I just wanted to add to this thread on educat...

October 06, 2008 by Meg in Lytton

I just wanted to add to this thread on education, as it was the subject of the Query in our Quaker Meeting this morning and an incidental discussion in the Care and Counsel Committee meeting before Meeting for Worship. At C&C meeting, I mentioned that I attended my high school reunion last weekend. Most of my classmates had stayed in the area and continued in their parents footsteps in a fairly poor area of SW Pennsylvania. Another Committee member, Tippy, a retired professor from UC Davis, commented that she had attended her high school reunion in a blue collar town where most of the men had gone into the Army for WWII and then took advantage of the GI Bill and then purchased low cost, often government-subsidized homes. This led to the US middle class (something we rebellious anti-Viet Nam war students railed against!) and the educated work force that fueled a creative economy for 40-50 yrs!

Another aside-Dick and I are swapping MacCullough's biography of John Adams back and forth, with 2 bookmarks. We started it on vacation in August in Boston, when we were embarrassed that we were the only people on the T that weren't reading! All Bostonians seem to have their noses in some written material all the time! Anyhow, when he wrote the draft of the constitution of the State of Massachusetts, John Adams included an impassioned section in the preamble about the responsibility of the government to foster and facilitate education for all the people. He expected the legislature to edit that section out, but they left it in, unchanged! Do you think this is may be why Massachusetts and Boston continue to be the intellectual powerhouses they still are? How do we inculcate the love of learning that not only makes life richer but helps to make our lives more comfortable? I think the difficulties of the Depression and WWII may have contributed to the motivation to learn, which may even have been a distraction from the nightmares of life outside the ivy tower.

On that note, we're all fine. Callie is working incredibly hard at Duke and has been selected to do some other extra-curricular projects that she is pleased about. Will is happy with his program and his parents just visited them.

Julie is dissecting her way through their cadaver, the low point being dissecting the penis. She seems very happy, despite the long hours of study. They finish Anatomy this month and move on to Biochemistry. She is in NYC this weekend visiting Alex.

Kayla is happy and working hard on her classwork and her job at Oberlin. She is having a little trouble re-adapting to the social life of a small town after her time in Belgium this summer.

Not much more news of import.No exciting adventures planned.