I had a growing desire to read a good Christmas novel.

You wouldn’t think it would be hard to find one; the store bookshelves are full of Christmas-related stories this time of the year.

But I couldn’t find the kind of novel I wanted. All of the paperbacks seemed to have a common theme, one in which two people meet in the midst of the busy chaos of the holiday season, and fall in love at Christmas time.

I’m not against a story of two people finding true love, but that’s not a Christmas story.

I wanted something different. I wanted to read a good story that would move a person’s heart on more than simply a romantic level.

Maybe to find such a story, one has to look to the past rather than the present.

Most of us are familiar with the tale by Charles Dickens called A Christmas Carol, in which Ebenezer Scrooge, full of bitterness, resents the thought of Christmas and resents anyone enjoying it. Through a night of spiritual intervention, Scrooge had a transformation that enabled him to truly embrace the meaning of Christmas. He was able to say at the end of the story, “I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.”

Another story with redeeming qualities is an obscure novel by Dr. Gilbert Morris called The Angel of Bastogne. It tells of how Chicago journalist Ben Raines investigated his father’s claim that during World War II he and his men were saved by an angel on Christmas of 1944 at the Battle of the Bulge. Raines began his investigation highly skeptical and with little appreciation for Christmas. He finished with a heart that was touched by the Christmas message and by the faith of war veterans like his dad.

Skipping Christmas by John Grisham is a short book also worthy of your attention at this time of year. The novel is a page-turner, written with the same quality and pace of all Grisham books,

and is a reminder of how busy we are with Christmas activities each year. It is humorous, entertaining, thought-provoking, and in the end, heartwarming.

In the next couple of days you might read one of these stories while sipping hot cocoa or hot tea. Or you may select something more recent from the bookstores.

But to help us truly understand Christmas, no story is more powerful than the original.

The biblical account with which we are most familiar is in chapter two of Luke. The baby…born in the manger…in Bethlehem…the angelic message of redemption…the angels singing…hearts were moved…

“Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace, good will toward men.”

You can read it for yourself.

In the words of Linus, “That’s what Christmas is all about Charlie Brown.”

Reconciliation at Christmas Time

December 21, 2014Jefferson City News Tribune

On Nov. 13 CNN reported that a school in Connecticut did away with religious holidays on the school calendar. Most of the school’s patrons are Christian or Jewish, but the decision to eliminate all religious references on the calendar came after a Muslim group wanted their faith’s holidays to be acknowledged in the same way as those that are Christian or Jewish.

The school board’s solution was to get all religious holidays off of the calendar and as a result, more patrons were upset than if the board had done nothing.

Afterwards, the Muslim group said that the elimination of expressions of faith was the last thing they wanted.

We could say that every religion and every tradition and every holiday should have equal footing, but we know that doesn’t always work, as the issue in Connecticut demonstrated.

My 21-year-old son Jared is studying in Austria this semester and on Thanksgiving weekend, he and some friends there got together to celebrate with a small Thanksgiving feast.

They don’t observe Thanksgiving in Austria, so in a way my son was introducing some individuals to the American tradition that surrounds Thanksgiving.

But Jared didn’t go to Austria expecting them to do everything according to what he is accustomed to.

In fact, most of us, if we travel very far, are reasonable enough to understand that some cultures or subcultures don’t do things as we do here.

If I were at a soccer game in Mexico, I would expect them to play Mexico’s national anthem before the contest. I would not expect them to play America’s national anthem just for me.

During this month, if I visited the home of a devout Jewish family in Israel, I would not expect to see a nativity scene or hear Silent Night playing in the background.

If I were in Iraq on Dec. 25, I wouldn’t expect that the locals would put together a Christmas celebration to make me feel at home.

Quite simply, in any culture we can expect that traditions are usually in line with what is wanted or what is practiced by the majority of the people.

That’s the way it is at this time of year in America. Christmas is widely celebrated because that’s what most Americans—for either religious or for traditional reasons—want to do.

Christmas in America is a time in which people tend to feel more loving and more honorable towards others than at any other time of the year.

And as a result, it’s a time in which conflicts and problems can be minimized or eliminated altogether.

Pastor and best-selling author Rick Warren wrote about the theme of reconciliation in his book The Purpose of Christmas.

“Reconciliation is the restoration of peace,” he wrote. “Peace with God, peace with others, and peace in your own heart. It is the powerful miracle cure for broken lives and relationships. Reconciliation defuses conflict and turns chaos into calmness. It quiets quarrels. It swaps your stress for God’s serenity, turns tension into tranquility, and produces peace of mind instead of panic or pressure.”

That message is appropriate at this time and always.

May peace and reconciliation be yours this year. Merry Christmas and happy holidays.

CHAPTER FIVE: HISTORY

History Teaches Us how to Work through Change

Jefferson City News TribuneMarch 25, 2012

It is unrealistic to assume that changes will be always be warmly embraced and that transitions will always be smooth, even when it is believed that the proposed changes are positive.

For a good example of this, we can look to the pages of history.

When delegates met at the Constitutional Convention in 1787, they were drawing up a plan for the United States government which, in their minds, was a necessary change for the better.

Throughout the process of writing the Constitution and in the days in which they tried to get it adopted, however, they met resistance and criticism.

Bear in mind that those delegates—which included Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington—represented the most brilliant minds of the day.

Those delegates—the founding fathers of the United States—certainly had the credentials, the education, the experience, and the wisdom to craft a government that would be far more than adequate to meet the needs of the country.

Yet they faced resistance to what they were doing at almost every turn.

The weather itself didn’t seem to be cooperative, as 1787 was the hottest summer that Philadelphia had experienced in 20 years.

That made it unbearable as the delegates met inside, and likely made tempers flare more easily during debates.

In spite of the obstacles, however, the delegates at the Constitutional Convention stayed the course and continued to work. Once the document was complete, they lobbied for its support until it was adopted by the states.

We must conclude that the document they produced—The United States Constitution—has not only stood the test of time, but has been the framework that has allowed the country to flourish throughout its history.

And if there is a lesson here for all of us it is this: If the founding fathers, representing the most talented and brilliant thinkers of the day, had to face resistance and criticism and mistrust, then any one of us should expect the same. And we could expect it even when we are working for a cause that we feel is just, or if we are simply proposing a change that appears to be for the better.

Education is not immune from those who may fear a change in the status quos.

Educators at all levels have great and noble aspirations about how to help children, but many new ideas are not given a fair hearing.

In some circles, a teacher who dares to be innovative may be unfairly criticized. A building principal who wishes to take the school in a challenging direction may be undermined. School board members who have an exciting vision for the future of the school district may be misrepresented and accused of having a different agenda.

All of those things have to be worked out in local communities with open and honest dialogue.

When all is said and done, however, if trust is established and if educators always try to do what is most beneficial to the students, there is a tremendous amount of good that can be done.

The founding fathers gave America the U.S. Constitution. We should give America a new generation of learners prepared to have just as big of an impact.

Examples from the Constitutional Convention

June 29, 2014Jefferson City News Tribune

When a major change is made in the structure of a school district, a business, an organization, or a government, it may require a great deal of discussion and compromise among the major participants. It can be both extremely frustrating and extremely beneficial.

Such was the case in the summer of 1787 in Philadelphia, when delegates met to draft a more workable plan of government for the United States. They faced a tumultuous process, but eventually produced the United States Constitution and lobbied for its ratification.

On July 4 we celebrate the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, but we also celebrate America and all of her accomplishments.

The accomplishment that resulted from the 1787 meetings was definitely one of America’s greatest and is cause for celebration on the 4th of July. Those deliberations not only gave us the Constitution, but also an excellent illustration of how successful, intelligent, and proud individuals can work together for the good of everyone.

There was a tremendous amount of intellect and wisdom there in Philadelphia during the hot summer months of 1787.

There was also a massive amount of ego, which, when combined with the record-setting heat, almost caused the convention to end in failure.

Benjamin Franklin, who was getting very old at the time, made a plea for prayers to help them get past their difficulties.

“I have lived,” he said, “a long time. And the longer I live the more convincing proofs I see of this truth: that God governs in the affairs of man. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid?”

Franklin then suggested that each day begin with prayer—a tradition that continues to this day in the U.S. Congress.

So the Constitution became a reality in part because of the wisdom of Benjamin Franklin and his realization that none of them were so great that they didn’t need the help of the Almighty.

But there were many other noteworthy individuals.

George Washington was wise, calm, steady, and deeply respected even to the point of being revered. His presence provided a great deal of assurance to the delegates and gave credibility to the entire undertaking.

James Madison was extremely gifted and came better prepared than any delegate. He had done his homework and arrived with a solid plan for government, much of which became a part of the Constitution.

Alexander Hamilton, also one with a brilliant mind, was there as well. But not everyone trusted him. He was too radical. He worked behind the scenes. He was a wheeler-dealer; a horse-trader, sometimes proposing a far-fetched idea, knowing that a counterproposal would result in a compromise which would give him what he wanted all along. His genius was not to be underestimated. Along with Madison, he later authored most of the Federalist Papers.

Patrick Henry, the great American patriot known for saying, “Give me liberty or give me death!” was not there. He wanted no part in the discussions. He felt that drawing up a new plan of government was not in the best interests of the new country. He said simply he “smelled a rat,” and some historians believe the rat he smelled was Alexander Hamilton.

Thomas Jefferson likely had the greatest mind of his day and he loved his country. But he was not present because he was serving as a U.S. ambassador in France.

So, when major changes are discussed in our world today, which individual do you favor? To be more specific, in the Jefferson City School District, as discussions continue about the future and about school facilities and instructional delivery, which of the founding fathers would you most resemble?

Would you be like Franklin, claiming that we will fail if we give in to petty differences and refuse to acknowledge that our collective wisdom is limited?

Would you be like Washington, steady at the helm, inspiring others, and instilling confidence?

Would you be like Madison, cerebral, questioning, and constructively critical?

Would you be like Hamilton, tirelessly working behind the scenes, forging alliances, talking to others individually?

Would you be like Henry, on the outside-looking-in, uncomfortable with the entire undertaking?

Would you be like Jefferson, very interested but duty requires that you be elsewhere?

In the end none of those great men got everything they wanted, but their willingness to hear another view and their ability to compromise gave America a government that has served her well.

Will we follow their example today?

Learning from the Battle of New Orleans

January 4, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

In 1814 we took a little trip, with Colonel Jackson down the Mighty Mississip.

If you’re old enough, you may remember a snappy tune with those words, which was a sensational version of the events of the Battle of New Orleans. I remember hearing it as a child, but it was still a bit before my time.

We fired our guns and the British kept a comin’—wasn’t nigh as many as there was a while ago.

And while the song (The Battle of New Orleans, a 1959 hit by Johnny Horton) seemed to make light of an actual battle, it did capture the spirit of the event and the years that followed.

On Thursday this week, on Jan. 8, it will be exactly 200 years since the famed Battle of New Orleans.

At the end of the War of 1812, General Andrew Jackson put together a rag-tag army to go down to New Orleans to keep the British from taking the port. (The song referred to him as Colonel Jackson but he was a general by then).

The army was made up of some misfits—cutthroats, riverboatmen, backwoodsmen, scoundrels, and expert marksmen from Kentucky and Tennessee—who went to New Orleans because they wanted action. They heard there was to be a big fight and they wanted in on it.

And get in on it they did.

But they had help.

A pirate by the name of Jean Lafitte warned Americans of the attack and also provided cannon from his ships to help turn away the invaders.

Within 30 minutes on the morning of Jan. 8, 1815 the British had to fall back, with 2000 casualties. The Americans lost only eight.

By any measure, it was an overwhelming American victory.

The Treaty of Ghent had been signed to end the war two weeks earlier, on Christmas Eve. It was the official end to the war but because news traveled slowly in those days, word had not reached New Orleans in time to stop the combatants.

The War of 1812 was one in which the United States only managed to hold its own with the powerful British military.

But the conflict at the Battle of New Orleans was far from being a draw. In fact, it was such a convincing American victory that the countries of Europe viewed it as if the whole war had gone that way.

In Europe, they viewed Americans with great respect in the years that followed. The mindset was: Trade with the Americans if you want. Make money off of them if you can. But don’t make them mad. You don’t want to fight with them.

In America itself the years from 1815-1819 became the most nationalistic time of that century.

Now, 200 years later, we could enter in to another era of great American pride.

It often happens when the country faces threats from the outside, but we shouldn’t need another war or the threat of war to cause us to pull together. We should simply come together because there are many more things that unite us than things that divide us.

It was 200 years ago that the United States celebrated the end of a war. Today we could choose to celebrate the liberties and the blessings that have endured throughout our history.

It’s a new year. And for the country, it can be a new day.

The Greatest Generation

November 7, 2011Jefferson City News Tribune

With Veterans Day in just a few days, it would be most appropriate to say how I am deeply impressed with what journalist Tom Brokaw referred to as “The Greatest Generation,” those Americans who suffered through the Great Depression, fought and won World War II, and then established peace and prosperity that lasted for decades.

It is the generation of my grandparents, a generation that believed firmly in hard work and doing the right thing.

My four grandparents, like many of yours, lived through the 1930s and the 1940s, and as a result, they experienced things and learned about life in ways that I will never know.

They came from a generation of Americans that knew more about work and sacrifice and living and dying than the rest of us will ever understand.

In our schools, it is important that we teach about their legacy; in our hearts, it is important that we honor them on Veterans Day.

While we remember and respect the sacrifices of veterans from Korea, Vietnam, the Gulf Wars, Afghanistan, and Iraq, we must also remember how the World War II generation set the standard for what duty and sacrifice are all about.

Brokaw wrote, “These men and women came of age in the Great Depression…. They answered the call to help save the world from the two most powerful and ruthless military machines ever assembled…. When the war was over, the men and women who had been involved…joined in joyous and short-lived celebrations, then immediately began the task of rebuilding their lives and the world they wanted. They were mature beyond their years, tempered by what they had been through, disciplined by their military training and sacrifices…. They stayed true to their values of personal responsibility, duty, honor, and faith.”

To fully appreciate the American experience, with all of its struggles and all of its blessings, students must learn about this generation in school, and should be encouraged to have a genuine gratefulness for what they accomplished. This can be done throughout any school year, but Veterans Day is a most appropriate time to reflect upon how earlier generations have shaped our lives.

The late historian Stephen Ambrose, in his book Citizen Soldiers, wrote of the great influence of American servicemen in World War II.

He quoted one veteran who simply called them GIs: “Imagine this. In the spring of 1945, around the world, the sight of a twelve-man squad of teenage boys, armed and in uniform, brought terror to people’s hearts. Whether it was a Red Army squad in Berlin, Leipzig, or Warsaw, or a German squad in Holland, or a Japanese squad in Manila, Seoul, or Beijing, that squad meant rape, pillage, looting, wanton destruction, senseless killing. But there was an exception: a squad of [American] GIs, a sight that brought the biggest smiles you ever saw to people’s lips, and joy to their hearts. Around the world this was true, even in Germany, even—after September 1945—in Japan. This was because GIs meant candy, cigarettes, C-rations, and freedom. American had sent the best of her young men around the world, not to conquer but to liberate, not to terrorize but to help. This was a great moment in our history.”

Ambrose went on to write, “…the spirit of those GIs handing out candy and helping bring democracy to their former enemies spread, and today it is the democracies—not the totalitarians—who are on the march…. That generation has done more to spread freedom—and prosperity—around the globe than any previous generation.”

On Nov. 11, we must pause and remember, so in some small way we show appreciation for our veterans and for the freedom they secured and preserved.

Pearl Harbor

December 4, 2011Jefferson City News Tribune

Dec. 7, 1941—the day Japan conducted a surprise attack on Pearl Harbor, the day when the United States was brought in to World War II, the day described by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as “a date which will live in infamy,”—happened almost 70 years ago.

In fact, Wednesday, Dec. 7 is the 70th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.

On such milestone anniversaries, we are prone to look back and to remember, and also to reflect upon what it means to us.

But because the gravity of the event is losing its hold on newer generations of Americans, some of the bigger questions may be, “What does Dec. 7 mean to our children?” and “What does Dec. 7 mean to future generations?”

We teach the significance of Dec. 7 in our schools, but in the minds of young American students today, if it happened 70 years ago it’s not much different than if it happened 150 years ago.

Students are beginning to view Pearl Harbor in the same way they might view the drafting of the U.S. Constitution or the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. In other words, to them it is something that happened a long time ago.

One reason they have this perspective is, quite simply, there are fewer Americans who can provide eye-witness accounts of the crucial events of 70 years ago.

American teenagers need to hear from older Americans who remember. Teenagers need to hear them say, “I remember when that happened. I was there. It changed my life. It changed our country overnight. It changed our world forever.”

Gordon Prange, in his monumental work on Pearl Harbor entitled At Dawn We Slept, wrote that Pearl Harbor had such an impact on Americans alive at the time that their lives were divided in to life before Pearl Harbor and life after Pearl Harbor.

He wrote, “…for all Americans old enough to remember, Pearl Harbor will never die. It is too deeply engraved on their consciousness to be obliterated by anything short of the loss of memory itself.”

The only modern example we might compare this to—as far as its impact upon our psyche—is Sept. 11, 2001.

Before Pearl Harbor, Americans looked at events in the world as matters that did not concern them and would not affect them. After Pearl Harbor, Americans were brought together.

As Prange wrote, “No more did Americans ask whose fight it was or question what they should do about it…. The sense of outrage triggered a feeling of direct involvement which resulted in an explosion of national energy. The Japanese gave the average American a cause he could understand and believe to be worth fighting for.”

American students are taught about what happened on Dec. 7, but they also need to be taught about its influence in history.

Without an understanding of the importance of Dec. 7, it is just another date in history that students do not find relevant.

Dec. 7, however, is relevant, and our children should know why.

It is important because it reminds us that countries can be suddenly drawn in to clashes of great magnitude.

It is important because it reminds us that a strong nation must always be prepared and alert to preserve the safety of its citizens. That which is unexpected does happen.

It is important because we must always remember that where the United States is involved, when things go wrong on the international stage, it is Americans (both military and civilian) who are wounded, who bleed, and who die.

More than 2,400 Americans were lost 70 years ago at Pearl Harbor, and 1,200 more were wounded. We must remember them, what happened, and why. It is an ongoing reality for all of us because to this very day, American security continues to be paid for with American lives.

Pearl Harbor: A Lesson for Today

December 7, 2014Jefferson City News Tribune

As you are aware, on Dec. 7, 1941 the American naval fleet at Pearl Harbor was subjected to a devastating surprise attack by Japan.

The event has been chronicled in a number of books but one that is very detailed is Gordon W. Prange’s At Dawn We Slept.

The title At Dawn We Slept was very fitting. At Pearl Harbor, not only were American military forces in the Pacific taken completely by surprise, but the entire country was caught off guard.

Indeed, America had been asleep, even as—all over the globe—armies marched and navies sailed as a part of war or the prelude to war.

The 1970 movie Tora Tora Tora told the story of Pearl Harbor and the closing scene was very telling. After the attack, the Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto said of the United States, “I fear all we have done is to awaken a sleeping giant and fill him with a terrible resolve.”

We know from history, and from our parents and grandparents, what happened next. Pearl Harbor galvanized the American cause in a massive war effort dedicated to total victory.

Yamamoto’s words were both an accurate assessment and a prophetic assertion. In short, Pearl Harbor woke America up.

Today, it appears the country is slumbering again. Many do not know what is going on in the world, in government, in their communities, or within their local schools. In some instances, a few individuals do not even know what is going on in their own families.

It is unfortunate that many are addicted to entertainment, to leisure, to personal pursuits, and to getting rather than giving.

On Sept. 11, 2001 a tragic event occurred that shook America out of her complacency. After 9-11, Americans were united in their efforts to crush terroristic groups who meant to the country harm.

As the years have gone by, however, the feelings of safety and security and prosperity have gradually made America sleepy again.

I wouldn’t dare predict that another tragic event is on the horizon, but at the same time, we must ask what it might take to arouse Americans to at least know what is going on in the world today. And we must wonder what it might take to cause us to perhaps care, and—dare we hope—that we care enough to take steps to secure the peace of the world where we can?

We must never forget the lessons of Dec. 7 or the lessons of Sept. 11. Nor must we ever forget our responsibility to think as much of others as we do ourselves.

With the holiday season upon us, it is time to do that. It is a time to enjoy the love of family and the significance of the season. It is a time to celebrate from the depths of our hearts, to be giving, and to enjoy peace, prosperity, and whatever blessings come our way.

But if we are only focused on ourselves—our wants, our preferences, our entertainment, our feelings, our satisfaction, our possessions—we become oblivious to the uncertainties of life and to the frequent instability of the world in which we live.

In the end to think only of ourselves makes us more vulnerable. And when we look at the world today, and when we take note of all of the hostile groups that hate America and all of her citizens, vulnerable is the last thing we want to be.

Omar Bradley and World War II

May 26, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune About 70 years ago during World War II, on May 20, 1943, there was a long military parade in Tunis, Tunisia to celebrate the expulsion of the German and Italian armies from North Africa.

General Omar Bradley, a native of Missouri, was there. He was born near Clark, in Randolph County, graduated from Moberly High School, and was married in Columbia.

He graduated at West Point in the class of 1915 and then embarked upon a prominent military career that lasted almost four decades.

By the time Allied forces fought in North Africa during World War II, Bradley was a key leader as a general in a supporting role for General Dwight D. Eisenhower, working alongside General George S. Patton.

As we approach Memorial Day, it is only fitting that we remember Bradley’s service, as well as those of thousands of Americans who helped free North Africa and Europe from fascist oppression 70 years ago.

Pulitzer Prize winning author Rick Atkinson has written three volumes about World War II. In An Army at Dawn, the first of the trilogy, he detailed the importance of what the Allied forces accomplished in North Africa in 1942 and 1943.

Atkinson wrote that while the Allied efforts there were not successful at first, Africa was a training ground in which they gained valuable combat experience.

This was extremely important, enabling Allied forces to be much better prepared when they later invaded the heart of Europe to face seasoned German armies.

Atkinson wrote that quite frankly, American efforts in the earliest days in North Africa were not good; similar military engagements later would have been disastrous.

He wrote, “Given the dozens of Wehrmacht divisions waiting behind the Atlantic Wall, France would have been a poor place to be lousy in.”

But that was not to be. North Africa enabled the average soldier on the ground to become much better.

It also was a time in which some of the war’s best commanders proved their mettle. Out of North Africa the military leadership of Eisenhower, Bradley, and Patton was honed, as well as that of the British General Bernard Montgomery.

The experience of North Africa also helped American fighting forces to be fully vested and gain a greater sense of clarity about what they were fighting for. They had a renewed commitment, a sharpened focus, and a more disciplined approach. In short, they were more determined and became better soldiers.

According to Atkinson, one soldier wrote, “We all feel we’ve got something to fight for and something to live for, and we go along every day with the hope and the prayer on our lips that we can soon be on our journey home.”

The same dedication has remained a part of American military efforts to this very day.

The motto at West Point (Duty, Honor, Country) sums up the ideals of the United States Army. In addition, American military personnel speak with sincere love of their country, their strong belief that they serve to protect their home, and their commitment to their brothers in arms.

It is a history and a tradition of which America can be proud.

What happened in North Africa 70 years ago this month is but one example of such pride. It was also a crucial chapter in the story of World War II, where Americans were tremendously influential in saving the world for democracy.

When the parade took place in Tunis 70 years ago, it celebrated the freeing of a continent.

But then, like today, the American military could not rest long, because preparedness and planning required their constant attention. There were yet more battlefields to enter.

In Tunis 70 years ago, Americans knew that even though Africa was liberated, their work wasn’t done.

As Atkinson wrote, “Beyond Tunis Harbor, just over the horizon, another continent waited.”

D-Day: Appreciating a Tremendous Sacrifice

May 27, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

A student was in my office earlier this year for conduct that was disrespectful and disruptive. The poor behavior stemmed from the student not wanting to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance.

Now, for the record, we do not force students to stand for the pledge, but there is a firm expectation in place that we show respect for the country’s flag. This expectation is modeled by the Jefferson City High School faculty each morning when the pledge is said.

By far, the overwhelming majority of the student body is very respectful and participates in the daily Pledge of Allegiance.

In addition, a number of student groups have participated in ceremonies and fund-raising activities for veterans in our area. In short, most all Jefferson City students have a tremendous respect for their country and the men and women who serve it.

In this particular instance, however, a student was asked to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance but refused, and then argued with the teacher so vehemently that he made the situation in to a classroom disruption.

As a result, he ended up in the office. Please understand that he was in no way going to be disciplined for whatever his views were concerning the American flag, but he forced us to deal with the disruption in class that compromised the learning environment.

Often when a student is in the office for a disciplinary reason, we try to utilize it as a teaching opportunity.

So I simply asked him why he didn’t feel it was important to stand during the Pledge of Allegiance.

His answer was pretty shallow.

“My feet hurt,” he said. “I didn’t feel like standing.”

As one of millions of Americans who take pride in our country, I didn’t appreciate that answer. In fact, I was offended by the disregard that was conveyed in his voice.

On the other hand, I wasn’t about to respond with any level of anger, because if I assaulted this young man’s dignity it wasn’t going to make the situation any better.

I also understand that our country is not going to cease to exist because of the views of one misguided teenager, but it will cease to be great if we produce generations of students who don’t appreciate America’s heritage and the ideals for which she stands.

With that in mind, I remembered that we must educate all of our young people, sometimes one student at a time, one lesson at a time.

On the wall in my office I have a few items from the National World War II Museum in New Orleans, and some other items honoring the sacrifices of our veterans.

I directed this student to a framed poster depicting photos of the D-Day invasion in 1944.

“Do you know what D-Day is?” I asked him.

He did not.

I told him briefly about how during World War II thousands of American, British, and Canadian soldiers invaded France to free it from the grip that Adolf Hitler had on most of Europe. I told him that many of them were killed almost instantly when they landed on the beaches.

“I know you said that you didn’t want to stand for the Pledge of Allegiance because your feet hurt,” I said, “but you should at least consider standing out of respect for them.”

He said he understood.

I continued. “If your feet hurt today, I’m sorry, but you need to understand that a lot of those guys couldn’t stand for the Pledge of Allegiance after that battle because their legs were blown off. You might at least consider standing up for them.”

He didn’t argue.

Tomorrow is Memorial Day, and while we always talk of the appropriateness of pausing and remembering our veterans in a special way, that in and of itself may not be enough.

Perhaps it is time that we commit to having important discussions with our children about the sacrifices that have been made on our behalf, about the meaning of duty and honor, about the importance of understanding our history, about the great benefits of patriotism, and about the important symbolism embodied in our country’s flag.

To fail to do so is to foster widespread apathy and a lack of appreciation for the greatness that is America.

D-Day: What it Means

June 3, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

Each year as we approach June 6, my mind is drawn to what happened during the D-Day invasion on that day in 1944.

During this time of year, we have a series of patriotic observations which include Memorial Day, Flag Day, and the Fourth of July. Often D-Day, on June 6, isn’t commemorated in the same way as the rest.

But perhaps it should be.

In school it is important for students to learn the details of D-Day, as well as other crucial times in history.

On June 6, 1944, as you may recall, thousands of American, British, and Canadian troops began the invasion of France in an effort to free Europe from the tyranny of Adolf Hitler.

There was very little debate about whether 18 and 19-year old Americans should be there. Most people understood it was a job that had to be done.

In the years since then, historians have hailed the significance of D-Day, saying it was perhaps the most pivotal moment in the entire 20th century, because it was on that day that it was determined whether the world would have to defer to a cruel government that engulfed all of Europe, or whether countries had the right to be free.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower agonized over the decision on when the invasion should begin.

Would the weather cooperate? Could the enemy be surprised by the choice in logistics? Had spies learned of the invasion plans?

After meeting with his top officers and advisors on the evening of June 5, Eisenhower said simply, “Okay, let’s go.” As the order was given, Eisenhower knew he was inevitably sending many young men in to the battle and to their deaths.

It was not an easy thing to do.

Parts of the invasion were horrifying. If you have seen the beginning of the movie Saving Private Ryan, then you got a glimpse of what some of D-Day was like.

Historian Steven Ambrose described the young Americans who fought in D-Day, men of whom he wrote were “born in to the false prosperity of the 1920s and brought up in the bitter realities of the Depression of the 1930s….”

“None of them wanted to be part of another war,” he wrote. “They wanted to be throwing baseballs, not hand grenades, shooting .22s at rabbits, not M-1s at other young men. But when the test came, when freedom had to be fought for or abandoned, they fought. They were soldiers of democracy. They were the men of D-Day, and to them we owe our freedom.”

Ambrose later wrote of how Walter Cronkite interviewed Eisenhower 20 years after D-Day in 1964. The two were on Omaha Beach, where part of the invasion took place.

Eisenhower said, “It’s a wonderful thing to remember what those fellows…were fighting for and sacrificing for, what they did to preserve our way of life. Not to conquer any territory, not for any ambitions of our own. But to make sure that Hitler could not destroy freedom in the world.”

He continued, “I think it’s just overwhelming. To think of the lives that were given for that principle, paying a terrible price on this beach alone, on that one day, 2,000 casualties. But they did it so that the world could be free.”

D-Day: 70 Years Later

June 1, 2014Jefferson City News Tribune

About a year ago my children, knowing my appreciation for history and my respect for war veterans, gave me a book for Father’s Day called The D-Day Companion.

It was originally published in 2004 to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the great D-Day invasion in which the United States and her allies began reclaiming Europe from the clutches of Adolph Hitler during World War II. It is a great tribute to any commemoration of D-Day.

Now the 70th anniversary of D-Day is upon us and it should not go unnoticed.

Quite simply, June 6, 1944 was one of the most crucial moments in history. According to historian Stephen Ambrose, young American citizen-soldiers did their part to make sure the world would be safe for democracy.

Ambrose wrote in his book D-Day, June 6, 1944, The Climactic Battle of World War II, “…when the test came, when freedom had to be fought for or abandoned, they fought. Theywere soldiers of democracy. They were the men of D-Day, and to them we owe our freedom.”Historian Carlo D’Este wrote, “The significance of D-Day cannot be overestimated… it meant that at long last the struggle was being taken directly to Nazi Germany, and that the liberation of Europe was at hand.”

Major Dick Winters was a veteran of World War II in the U.S. Army’s 101st Airborne Division in an elite company of paratroopers.

He passed away on Jan. 2, 2011 but his words continue to live on in numerous publications. His role in World War II was extensively profiled in the book Band of Brothers by Ambrose, which was made in to a 2001 HBO mini-series.

Winters wrote in the Forward of The D-Day Companion about his D-Day flight in the darkness from Britain to France over the English Channel. As a prelude to the invasion, they were to parachute in to a designated drop zone behind enemy lines. They had specific military objectives and would likely engage the enemy before the main invasion began at daylight.

“My mind filled with the excitement of being a vital part of the biggest invasion in history,” he wrote, “and the tremendous responsibility I now faced of leading men in actual battle, all of us for the first time. I prayed that I was up to the challenge.”

According to a book by historian Gerald Astor called June 6, 1944 The Voices of D-Day, paratrooper Ed Jeziorski told a similar story as he was flown in to combat. “…I was apprehensive,” he said, “as to what lay ahead. I did say a prayer, asking God to let me do the job for which I had been trained, and not to let my buddies down.”

Stories such as these were common. Seventy years ago, literally thousands and thousands of Americans in the armed forces faced fearful scenarios as they were ushered in to battle.

They were afraid because they were human. But time after time after time, they forged ahead anyway, in spite of their fears. They simply had a job to do and an enemy to defeat.

America’s future depended upon their success and they didn’t let her down.

Winters wrote, “D-Day was the beginning of the end of Hitler’s dream of conquering all Europe and eventually the world. At last the tide was turned and he was on the defensive.”

D’Este wrote the conclusion of The D-Day Companion this way: “Each June the attention of the world is once again focused on Normandy. It is an occasion to re-affirm that the sacrifice of those who fought the battles and campaigns of the most devastating war in history will never go unremembered. It was that common purpose, the spirit and grit shown on D-Day, that has permitted democracies to survive. That is what we celebrate on June 6.”

70 Years Ago: Victory in Europe

May 3, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

The headlines, eight columns wide and four lines deep, extended all the way across the top of the May 8, 1945 New York Times.

“The War in Europe is Ended! Surrender is Unconditional. V-E will be Proclaimed Today.”

That was 70 years ago. Victory in Europe had been achieved. Germany had fallen to the United States and her Allies, and there was hope that the end of World War II was near.

On Friday we should pause and reflect on the importance of V-E Day.

Historian Stephen Ambrose wrote that V-E Day “was the occasion for the greatest outburst of joy in human history…. The end of the war was the single best thing that could happen to every person alive in 1945.”

History records the details of the event quite well.

General Dwight D. Eisenhower, in his 1948 book Crusade in Europe wrote about how a German delegation surrendered at his headquarters: “the surrender instrument was signed … at two forty-one in the morning on May 7. All hostilities were to cease at midnight May 8.”

Orders went out to Allied forces, including the American General Omar Bradley, who communicated to other American generals near the front lines of battle. Americans didn’t want to suffer any more casualties so commanders were ordered to stop their advance.

General George S. Patton met with his staff the next morning and told them it would be their last briefing in Europe (Patton had hopes that they would be transferred to Asia, where they would help defeat Japan).

Soon there was uncontrollable pandemonium throughout France, Britain, and almost all of war-torn Europe.

In America the news of Germany’s defeat was met with celebrations, prayers, and tears.

Dr. Peter Marshall delivered a dedication message on V-E Day in Washington D.C. at the New York Avenue Presbyterian Church.

“This is a day we have long waited for,” he began.

He spoke of how the people of Europe could put their lives back together after seeing such destruction. “Now the lights can go on again,” he said, “and the air raid shelters can be torn down, for the sirens will not wail again in the night, and blessed sleep will once more be possible.”

He told of Americans who sacrificed their lives. “They are the dead—the fallen—who paid the price,” he said. “They are one, now, with their comrades of yesteryears, who did not lose their lives, but who gave them for all that America is, and for all she yet may be.”

In the days that followed, there was much to reflect upon.

Patton, according to historian Carlo D’Este, wrote, “The one honor which is mine and mine alone is that of having commanded such an incomparable group of Americans, the record of whose fortitude, audacity and valor will endure as long as history lasts.” Patton also wrote in his General Order for V-E Day, “In proudly contemplating our achievements let us never forget our heroic dead whose graves mark the course of our victorious advances…”

Pulitzer Prize winning author Rick Atkinson wrote in The Guns at Last Night of how, after V-E Day, Europeans could once again turn on the lights of their homes and their cities without fear of becoming easy targets for enemy bombs. “For the first time in nearly six years,” he wrote, “the sun set on a Europe without front lines, a Europe at peace….Night stole over the continent… Darkness enfolded a thousand battlefields… and the lights came on again.”

Much of history chronicles how armies have marched to stop evil’s devastating impact.

We can hope the history of our generation will greatly resemble the history of the accomplishments of the generation of Americans that won World War II. Of that generation, history accurately concludes that they did whatever it took to stop atrocities and restore stability in the world.

70 Years Ago: Hiroshima, Nagasaki

August 9, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

Hiroshima. Nagasaki.

The names of those two Japanese cities will forever be linked to the use of atomic weapons by the United States at the end of World War II.

Hiroshima was devastated on Aug. 6, 1945 and Nagasaki on Aug. 9. That was seventy years ago.

President Harry S. Truman, originally from Independence, Missouri, authorized using the atom bombs.

Early in 1945 Americans took the Pacific island of Iwo Jima from the Japanese, costing the lives of 7,000 U.S. Marines. The Americans took Okinawa in June and lost 12,500 more lives in the process.

A massive invasion of Japan was planned later; it was estimated that 250,000 Americans would die before the enemy was defeated.

To prevent such a bloodbath, President Truman ordered the use of the atomic weapons.

According to historian David McCullough, Truman said months afterwards, “It occurred to me that a quarter of a million of the flower of our young manhood were worth a couple of Japanese cities, and I still think they were and are.”

Truman spoke to the nation after the new weapon was detonated on the Japanese cities, saying it was utilized “in order to shorten the agony of war, in order to save the lives of thousands and thousands of young Americans.”

Devastating as the atomic bombs were, they made it possible for those thousands and thousands of young Americans to live to old age.

I’ve talked to some of them and so have you.

I remember speaking in church on Aug. 6, 1995. It was the 50th anniversary of the dropping of the first atomic bomb on Japan and I felt impelled to say a word of thanks to all of those in the crowd who were born in 1930 or earlier.

I asked the World War II generation to stand (both men and women) and I told them how the rest of us had no idea what it was like to go through the experiences they did in the Great Depression and in World War II and that we appreciated their tremendous sacrifices. We gave them a round of applause to show our appreciation.

Another great ovation is in order today for that generation of Americans.

We need to say thank you to all of them—to those who are 85 years old or older. They saved the world from tyranny and then built the greatest economy the world has seen.

It would be appropriate for all of us to commit to building upon their accomplishments and to emulate their dedication, their work ethic, their sacrifice, and their faith.

70 Years Ago: Surrender, and a New Beginning

August 30, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

In Tokyo Bay, on board the battleship USS Missouri on Sept. 2, 1945, World War II officially came to a close.

General Douglas MacArthur presided over the proceedings.

On Wednesday it will be the 70th anniversary of that event and it might be good to ask if we are looking to the future with the same optimism and hope that they were on that day.

General MacArthur spoke extremely eloquently at that event. His words, and the words of others, commemorate this anniversary extremely well.

“We are gathered here,” MacArthur said, “representatives of the major warring powers, to conclude a solemn agreement whereby peace may be restored.”

He continued: “…it is for us, both victors and vanquished, to rise to that higher dignity which alone befits the sacred purposes we are about to serve…”

MacArthur concluded: “It is my earnest hope and indeed the hope of all mankind that from this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out of the blood and carnage of the past—a world founded upon faith and understanding—a world dedicated to the dignity of man and the fulfillment of his most cherished wish for freedom, tolerance and justice.”

President Harry S. Truman said on Sept. 1, 1945: “It is our responsibility—ours, the living—to see to it that this victory shall be a monument worthy of the dead who died to win it.”

History teaches us that peace and security come at a tremendous cost. It also preserves the words of those who lived before us, words that contain insight as to how we should move forward.

MacArthur’s words are saturated with the ideas of responsibility and duty. He told of how “peace may be restored,” of how we should aspire to a “higher dignity,” and to remember our “sacred purposes.”

He said that we should build a better world out of “the blood and carnage of the past.”

Truman said we should live our own lives in such a way that it is a tribute to those who died.

Abraham Lincoln said in the Gettysburg address, “that we highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.”

The preamble to the U.S. Constitution states clearly that one main reason our government was established was to “secure the blessings of liberty.”

Clearly, Americans who lived through such difficult times have much to say about our moral obligation to learn from the past and to look to the future with the greatest of noble intentions.

Again and again, America has been the recipient of good fortune; its people have endured hardship and the country has been preserved even during many times of turmoil.

Americans today were born in to freedom but it comes with a serious obligation. We shouldn’t act as if we have a license to do anything and everything we may feel without respect to anyone or anything else. The idea of freedom, rather, must be balanced with a great sense of responsibility to conduct our lives accordingly.

We have been entrusted with the “blessings of liberty” but every generation has to do its part to keep liberty secure.

Seventy years ago Americans understood that. They were trying to make sense of life at the end of a gruesome world war. They knew that even though the battlefields were silent, there was still much work to be done. But do we understand that today?

50 Years Ago: An Inspiring Dream

August 25, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

On Wednesday, Aug. 28, it will be the 50th anniversary of Dr. Martin Luther King’s “I have a dream speech” at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington D.C.

It is a date that cannot go by unnoticed.

“I have a dream …” Dr. King said, again and again, as his speech gained momentum, as his passion soared, and as the cadence captivated listeners.

The speech is known for its historical significance, for its message of fairness and equality, and for its majestic delivery.

“I have a dream…”

Generations of Americans can still hear Dr. King’s voice as they honor his memory.

Dr. Roy Buckelew was one of my college professors and he spoke very admirably about Dr. King. Dr. Buckelew was a speech professor fascinated by memorable speeches made by great orators.

He told us how he heard Dr. King’s “I have a dream” speech on his car radio when it was originally delivered on Aug. 28, 1963.

“I was so caught up in the rhythm of the speech,” Dr. Buckelew said, “that I had to pull my car over and just listen to it.”

He was, like many Americans, truly mesmerized by Dr. King’s delivery.

But while he was impressed with the captivating address, he was moved even more by the greatness of the man.

Dr. Buckelew used to tell us that one of the key ingredients of a good speech was that it be delivered by “a good man.” By “good man” he meant that the person making the speech be one of great passion and great character, and one that spoke with great conviction from the very depths of his being.

Dr. King fit the bill in that regard and Dr. Buckelew knew it.

And he made sure we knew it.

Dr. Buckelew had a positive influence on hundreds of students over the years and I was one of those. Dr. King had a great impact on entire generations, including my own.

Both men were great within their own sphere of influence, but it was Dr. King who had the much bigger stage.

As we know, his life was abruptly ended by an assassin’s bullet in Memphis on March 29, 1968. Dr. Buckelew died of natural causes on Aug. 18, 2005.

One of Dr. Buckelew’s students wrote, “Roy was a big man in stature, life, and spirit. He had that robust, polished voice of a professional speaker with the gentleness and kindness of a grandfather.”

One of his colleagues said, “…he clearly felt that he was here for the students and not the other way around. He was adamant that relationships were more important than rules and abstract concepts…. I believe his influence will be with us for a long time.”

I deeply appreciated learning from a good man like Dr. Buckelew and I’m glad he pointed us to other great individuals like Martin Luther King, Jr.

And I’m extremely proud of a country that produced both.

50 years ago: A devastating tragedy

November 17, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

“The death of John F. Kennedy became a participatory American tragedy, a drama both global and intensely intimate.” – Time Magazine, November 14, 1983

On Oct. 7, 1945, President Harry S. Truman visited the southeast Missouri town of Caruthersville to speak at the Pemiscot County Fair at the American Legion Fairgrounds.

During his visit Truman stayed at the Chaffin Motor Inn in the downtown area of Caruthersville.

It was a historic occasion for the Mississippi River community.

Eighteen years later, in the fall of 1963, the Chaffin Motor Inn was still standing, but it had lost much of the luster it had during Truman’s historic visit.

It was simply one of several aging buildings in the heart of a calm community.

Eighteen years later it was an ordinary fall day in Caruthersville without all of the excitement of a presidential visit.

But my Dad was there.

On Nov. 22, 1963 he was tuck pointing the Chaffin Motor Inn where Truman once spent the night.

(Tuck pointing, incidentally, is a masonry restoration process in which new mortar is put in between the bricks on an existing building, making it stronger and more water resistant. It’s what my dad’s construction business is based on, and I grew up learning all about it).

I don’t remember the details of Nov. 22, 1963 because I wasn’t in Caruthersville with my Dad. I was also too young to remember. I was 22 months old; my younger brother was only three months old.

But Dad remembers.

A man walking through the alley behind the Chaffin told him that President Kennedy had been killed in Dallas.

That was 50 years ago, and Dad remembers the day in detail, just as other Americans who are old enough to remember.

An article in the November 1983 Life magazine began this way: “Of the …Americans now living who can recall the events that began on November 22, 1963, most know exactly what they were doing when they learned about the shooting of John F. Kennedy. It was that kind of moment—terrifying, deeply painful, beyond rationality—and one could struggle back to a bearable reality only by framing the huge unacceptable truth, a vital young president gone, within the banal margins of one’s own life. That tragic event and the four days that followed it drew the stunned attention of the world.”

A lot of Americans took off work once they heard about the tragedy. Schools were dismissed and the country went in to a collective time of mourning.

Years later, CBS News Anchor Walter Cronkite, who had announced Kennedy’s death on television in 1963, wrote, “There’s no question the assassination was a serious blow to our national psyche—to have a president killed, and in particular one who had inspired a following among youth to the degree he had. The trauma was very deep.”

My Dad couldn’t start mourning or reflecting much that fall afternoon. As the provider for our very young family, he had to finish his work day. Every day was an opportunity to earn a few more dollars to take care of our needs.

But for almost 50 years now, America has tried to make sense of what happened in Dallas in November of 1963. And as a nation we still can’t fully come to grips with it.

On Friday, we mark the 50th anniversary of that tragedy. The day will be one in which Kennedy will be remembered to be sure, but it should also be a day in which we examine how we help each other through such national heartache.

JFK’s assassination was an extremely difficult time. And so was the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger on Jan. 28, 1986. And so were the horrific events of Sept. 11, 2001. And to a lesser extent, so was the assassination attempt on President Ronald Reagan on March 30, 1981.

Whether we realize it or not, deep heartfelt tragedy forces us to go on an introspective journey together and narrows our focus to what is most important.

Ben Bradlee was a friend of Kennedy and a journalist for Newsweek at the time of the assassination. He later became the executive editor of the Washington Post. Years after the assassination, he wrote in his autobiography A Good Life, “Death triggers an introspective search for truth and meaning. The death of a president brings forth a rush of experts to help or complicate this search, and their work is never done. The violent death of John Kennedy played on the natural paranoia of Americans, and made it the most analyzed death in the country’s history. The evaluation, and reevaluation, continues unabated…”

CHAPTER SIX: CULTURE

Using Facebook Responsibly

October 30, 2011Jefferson City News Tribune

We’ve all heard of Facebook, an online community created by Mark Zuckerberg that boasts having more than 800 million users worldwide.

Practically anyone can have a Facebook page and communicate with family or friends, or reconnect with long-lost acquaintances. And one can’t help but wonder if there is potential to do much, much more with Facebook than simply stay in touch.

Facebook, like almost any tool, can be used for great good or can be used irresponsibly to create unneeded turmoil.

Schools have been innovative enough to have their own Facebook pages to help get the word out about important happenings within their districts. Missouri is still debating exactly what the limits should be when it comes to teacher-student contact in cyberspace, but the fact remains that Facebook has great potential to be helpful.

There is, however, a dark side to Facebook’s influence.

In every community, students are able to communicate non-stop via Facebook pages. And what are they communicating? It’s not all good.

Through Facebook, students can make threats, try to intimidate others, bully their classmates, and slander families. It happens on a daily basis.

The unfortunate part is, when two or more students get in to a confrontation such as this, (whether it is through texting, Facebook, or some other social media), there is a ripple effect that carries over in to schools.

There are weekly instances in which two students have a conflict at school (and sometimes it gets physical) over something that someone posted on Facebook.

And as school officials try to preserve the peace by wading through the cyber drama that comes their way each week, one has to ask, where is Facebook’s responsibility in all of this?

There is no doubt an expectation that every student is responsible for his or her own conduct. Speech and actions that are inflammatory are certainly the responsibility of those who initiated them, whether it is in cyberspace or anywhere else.

If, however, there are conflicts and disruptions at school as a result of what is posted on Facebook, shouldn’t Facebook own a part of that problem?

In Facebook’s defense, they can claim that this is a First Amendment issue concerning free speech. They can further reason that they are merely a platform or a vehicle of communication which individuals have chosen to use.

So, Facebook is absolved from any of the fallout, right?

Wrong.

While we are a country that holds Constitutional rights dearly close, none of those rights work out in real life if one cannot practice responsibility and take a reasonable approach in dealing with others.

Facebook has a right in our free enterprise system to do business as they see fit and Facebook users have the Constitution behind their regular cyberspace communication with others. There still, however, comes a point when everyone must realize that responsible behavior has to be the rule of the day.

And that includes everyone from Mark Zuckerburg, who should know better, to the immature teenager who may not.

Learning from the Super Bowl

January 15, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

Super Bowl XLVI is three weeks away, and it’s not just of interest to football fans. It is a cultural event that borders upon being a national holiday.

It also represents a vast learning opportunity for students in school.

A teacher who thinks outside the box can orchestrate interesting learning based upon such a major event because students—like all of us—naturally gravitate towards topics that are current, meaningful, or relevant.

The future of education requires such creativity from teachers, and the National Football League’s upcoming Super Bowl game fits the bill; it can be a vehicle to learn about global connectedness, culture, communication, economics, and technology.

Because many students are more proficient with the internet than most adults, the teacher simply needs to provide guidance as the students embark upon their learning journey.

In the case of the Super Bowl, which will be on Feb. 5 in Indianapolis, students can research how a city prepares to host the game, and the economic impact such an event brings to a region and to business elsewhere.

Guiding questions for students to consider would include: What has the city of Indianapolis done to prepare for the event? What about the state of Indiana?

Does the state highway department have special considerations? Are the interstate highways leading in to Indianapolis prepared for the volume of traffic connected with Super Bowl week, or is special road work needed? (Incidentally, it was).

Students might also discover how many jobs are created or enhanced as a result of the game and the festivities that surround it. Does it affect hotels, tourism, law enforcement, security, stadium maintenance, parking, supervision, public relations?

How does the Department of Homeland Security guard against any possible terrorist activity? Does their role influence how others do their jobs?

Does the event affect the political climate? How do elected officials and government employees participate in making sure the game and the crowd is handled?

Does the game influence the work of various vendors? What kind of impact does it have on the restaurant business?

What role do individuals in the media play during Super Bowl week? Can students research the jobs of reporters, editors, broadcasters, and webpage designers? Can they study the impact of television, radio, newspaper, or online advertising surrounding the game?

No single individual has all the answers to these questions, but the beauty of guiding children in this kind of discovery activity is that both teachers and students learn together.

And learn they will, because a current event such as this has the potential to spark a natural curiosity in students that is not satisfied until answers are obtained.

In their quest to satisfy that curiosity, students must be given the opportunity to research, question, discover, and to develop their oral and written communication skills as they report the findings of their learning.

It is a departure from the traditional approach in schools, but one whose time has come.

Learning from Pink Floyd

January 29, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

Many of you may have heard of Pink Floyd, an English rock band that started in 1965.

In 1979, Pink Floyd released a song called Another Brick in the Wall, which, when you listen to the words, has a message which rants against organized education.

In the song you can hear the words of an English school master chiding students with comments such as, “You! Yes, you! Stand still laddie!” and “Wrong! Do it Again!”

While many adults, including educators, may like the song (it sold four million copies), it will never gain credibility with teachers for its abuse of grammar or its message. The words, in part, say, “We don't need no education, We don’t need no thought control, No dark sarcasm in the classroom, Teachers leave them kids alone …”

Many of us often pass off such a rebellious expression by categorizing the rebel in question as one who is going to rail against the establishment no matter what, and we often assume that the anti-establishment tone is generated from individuals who just cannot get along with others and have no respect for the prevailing norms of society.

Certainly an individual’s attitude comes in to play, but in the case of the words in Another Brick in the Wall, is there something communities and schools can learn?

Another Brick in the Wall is a well-known song that has stood the test of time and was performed by an extremely talented group, but it is basically a song of protest against schools.

Is its message simply to be dismissed as coming from the disgruntled, or should we ask ourselves why attitudes such as these develop?

Furthermore, is it fair to ask questions about why some students don’t like school or who is to blame when students end up hating school?

Countless studies have been done to grapple with such questions, but for our purposes here, it might be insightful to focus on one line from Another Brick in the Wall.

In the short list of what the song says students do not need, it includes the statement, “No dark sarcasm in the classroom…”

Is it possible that the author of these lyrics, at some point in life, took issue with the words of a teacher, or perhaps how the teacher said something?

Is it possible that the writer of the song, at some point in school, felt disrespected, humiliated, or belittled by the careless words of an educator?

When we look at the words, and see the overall tone of the song, we have to conclude that such an origin is at least a possibility.

It is indeed bizarre when one thinks about it, that perhaps a teacher spoke inappropriately to students years ago, perhaps in the 1950s, and now the results of that negative interchange continues to reverberate to millions today, through the medium of music.

We are often reminded that there is an appropriate and respectful way to interact with others. We can’t be harsh, condescending, irritable, or unkind. But being human, any one of us can sometimes fail in that regard.

What is unfortunate is that when a teacher uses the wrong words or the wrong tone, it makes a negative impression upon a child that can remain for years.

We must be careful about how we speak and act towards each other. Teachers have an extra burden to bear, because their words can make impressions that last a lifetime. Those words must be chosen with care.

We can thank the members of Pink Floyd for reminding us that “dark sarcasm” or any negative communication in class serves no purpose and provides no benefit.

So, while most educators would never come to this conclusion, we can see that in a round-about way, Pink Floyd teaches a valuable lesson about encouraging students and dealing with them respectfully.

They just missed it entirely when it comes to good grammar.

Learning about the Eagles

Jefferson City News TribuneFebruary 19, 2012

It matters not what community or what school you are talking about; when working with today’s students it is a serious mistake to assume that their world is the same as the one most of us grew up in.

It’s not.

Let there be no misunderstandings though. Students are still students, and they grow up feeling some of the same apprehensions and anxieties that students felt in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. But their world is different. Many families are different. The economy is different. Entertainment is different.

Months ago I was visiting informally with a Jefferson City High School student. He was singing to himself, and I asked what it was.

He said it was a song they were working on in choir.

I asked a question off the top of my head. “Do you guys ever sing anything by the Eagles?”

His reply was a bit amusing. “What’s that? Are they a band?”

I couldn’t help but chuckle. “Yes, they were a band,” I said.

Now, bear in mind that I don’t expect students to know all about the music that was big decades ago, but many teenagers today have at least heard of the Eagles. Or Michael Jackson, or Queen, or Bon Jovi, or any number of performers from a few years back.

But this young man had not heard of the Eagles, and that’s okay. His next comment, however, further demonstrated his naiveté.  

“Where they any good?” he asked.

At that point I couldn’t help myself. I laughed out loud. Please understand I wasn’t laughing at the student, but at what he said. In the midst of my laughter, I managed to tell the student that he just needed to Google the Eagles.

Where they any good? Most likely, anyone who is 30 years old or older knows that the Eagles were pretty good, and their talent is acknowledged by people who don’t even care for that kind of music.

But in schools today, we aren’t working with students who have an understanding of 30 years ago. The world of 30 years ago worked differently on a day-to-day basis than the world of today.

In education, we have to understand that and conduct our business accordingly. To fail to do so would be to fail to do the best we can for our students.

A book called Change Leadership, authored by several experts, emerged from the Change Leadership Group, an initiative of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

In that book, the authors explained that many of today’s students, because of the circumstances surrounding their upbringing, do not have a respect for authority or a disciplined approach to life.

In short, this means, for better or for worse, students don’t always look at things the way most adults do.

The authors call for an educational system that focuses on what motivates students to learn.

They wrote, “The reality is that students who lack self-control and who have less respect for authority are far more difficult to reach and to motivate by traditional means.”

The implication is that the traditional approach to education is not always appropriate, and certainly not always effective.

Whether students know who the Eagles are doesn’t matter much, but we need to remember there is much more that students don’t know and can’t possibly understand, because their perspective is limited to only that which they have experienced in the 21st century.

There is not simply a generation gap between students and adults about music or work or education; there is a gap in the perspectives of different generations who grew up in different worlds.

And even in different centuries.

The authors of Change Leadership put it well: “…all of us who are concerned with education today need to work together to understand the new challenges for teaching, learning, and parenting in the twenty-first century.”

We should proceed with that in mind.

Young People Today

April 1, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

Recently I overheard a conversation in a restaurant between two college students.

It was simple communication, but I had to wonder, what if one were hearing it in the year 1985? How much of the conversation would have made sense about 25 years ago?

Here’s how it went:

Student 1: Where you gonna be later?

Student 2: Dunno. If I go out, I’ll let you know. (The conversation is pretty understandable so far, but read on).

Student 1: You gonna hit me up?

Student 2: Yeah.

Student 1: I ain’t got no line.

Student 2: No? I’ll go online.

Student 1: All right. Facebook.

Student 2: See ya.

Long story short, one student didn’t have a phone that was working (a rare instance these days) and the two students planned to communicate later through the internet.

With apologies for the poor grammar and the slang terms of the conversation, I must ask, would any of us, in 1985, have understood what was being said?

“No line” was a reference to no cell phone, but 25 years ago, none of us envisioned everyone carrying a smart phone.

Going online was a reference to the internet, but few had heard of the internet in 1985.

And as for Facebook? If you heard that term in 1985, wouldn’t you have instinctively asked, “What is Facebook?”

There is no doubt that technology is changing how we do things and how we communicate, even if we are engaging in an old-fashioned, face-to-face conversation.

We have seen tremendous change in the last 25 to 30 years, and it is safe to say there will be even more change in the next 25.

So how do we prepare students for a future that we cannot accurately envision?

Educators can teach students what we know about upcoming changes, and we can make good guesses about what might happen in the years ahead, but what about what we don’t know?

How can schools prepare the next generation for that?

How do we prepare them for a world that we do not foresee and for jobs that do not yet exist?

Furthermore, what does the job market demand of today’s high school graduates?

Raymond J. McNulty, in his book It’s Not Us Against Them, provided an answer to these questions.

He wrote, “Whether I talk with college admissions officers or business leaders, I hear the same exhortations: Send us graduates who know how to do more than just fill in the blanks! Send us thinkers! Send us problem-solvers! Send us team players! Send us leaders!”

To be successful in the years ahead, today’s high school graduates need to know how to find information and apply it to problems in the real world.

Their job will not require them to simply recall information. Our world will be far more complex than that.

The future success of our graduates will depend upon their ability to communicate, do collaborative work, and to apply creativity and innovation.

If we help students do that, they will be well on their way to a successful future.

Our world will continue to change, but for students to thrive in the coming years they must be equipped to deal with it, no matter what comes their way.

Technology Today

April 8, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

If you want to view something both interesting and entertaining on the internet, go to YouTube and view the videos called Did You Know?

They are lively presentations, only a few minutes long, that present information about how rapidly our world has been changing.

Here are a few items from those video clips that are technology and information related:

(1) In 1992 there were one million internet devices; today there are one billion.

(2) In 2006 there were 2.7 billion internet searches done each month on Google. Today there are 31 billion Google searches per month.

(3) There are more text messages sent and received each day than the total number of people living on the planet.

(4) Once radio was invented, it took 38 years before it had an audience of 50 million people. It took TV 13 years to gain that large of an audience. It took the internet four years, iPod three years, and Facebook two years.

(5) Every minute, 24 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube.

(6) More than 3,000 new books are published every day.

(7) If Facebook were a country, it would be the world’s third largest.

(8) If Wikipedia were made in to a book, it would be 2.25 million pages.

So what does all of this tell us?

We are seeing an explosion in technology, information, and social media, and it isn’t going to slow down.

What does it mean?

First, it changes how today’s students learn. Young people today are immersed in technology and social media, and they are bombarded with information in a way that previous generations weren’t.

Because of our connectedness through computers or electronic devices, high school and college students can study together and collaborate on work without ever meeting at a designated time and place.

One student can set up a blog, a wiki, or a web page allowing an entire class to share notes, ask questions, and prepare for tests. Students can pool their understanding and support each other’s learning in a way that was not possible only ten years ago.

Second, the explosion of technology and information changes how schools are functioning.

Schools spend thousands of dollars every year on textbooks, supplies, and learning materials, but if none of that were provided, valuable learning could still occur in any class with nothing more than Google and the teacher as a facilitator.

That is not to say that schools should rely solely on the internet, but there are tremendous opportunities for learning through various forms of technology. Those opportunities will only increase in the years ahead.

Third, it changes how we do business.

Technology and social media have transformed how marketers do their work; they know it would be foolish to rely simply on traditional advertising venues. Now products and services must have a presence on the internet.

In addition more and more people (younger generations in particular) are evaluating products, sharing information, and making purchasing choices through what they learn on the internet from others. Most young people are savvy enough to shop on the internet and read reviews by others before they make a purchase.

In a way, social media has allowed customers to by-pass advertising efforts.

Those who best understand how to harness the potential of these changes will be the most successful in the future.

Schools who utilize this explosion in technology and information will best prepare students for the road ahead.

Economic factors today

April 15, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

What country is the richest in the world, has the largest military, is the center of world business and finance, is the center of innovation and invention, has currency that is the world standard in value, and has the strongest education system?

If this question were asked in 1900, the answer was… Great Britain.

If this question were asked 30 or 40 years ago, the answer was clearly the United States.

If this question is asked today, there might be some debate.

Certainly the US continues to be a major player on the world stage, but since 1980 Japan became a major competitor, and in more recent years, China has become an economic force to be reckoned with.

In addition, the oil-rich countries—by draining money from developed countries such as the US—are becoming wealthier and more influential in global affairs.

News headlines often indicate such potential worldwide shifts in power.

A report by the Associated Press on March 25 said from the perspective of other countries such as China, the US is still viewed as the country that sets the pace worldwide in areas such as technology, business, research, and the military.

The mere existence of a news story saying the US is still number one, however, suggests that in some ways the US has been viewed as a country on the decline.

Furthermore, a news report such as this would not have been necessary in past decades, simply because it wouldn’t have been news.

So while we might question whether the US is losing some of its stature as the world’s most powerful and influential, we cannot deny that the future will be one in which the US must work closely with countries who are becoming more economically prominent.

One such developing power is China.

The Chinese have a vast supply of labor and an education system that has more honors students than the United States has students.

The same is true of India.

Those numbers suggest that the US will, in the years ahead, have to work with China and India as business partners, and in some cases, will have to compete with them outright.

In fact, those things are already happening.

An AP story on April 2 told of how a Chinese company named Foxconn is being forced to improve working conditions for its 1.2 million workers.

Foxconn makes more than 40 percent of the world’s electronics products for companies such as Apple, Amazon, Dell, and Hewlitt-Packard.

A company like Foxconn exists because of America’s growing appetite for popular items such as iPhones and iPads. We simply could not secure those items at current prices were it not for business partnerships with China.

We could say our children will do business in that kind of economic climate, but that is not totally accurate.

The truth is, we are already there. It is the 21st century and business is done globally. From this point on, those who are the best-educated and understand the dynamics of connected economies will have the most opportunities to flourish.

Are we ready?

Newspapers and Education

September 30, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

Jefferson City Public Schools and the News Tribune have a history of working together in a very cordial manner as each carries out its very important job.

And the community should be grateful for that.

In many ways, schools and newspapers have a common mission. Both seek to inform, educate, and to contribute to the overall good of the community.

Their missions also differ in some respects. A newspaper is a business, and it has to make money as it monitors and chronicles community events.

A school does not have to make a profit, but at the very least, it should break even financially. For both public and private schools, just barely staying in the black is acceptable as long as students are equipped to be good citizens and to make successful futures.

What communities should not expect from its schools is runaway deficit spending and regularly producing students who are in no way prepared to face life.

And what communities should not expect from any local media outlet is when it unfairly casts an individual, a business, an organization, or an institution in a negative light.

Complete fairness and objectivity must always rule the day.

Both newspapers and schools have missions that are highly noble. The newspaper’s mission has been established by the First Amendment. The school’s mission has been established by the long-standing and widely-held tradition that a well-educated citizenry is vital to our republic.

It is tragic when either institution fails to deliver or fails to work with the other.

I once had the misfortune of working in a school where the town’s newspaper seemed to take great pride in being very critical of the local school district. Everything was opened to scrutiny and the newspaper’s assumption was usually that the school district was in the wrong.

To make matters worse, the newspaper would allow local individuals to anonymously submit opinions of the school or other local organizations.

This practice was nothing other than slanderous, bordering upon libel, and it was done under the guise of fairness, objectivity, and having an open forum. But it wasn’t any of those things. The best thing to say about the practice was that it was irresponsible.

I questioned the publisher and editors at the newspaper concerning this, and they were of the opinion that they were doing nothing wrong. I pointed out that they were quoting unnamed sources that were making claims that could not be substantiated.

Their response was troublesome: “Sorry, but we won’t engage in censorship of our readers.”

Their statement demonstrated that they didn’t know the meaning of censorship. Or responsibility.

I contended then, and I still do, that a newspaper has a responsibility to the community to not assume wrongdoing on the part of public servants such as those who run our schools. Not until the evidence warrants it.

If there is illegal activity concerning how monies are handled, the local media should investigate it thoroughly and report it to the community. If laws are being violated concerning student or parental rights or how the school does business, reporters should be all over it.

But the local media should never elevate hearsay to the level of credibility. To do that is extremely irresponsible and is a violation of the public’s trust.

Members of the media are obligated to adhere to appropriate ethical standards.

Benjamin Franklin helped establish such high standards in the Pennsylvania Gazette more than 250 years ago. He wrote in his autobiography that within his newspaper he “carefully excluded all libeling and personal abuse.” He also wrote that he had an agreement with his subscribers that he would “furnish them with what might be either useful or entertaining” but that he would not fill the paper with “private altercation.”

Not a bad example from Dr. Franklin.

The media must conduct business with the highest of ethical considerations. Ditto for schools.

A Dropout Today

February 17, 2013Jefferson CityNews Tribune

It is in society’s best interest for every student to get a high school education. But that’s not easily accomplished.

In every high school, when the teachers and administrators put in an honest effort day after day, they can get about 85 percent of the students through graduation and on the way to the next phase of life.

To raise that percentage from 85 percent to about 95 percent takes a lot more effort. That’s because at least 10 percent of the student population needs more guidance and support and encouragement to get their high school diploma.

Beyond those numbers, approximately 2-5 percent of the student population struggles tremendously. They don’t just struggle with gaining academic success; they tend to struggle with all of life.

Some of those students have difficult circumstances that most of us never faced growing up. Some have no support at home. Some have a severe case of apathy towards anything related to school, work, or personal success. Some have no ambition at all. Some have no hope that life might be better.

This small percentage of students sometimes comes across as rebels, non-conformists, angry, bitter, hard to deal with, emotionally unstable, and destructive. Because of this it can be easy to give up on them.

But the cost is too high if we do that. Schools have to reach such students and teach them to be successful even if they seem determined to self-destruct.

Many struggling students will make it clear that they don’t like anything about school. After weeks and months in which educators try to work with them without much progress, the natural human reaction is to conclude, “This kid doesn’t want to be here and he’s making everyone miserable. The only logical thing to do is to put him out of school and be done with it.”

For decades, schools have been able to do just that. But it isn’t a solution. When a student can’t function in a regular school setting, putting him or her out of the school is a short term arrangement that only provides some relief to the staff and other students. But the problem remains. Now that the student is out of the school he or she potentially becomes an issue for all of society.

Let me be clear on one point: we can never allow students to remain in school who are a threat to the safety and security of others. We have no choice in the matter but to have those few students removed.

On the other hand, we can’t afford to give up on students who are just plain hard to work with. To do so means they are likely going to be a heavy burden on taxpayers and on the entire community.

In addition, none of us can afford to take the attitude that we won’t worry about it because it’s not our own children. The truth is, we all share in this effort because we all share in the cost when we fail to reach a child.

Dr. Peter Marshall, Chaplain of the United States Senate in 1947 and 1948, gave an illustration in one of his messages that demonstrates why we cannot focus only on our own family, but must have a genuine concern about everyone’s well-being.

He asked his congregation to imagine their home as immaculate with a neat and well-kept lawn. On a beautiful spring day, he said, imagine you are having a family picnic and you spread out a blanket and put your baby down to play. The day would seem perfect.

But what if your neighbors did not keep their house and property in good shape? What if they are not clean and they pile up garbage behind their house? As you try to enjoy your family picnic you must do so with the mess next door in plain sight. When the breeze blows your way, you can smell the stench of the garbage. And unfortunately, even though you try to keep your house in very good order, the flies from the garbage end up at your picnic and some of them are even crawling on your baby’s face.

It’s a graphic picture, but Dr. Marshall was making it clear that one of the profound messages from the book of Genesis implies that all of us are indeed “our brother’s keeper.”

When a school writes off a teenage student now it only means someone may very well have to deal with him or the result of his choices later.

And we can’t kid ourselves. It is extremely hard to get some students graduated. In fact, it sometimes takes a small miracle to get such a student through. But miracles do happen and we reach some students like that every year.

In the end, schools have no choice but to try everything they can to help the most difficult students make it. If we fail, some of them will eventually end up in prison. Some will be relegated to a life of poverty or one that is dependent on government assistance.

Whenever one of those students gets a diploma, however, they at least have a fighting chance to have a better life. And in the years that follow, one of them may live next door to you. And armed with an education and a fresh outlook on life, he or she might be the best neighbor you could ever hope to have.

Insights from The Internship

July 7, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

You may have seen the movie The Internship this summer, starring Vince Vaughn and Owen Wilson.

In the movie, Billy and Nick (played by Vaughn and Wilson) were out of work. They tried a long shot to land a job by working as interns at Google.

The Internship, like all movies, was made for entertainment purposes and to make money. And it was funny.

But it also contains a few insights worth contemplating.

First, no matter what one’s age, it is best to be equipped with up-to-date skills in case you have to change careers. Vaughn and Wilson’s characters found themselves in the uncomfortable position of realizing that they were woefully unprepared to embrace the frequent use of technology in their internship.

One of the challenges in education today is to inspire students to continue learning all of their lives, because they will need to. Projections are that their careers will take a lot of turns in the decades to come.

Second, the workplace of the future—while perhaps not as informal and fun-loving as it was portrayed at Google in the movie—is at the very least a vastly different world than the job

market of the 70s and 80s. It requires employee collaboration, ongoing learning and research, and completing projects in teams.

Third, we see in the movie that in 2013, just as in decades of the past, there is a definite difference from one generation to the next. In the 1960s America acknowledged a “generation gap” and it seems that one has always existed from one era to another. We must understand that the younger generations and the older generations don’t always communicate the same way; nor do they always understand each other.

Fourth, the generation gap in The Internship focused on how the younger generation is more naturally prone to master technology. (How many times have you seen teenagers showing their parents or grandparents how to use their smart phone or even program their DVR?)

Finally, while the younger generations generally do better than their older colleagues at mastering technology, they do not always do as well with real live communication. In the Internship it was clear that the technology-challenged, middle-age characters were the ones who had to carry the day in going face-to-face with potential clients.

So in today’s world of work, which is most important? Mastering electronic communication and the use of digital technology? Or the old-fashioned skills needed to make a warm connection on the human level?

Actually, a person needs both.

And as a result, schools should teach both. And schools should teach them in a way that is meaningful to students in an environment that resembles the workplace today.

Classrooms of years past were lecture-dominated, with lots of information flowing in one direction, from the teacher to the students.

Classrooms today should have learning, questioning, and dialogue going in a number of different directions—teacher to student, student to teacher, and student to student.

Students need to leave high school with both a solid foundation in the latest technology and the age-old skill of working well with people. Both the younger and older generations have a lot to learn concerning these areas of expertise.

We might learn about those areas of expertise by seeing a movie such as The Internship, but we can’t count on that. For schools to do the best job possible, and to give every generation its best chance at success, we must regularly learn all we can from each other.

Five Books Bound to Inspire

July 14, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

What are the best books you’ve ever read? What books have had the biggest impact on your thinking? What books have you enjoyed and appreciated enough to read a second time?

For many individuals the Bible tops their list because of its richness in history, literature, wisdom, and personal spiritual significance.

But outside of the Bible itself, what books make your best-ever list?

Some people prefer novels, and there are certainly scores of good ones that have stood the test of time.

My own list of meaningful favorites, however, focuses on nonfiction. In no particular order here are my top five:

How to Win Friends and Influence People by Dale Carnegie. First published in 1936, it is rich in stories and practical wisdom. At its heart it is a book on personal fulfillment and satisfaction in how we relate to others. I first read it in 1998 and underlined meaningful lines in each chapter. I read it again in 2007 and have referred to it again since then. Particularly insightful was Carnegie’s discussion on how the right mental attitude goes a long way towards our own happiness and how others perceive us. He cited Abraham Lincoln saying, “Most folks are about as happy as they make up their minds to be.”

Winning Every Day by Lou Holtz. This is another book I have read twice; both times I underlined a lot and made some notes. Holtz held college head football coaching jobs at William and Mary, North Carolina State, Arkansas, Minnesota, Notre Dame, and South Carolina, and currently works as an analyst for ESPN. He has also been a highly sought-after motivational speaker. Winning Every Day has several football anecdotes, but it’s far from simply being a book about football. It is a book about attitude, handling adversity, having purpose, good leadership, hard work, and excellence.

Life’s Greatest Lessons, 20 Things that Matter by Hal Urban. Dr. Hal Urban is a teacher, author, speaker, and a proponent of character education in schools. His book Life’s Greatest Lessons is another informative and insightful read that helps clarify the things that are important in life. It is a good book for teachers, parents, grandparents, and young people. Early in his book, Urban wrote, “I discovered long ago that regardless of age, people are eager to learn when it means understanding life more deeply and living it more fully.” And as you read each page, you will embrace the idea of doing just that.

Citizen Soldiers by Stephen Ambrose. The late Stephen Ambrose was inspired as a young college student by one of his history professors. Students engaged in historical research so they would, in the professor’s words, “be contributing to the world’s knowledge.” Ambrose was motivated to do original research ever since, adding to the world’s knowledge, producing several volumes of fascinating history. His books about World War II helped inspire Steven Spielberg to make the movie Saving Private Ryan. In my view, Citizen Soldiers is Ambrose’s best book. It tells the role of American soldiers in Europe in World War II, from their landings on D-Day until the day of the German surrender. It is history that in many places reads as good as a novel. Through his

research and through his interviews with World War II veterans, Ambrose gained a deep respect for their service and it shows in the pages of his books. He wrote, “At the core, the American citizen soldiers knew the difference between right and wrong, and they didn’t want to live in a world in which wrong prevailed.”

Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. This is a book in which the brilliant Cambridge professor C.S. Lewis defends his faith, or more accurately, explains how the Christian faith defends itself by being reasonable and logical, and by standing firm in spite of being assailed by critics for centuries. Lewis, as you may recall, authored the series of children’s books entitled The Chronicles of Narnia, which have been made in to three movies since 2005. Mere Christianity, however, is a book that is deep, intellectual, fascinating, and practical. Lewis begins by going in to great detail to demonstrate that God exists. From there, he explains what Christianity is. Sometimes Mere Christianity is deep and you need to bring your thinking cap. At other times it is refreshingly practical and makes perfect sense, leaving the reader thinking, “Wow. That’s well-put. Why didn’t I understand that before?”

Each of these books had a deep impression on me. Perhaps they would on you as well.

Back to the Future

March 22, 2015Jefferson City News Tribune

Thirty years ago Back to the Future was a top summer movie at the box office.

You will remember that in the movie Marty McFly, played by Michael J. Fox, went 30 years back in time, from 1985 to 1955. And at the end of the movie they took a trip that transported them instantly 30 years in to the future, to the year 2015.

For the rest of us it took the full 30 years to make that trip. But now that we are firmly in the world of 2015, most of us are very well aware that we have plenty to think about.

A dialogue early in the movie between Marty and his principal, Mr. Strickland, provides some insights. You may remember how it went.

Mr. Strickland: “You’ve got a real attitude problem McFly. You’re a slacker. You remind me of your father when he went here. He was a slacker too.”

Marty: “Can I go now Mr. Strickland?”

Mr. Strickland: “I noticed your band is on the roster for the dance auditions after school today. Why even bother McFly? You don’t have a chance. You’re too much like your old man. No McFly ever amounted to anything in the history of Hill Valley.”

Marty: “Yeah, well, history is gonna change.”

The principal in the movie perhaps knew something about how to run a high school but he didn’t appear to know how to talk to teenagers and therein lies our first lesson: There is a right way to deal with students and it is not by insulting them or their family or telling them they won’t amount to anything.

Students are just like all other human beings. A little bit of friendly encouragement can produce great results. Many educators understand this very well, and as a result, they encourage students every hour of every school day.

There are, however, still many instances in which a young person has been told something disheartening. It may have happened 25-30 years ago, or it may have happened as recently as this past week.

How do we know this? Because there are individuals in every community who remember negative comments that were directed their way during their formative years. It may have been something cruel, or insensitive, or inconsiderate. Or it may have been something that was simply misunderstood. But the person who was offended still remembers it, even if he or she is 30 or 40 or 50 years old today.

You might say, “Well life is hard and we all have to deal with it. And we aren’t doing our young people any favors if we don’t teach them to toughen up.”

True. But since life can be challenging enough as it is, why would we want to add to the difficulty by using harsh words? Especially with a young person who needs help developing in to adulthood?

No, as I already said, there is an appropriate way to talk to people. Our students need to learn that lesson, and all adults should remember it.

Our second lesson comes from Marty’s profound reply: “Yeah, well, history is gonna change.”

You may remember from the movie that when Marty went back to 1955 and interacted with his parents he inadvertently caused a few things to turn out differently. In the movie, history literally did change.

The lesson for us today is that in the case of education, history does need to change.

The only catch is that we can’t go back in time; we must start where we are.

Back to the Future reminded us that schools didn’t change very much from the year 1955 to 1985.

And today we might make the case that schools haven’t changed much from 1985 to 2015.

But they must.

Raymond McNulty, in his book It’s Not Us Against Them wrote, “When students walk through the door of most schools, they enter a realm in which time fundamentally stopped long before they were born. Today’s learners live in a world where technology and information are right at their fingertips every minute of the day—except when they are at school.”

The trend of using technology in school is getting better, but the fact remains that schools seem to be one of the slowest institutions in American life to change, not just in technology, but in all other ways.

Our high schools shouldn’t be set up to look like and to operate like the one Marty McFly attended in 1985. But in many ways they are.

Schools don’t need to get back to the future, but they do need to embrace the future. And we’re behind schedule. The future is already here.

CHAPTER SEVEN: PERSONAL

Simplify

October 16, 2011Jefferson City News Tribune

Last weekend was beautiful outside, and I took time to sit and think quietly by picturesque Lake Norfork in North Central Arkansas. A person needs to have moments like that in October (and at other times as well). Our minds weren’t designed to be constantly humming at high speeds and dealing with dozens of stimuli. Simply slowing down and clearing one’s head can be therapeutic.

And sitting outside with nature, somewhere quiet, can sometimes be just the mental and emotional break a person needs from the busy occurrences of life and work.

In the 19th century, American author and philosopher Henry David Thoreau spent a lot of time outside meditating about life, its meaning, and simple living. As a result, he wrote Walden, in which he said he intended “to drive life into a corner, and reduce it to its lowest terms…”

While most of us don’t devote great amounts of time sitting quietly outside as Thoreau did, we can see the benefits of allowing one’s mind to do some quiet contemplating and reorganizing.

In this column each week, we regularly explore thoughts pertaining to education, and at this point, you might ask what any of this has to do with schools in America today.

Well, just as each person needs time to reflect and examine what is most important, school districts must take time to reevaluate what is best for students and what must take priority.

In addition, if an individual finds it necessary to simplify matters and prioritize things in life, one must ask if schools need to do the same.

Today’s society—complicated, busy, and fast-paced—is one in which individuals find themselves scrambling to keep up. Schools, always a reflection of society, often find they are taking on more and more tasks and initiatives each year. In light of that, one can make a case that instead of trying to do everything, schools should focus on doing the most important things well.

In any given year, teachers and school administrators must weigh the benefits of old practices and new, and must also look at research, strategies, possible changes in policy, and proposed initiatives. No school can take on every good idea that is mentioned; they simply must choose to do those that can have the greatest positive impact.

My own personal retreat last weekend resulted in a renewed desire to focus on those things that matter most. Maybe Thoreau would have been pleased.

A more modern writer, the late author and counselor Dr. Alan Loy McGinnis wrote in his book, The Balanced Life, “Each 24-hour period contains ample room to maneuver if you have decided what and who are most important and in what order you will distribute your time.” He further said, “We can easily allow our calendars to fill with nonessentials until they become cumbersome and unwieldy.”

That’s good food for thought for any busy individual, especially those who may feel overwhelmed.

Each person has to address certain questions and set his or her own priorities in life. To fail to do so adds complications and stress.

In the words of Thoreau, “Simplify, simplify.”

Turning 50

January 8, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

On January 8, 1962, I was born in St. Louis.

That means I am 50 years old today.

Wow. That makes a person think.

This column, however, is not about me; nor is it about soliciting birthday wishes. By the time you read this, my family and closest friends have already wished me well anyway.

No, today’s column is about reflecting, and that is what one should do on a 50th anniversary.

Some people say the 50th birthday is no different than any other. It’s just a number.

I disagree. No one places special emphasis on the 49th anniversary of anything. Nor does anyone give extra attention and celebration to a 51st anniversary.

But the 50th? That is always looked upon as something special.

So while this column is not about a birthday, it has everything to do with reflecting upon the importance of what life is all about.

Admittedly, we can’t expect to fully explore the meaning of life in one brief column, but we can at least acknowledge that if a person does not do some serious introspection after 50 years, he or she will probably never do it.

In light of that, here are some thoughts to consider—some deep, some more light-hearted.

First, life goes by quickly.

For most of us, it takes decades to realize this, and then we regret not utilizing and enjoying those youngest years to the fullest. We could have worked harder and still played more.

Charles Hadden Spurgeon, the great British minister of the 1800s, wrote about the brevity of life, explaining that when we contemplate it, our “passions cool in the presence of mortality….”

Second, because life is short, we should be busy getting things done, and enjoying it as we go.

Quite honestly, the person who sets priorities, makes plans, and approaches life with enthusiasm each day accomplishes much, much more. Life is fuller because so much more has been deliberately put in to it.

Benjamin Franklin, who no doubt understood a healthy perspective on life, said, “Dost thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of.”

Third, there are a few things in life that are most important—family, health, peace of mind, spiritual growth—and it is wise to learn what must take priority. The rest is just incidental, and not worth feeling troubled about.

Richard Carlson, author of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff, wrote, “Often we allow ourselves to get all worked up about things that, upon closer examination, aren’t really that big a deal.”

Life can be challenging, difficult, perplexing, unfair, and even painful. But in spite of all that, life can and should be enjoyed. On any given day, we can take in life’s goodness and appreciate special times with loved ones.

Sometimes we have to slow down to gain clarity about what matters most.

That’s what I chose to do on my birthday. You can do the same, on any day.

The 1986 movie Ferris Buehler’s Day Off offered some entertainment value, but didn’t exactly contribute volumes to philosophical views or greatly influence our culture. It did, however, offer one observation at the end that contained a degree of truth.

Young Ferris looked in to the camera and said simply, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

Priorities in Schools

March 4, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

In any school district, you can see instances in which school leaders and teachers get bogged down in regulations, details, disciplinary matters, local initiatives and management issues, many of which detract from the overall educational purpose.

When this happens, it is easy to lose sight of lofty goals about helping every child be successful.

To illustrate this, allow me to share something from a few years back.

I grew up helping my father in his construction business. I learned to do brick work, brick cleaning, waterproofing, plastering, caulking, etc. A lot of his work in the summers was done on school buildings.

One summer, in one particular Missouri school district, my dad’s crew was painting some classrooms. Elsewhere on the same campus, crews were scrambling to finish new grand stands and a state-of-the art press box at the high school football field.

The head of the building and grounds crews approached my dad and asked him to help get the painting done on the stadium renovations.

My dad said that was fine, but if he pulled his workers from the classrooms they may not get all the painting done before the school year started.

The person in charge gave an interesting reply.

“If we don’t get some of the classrooms painted, that’s not the end of the world,” he said. “But if we don’t have this football stadium ready, we’re all going to be in trouble.”

I do not share that story to belittle the place of athletics in schools. In fact, I have always said that in my own high school experience, I learned things in athletics that I may never have learned in any classroom.

No, I share that story because it demonstrates that there are times, because of various circumstances, that school leaders cannot possibly focus solely on student learning.

There are times, quite simply, when pressure from the community or from specific stakeholders requires that schools give special attention to certain high-profile issues.

It doesn’t mean that schools do not care about the primary purpose of educating children. It merely means that schools are called upon to do so much more than just educate.

In addition, within any organization, there is often a discrepancy between what the stated ideals are and what is actually given the most attention on a day-to-day basis.

Author Doug Reeves, in his book Leading Change in Your School, described that discrepancy.

He wrote the culture of a school “…is not likely to be found in lofty vision statements, missions, or strategic planning documents.” The culture of a school, he wrote “… is reflected in the behavior, attitudes, and beliefs of individuals and groups.”

Those are thought-provoking words for schools, businesses, and organizations to live by. If time is taken to reflect upon what is most important and to articulate a purpose for what we do, it is equally important to make sure that what we say is valued is what actually is valued.

Do schools really want to help students? It should be evident in everything we do.

My grandparents’ generation

November 25, 2012Jefferson City News Tribune

In spite of having difficult economic times in recent years, America has a history of prosperity, especially when compared to most of the world.

And that prosperity has contributed to the development of a different outlook among our youngest generations.

To verify this, simply do an informal sociological observation in your own family. Compare the oldest and the youngest and you will likely see a noticeable difference across three or four generations.

About 20 years ago, when my oldest son was a preschooler, we had a big family gathering for his birthday. While everyone focused on him opening several gifts in the living room, my grandfather watched in silence.

I’m not sure what he was thinking. He had farmed during the Great Depression, World War II, and all of the years that followed. When he turned four or five years old, he would have been fortunate to have even one of the gifts that my son just received.

Quite frankly, in the 1920s poor Arkansas farm boys didn't always get a present on their birthday, but in the 1990s and in the years since then, middle class kids have often gotten several presents lavished upon them on their birthdays.

My grandfather was a man of great character, and that character was forged through decades of hard work and hard times. But it was tempered with an honest and uncontaminated appreciation for family, faith, and all of life's simple goodness.

My oldest son, who has grown in to a very decent young man, has had his share of life's challenges, as we all do. But there is no question that his life has been cushioned by the benefits of living in an affluent society.

That is both good and bad.

The increase in standard of living in the last 50 years has produced generations that are increasingly sophisticated, more highly educated, more complex in their lifestyle, and more global in their perspective.

On the other hand, it has produced millions of Americans who are addicted to leisure and entertainment, are more pampered, are more self-serving, and more materialistic.

That is not to say that recent generations have no morals or no character. They do. And many of them have a conscientious outlook. They've just never had to endure challenges on a major scale. Nor have they had to do back-breaking labor for low wages. Nor have they had to raise all their own food. Many have never had to work much at all until after college.

All of that makes for a very different generation of Americans.

People who were of the same generation as my grandfather are what Tom Brokaw has called "The Greatest Generation." They worked very hard, rarely complained, and seemed content even when they didn't make very much money.

Their children, the baby boomers, learned the importance of a solid work ethic from their parents, but they wanted more for their efforts. They weren't afraid of hard work and they used that trait to their advantage. Many worked their way up to the top of their profession or built their own business from the ground up.

And they reaped the financial rewards. They wanted bigger homes, nicer cars, and college educations for their children. And they got it.

In the process, as hard-working Americans, they established a strong middle class that has served our country well.

The children of the baby-boomers came next. They grew to expect more than one gift on their birthday, and just about anything else they wanted. They have always wanted a lot, and they don't really want to work very hard to get it. There are several exceptions, of course, but that is the general outlook.

That doesn't mean that younger generations are a bunch of spoiled brats. That's not the point at all. It's just that, for the most part, the youngest Americans have never really had to do without.

And since they haven’t done without, they’ve always had a built-in assumption that whatever they want or need will somehow be provided. The idea of working to get what one wants is something that we’ve failed to teach our children.

But we must.

There is absolutely nothing wrong with any family enjoying the blessings of liberty or the fruits of their own labor, but as a nation we need to realize that the most healthy character development doesn’t come from always having your way or getting whatever you want.

Many times, the road to the upper middle class and beyond is paved with hard work, perseverance, treating others well, and when necessary, getting by with what one has.

I could close by saying if my grandfather were here, that’s what he would say. But in all reality, he probably wouldn’t. He never had to say much; his actions pretty much said everything that needed to be said about how to approach life and work.

My grandparents’ influence

September 15, 2013Jefferson City News Tribune

My grandparents on my father's side were Sanford Wilson and Nancy Keller Wilson. My grandparents on my mother's side were John Henry Oxner and Mildred Blankenship Oxner.

The names won't mean much to you but they will forever mean the world to me because of their influence.

In their younger years, they lived through the Great Depression and World War II. 

They learned tremendous lessons during such hard times, and they passed on what they learned

to their children and grandchildren.

They didn't deliberately orchestrate the teaching of lessons for their family; nor did they give long lectures about what should be done.  They taught us in a much more powerful way, by modeling how one should approach life and work on a daily basis.

You could probably say the same about some of the elders in your family.

Because of their experience and their perspective, my grandparents knew things and understood things that I will never fully grasp.

In fact, I will dare to say that even though I have had the good fortune of completing college degrees and have lived a few decades myself, that I have not yet come close to understanding life in all of its fullness the way they did.

They were content with simple things.  I remember my Grandmother Oxner, "Granny" as we called her, tell me more than once as Christmas time approached:  "You don't need to get us anything for Christmas.  We just want to have a good Christmas dinner where we are all together."

They understood what mattered, and even though they never actually sat me down and told me what was important to them, I knew.

To my grandparents, family was important. Hard work was important. Honesty was important. Faith was important.

As you read this, you might be thinking, "I could say the same about my own grandparents."

So true.

In fact, many Americans recognize the positive legacy of their elders and still learn from their example.

My grandparents are gone now, and we lose many more of their generation each year.

George Will wrote in his column on Sept. 1 that 400 American World War II veterans pass away each day.

Soon we will live in a world in which none of that great generation is left and it makes one wonder if we will allow their influence to live on.

We should.

Time after time after time, they faced life with their priorities in order and got things done.

They produced a strength and character that became a part of the cultural fabric of the nation. We

would be extremely foolish if we didn’t emulate them in that regard.

Family. Faith. Integrity. Character. Hard work. Perseverance. Those things make an individual successful, make a family strong, make a culture that is healthy, and make a nation that is great.

My high school coach

March 9, 2014Jefferson City News Tribune

Students today need positive influences in their lives, just as we all did growing up.

Who guided you and influenced you the most?

Outside of my own family, Coach Don Campbell is among those who had a tremendous impact on me. This is a tribute to him and to all of those who shape young lives.

Coach Campbell was inducted in to the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame in Little Rock on Feb. 28.

I was there, along with several of his former players and assistant coaches.

Coach Campbell was my football coach in grades 8, 10, 11, and 12.

In the small town of Corning, Ark., he had a positive impact on hundreds of young men over the years, including me. He went on to coach football at two other schools in Arkansas after he left mine.

He influenced young people on the practice field, in the hallways of school, in his own home where he hosted meetings of the Fellowship of Christian Athletes (FCA), and at church.

In the four years I was on one of Coach Campbell’s teams, he coached us, drilled us, disciplined us, corrected us, taught us, encouraged us, motivated us, and shaped us.

I never heard one curse word from him during those four years, or for that matter, any of the 40 years I’ve known him.

Call me naïve if you want, but I grew up not realizing that some coaches curse.

At the induction banquet on Feb. 28, when it was Coach Campbell’s turn to speak to the thousand or so people present, he began with a quotation from Proverbs 18:22: “Whoso findeth a wife findeth a good thing, and obtaineth favour of the Lord.”

He then spoke lovingly of his wife Rita, who passed away just a few years ago. She had been by his side throughout his coaching years and was his biggest supporter. He spoke of his sons Mike and Chris, who both played for him.

He told of his recent battle with cancer and announced that he was now cancer-free for two years.

“I’ve had a new lease on life,” Coach Campbell said. “I think every day is a blessing.”

He praised the players and coaches who had worked with him during his 38 years of coaching and spoke to the ones present.

“If you guys hadn’t won all those games I wouldn’t be getting anything tonight,” he said.

He asked the players and coaches to stand.

“These guys mean the world to me,” Coach Campbell continued. “Once you play for me, you’re mine.”

He didn’t talk a lot about football. He could have spoken about his 257-98-6 record in 31 years as a varsity head coach. He could have mentioned the 16 conference championships and two state championships.

Instead he talked about family, faith, relationships, and helping players prepare for life.

“I always felt like we teach more than football out there,” he said. “The real crux of the matter is how you touch the lives of young men.”

In a way, Coach Campbell’s brief speech was a lot like how he did things throughout his coaching career. It was a focused endeavor that was humble, gracious, grateful, simple, and effective. And it was done with great dignity and class.

For Coach Campbell, if the game was worth playing it was worth playing well. Efforts were to be marked by excellence. Life never revolved around football, but football was a great vehicle to teach life.

Now that I think about it, in those years when we thought we were merely learning to win, in the greater sense, we were learning valuable lessons that equipped us for our own future.

And we came to understand what was really important. Coach Campbell wanted us to strive for excellence in football but he also wanted us to be successful in all the years that followed.

We did not want to let him down then, and we still don’t. We are deeply proud of his induction in to the Arkansas Sports Hall of Fame. But he was inducted in to our own lives years ago, and we’re all better for it.

My Dad

June 21, 2015

Jefferson City News Tribune

My Dad wanted my younger brother and me to know how to work and he wanted us to earn a college degree.

He believed that if we had both, we would be well-equipped to make it on our own in life.

On Father’s Day, I am glad to report that my parents did a great job in helping us in those areas. Our work ethic was developed and we both met with academic success after high school.

It wasn’t always easy on my parents or on us.

From the time my brother and I were 7 or 8 years old up until we reached junior high, our work experience included house cleaning, yard work, gardening, and some farm work in the fields (thanks to my grandfather).

We used a garden hoe to cut the weeds out of rows of cotton (simply called “chopping cotton” in the south). The cotton rows were often a half mile long or more, and in the summer heat it was grueling work for someone who was 10-11 years old. For that matter, it could be grueling work for anyone.

In the spring and early summer we also weeded the watermelon field and in late summer, we got to harvest the melons. A pickup truck would hold about 120 melons. My grandfather’s “Bob truck” held almost 500. We learned to toss the melons from one person to another as we loaded the vehicles in the field.

Incidentally, if you threw a few hundred melons up to someone in a truck, it was a pretty good workout. It was also hard work in the midst of the heat, humidity, and mosquitoes of northeast Arkansas.

At the ages 15, 16, 17, and 18, both my brother and I worked at a grocery store during the school year.

Sometimes on Saturdays, and throughout each summer, we worked in my dad’s construction business.

Dad’s company specialized in masonry restoration (tuck pointing) and we learned about the entire process. We also did stucco work, brick cleaning, sand blasting, waterproofing, caulking, and painting.

The most physically demanding jobs with the construction crew were mixing “mud” in a cement mixer and getting it to the men on the scaffold on a stucco job, using a hand-held electric hammer to chip out mortar, using a trowel to apply stucco, and tuck pointing. A full day of any of those tasks makes the entire body sore, but it also makes for a very good night of sleep.

I’m not complaining about all of that work; I only mention it to say I’m grateful for the experience and for what it taught me.

Throughout high school, I always had a summer construction job and I learned the lesson about work that my Dad wanted.

After that, getting the college degree was pretty easy by comparison. It was challenging to be sure, but it was never as physically demanding as the labor I had already seen.

I got some scholarships and earned my own spending money, and my parents worked hard to make up the difference. After I got to college, they entrusted the entire matter to my professors and me.

No one should get the impression that my parents were too hard on us. They were actually very loving and gracious. They had high expectations for us but they were also extremely sensitive to our development.

Dad worked us hard, but he paid my brother and me for every hour we worked in the construction business and encouraged us to save. And he always allowed us to be a part of playing sports or any other interests we had. He never said that we couldn’t be on the team because we had to work.

Dad and I always had an agreement in the summer. I was working for him until football practice started in August.

And I continued working for my Dad in the summers, from 1976 all the way up until 2001. My brother was even more dedicated; he runs the company now.

We learned a lot in getting college degrees but we learned much more about the real world of work.

Dad felt we needed both. And he was right.

ATA

David Wilson grew up in Arkansas but worked for 27 years as a teacher and school administrator in Missouri. He has been a journalist, construction worker, social studies and journalism teacher, and high school principal. His doctoral work was in Educational Leadership at the University of Missouri, and in his words, it was a valuable and enriching experience. But rather than being an academic thinker who relies heavily on the theoretical, he prefers to boil down information to that which is meaningful and relevant, finding practical application in everyday life. He has provided training sessions for educators and has written articles that have appeared in 20 different publications. He has three grown children: David II, Jared, and Rachel.

Blurb

Do you look back at crucial events and how they shaped you as a person? Do you look at current circumstances and wonder how they will affect your future? When you’re sorting out your plans it helps to remember where you came from and what life is all about. Learning Every Day is very helpful in that regard. It’s a realistic look at loving life, loving family, and loving one’s heritage. It’s about appreciating the past, enjoying the present, and preparing for the future. And yes, it’s also about embracing the daily opportunity to learn and grow.

Dr. David Wilson has produced an insightful newspaper column each week for more than ten years, and several of those form the basis of this book. You can read certain sections of Learning Every Day that appeal to you or you can read from cover to cover, but either way there are items that resonate. Learning Every Day is an encouraging and informative look at life and issues. It provides plenty to think about, and it just might help you gain a better perspective. Let it speak to your journey.