Family Thanksgiving

Astral Facts, November 2010

(weather-delayed edition)

Astral: (Theosophy) Consisting of, belonging to, or designating, a kind of supersensible substance alleged to be next above the tangible world in refinement; as, astral spirits; astral bodies of persons; astral current.

Family Thanksgiving

While sitting in the dentist office waiting room last August, I was surprised to see a current issue of Newsweek on the table. This issue focused on the world’s top 100 countries, where the United States finished 11th overall (Some details are here:

http://www.newsweek.com/feature/2010/the-world-s-best-countries.html)

I was interested in the rating for education, where the US didn’t crack the top ten in education. (On the online chart, the US finished 26th, snuggled between Slovenia (27th) and Latvia (25th), far behind Finland (1st), as well as Kazakhstan (14th), and Cuba (20th).

The issue also included a sidebar commentary on what kinds of “fixes” might be considered.


1. Get kids into school as early as possible

2. Increase the time spent in school

3. Invest in teacher training


The researchers noted that American children spend half their waking hours outside of school, but children experiencing extensive preschooling at a young age, extended school days and years, and instruction from “effective” teachers do better.

As the section on education concluded: It may be difficult in some nations, but “…the fruits of this emphasis are still paying off in high test scores.”


A major problem is certainly being exposed here. I am sure everyone can see it plainly.


Of course, I am referring to how the emphasis on family is not only absent from the equation but also undermined.

Rather, the focus is on getting “good” test scores related to intellectual and factual knowledge and its application. How is “character” education being included or even acknowledged? What part of the curriculum includes respect for others, tolerance toward diversity, involvement in community service, etc?


I always thought the “first school” and basic education began within the family and the family continued to be the primary institution of learning in any stable society. However, the three points emphasized for reform combine to reduce the influence and involvement of the family. Is the cure really to put children in school at an earlier age, keep them in school more days and for a longer time each day, and place the responsibility for the children upon the “trained” educators in the school system?


In my freshman comp class, students read “Mother Tongue” by Amy Tan, where she discusses the nature and complexity of the languages we use in intersecting worlds we inhabit. In giving a lecture about her book The Joy Luck Club, she found herself using the formal structure of academic English. Later in conversing with her mother and her husband, she commented on the high cost of furniture by saying, “Not waste money that way.” She realized this was a perfectly normal statement to make “in our language of intimacy” that she had grown up with as a member of an immigrant family. In her article, Tan recognizes the different “Englishes” she combines in her writing:

The English I spoke to my mother, which for lack of a better term might be described as ‘simple’; the English she used with me, which …’broken’; my translation of her Chinese, which …’watered down’; and what I imagined to be her translation of her Chinese if she could speak in perfect English, her internal language, and for that I sought to preserve the essence, but with neither an English nor a Chinese structure. I wanted to capture what language ability tests can never reveal: her intent, her passion, her imagery, the rhythms of her speech and the nature of her thoughts.

We also read and discuss “Children in the Woods” by Barry Lopez (referred to as “the nation’s premier nature writer" by the San Francisco Chronicle). Lopez owns some wilderness property in Oregon, where children frequently visit. He says the children often want to go into the woods with him. Lopez notes, “In the beginning, years ago, I think I said too much. I spoke with an encyclopedic knowledge of the names of plants or the names of the birds passing through in season.” He goes on to say that he learned later just to guide the children along paths of discovery from simple details they notice. He comes to realize,

In speaking with children who might one day take a permanent interest in natural history-as writers, as scientists, as filmmakers, as anthropologists-I have sensed that an extrapolation from a single fragment of the whole is the most invigorating experience I can share with them. I think children know that nearly anyone can learn the names of things; the impression made on them at this level is fleeting. What takes a lifetime to learn, they comprehend, is the existence and substance of myriad relationships: It is these relationships, not the things themselves, that ultimately hold the human imagination.

I would think such experiences as Tan and Lopez describe are important "astral" intangibles that the SAT, GRE, ACT, WASL (may it rest in peace), etc. overlook or even ignore. In this country, we see universities placing emphasis on community service, extracurricular activities, and personal narratives as much as the standardized tests that currently define “good” students.


Both my grandfathers died before I was born, so I never got to take a walk with them in the woods or discuss the olden day struggles with them; nonetheless, I learned a lot from my own father and mother about their lives and my own through our shared experiences as a family during the “down time” from school, something I make sure to do with my own children.


During this November and December festive holiday time when families traditionally gather, I hope everyone can have time for informal and internal education as a family, where tuition is cheap and priceless.

Walter Lowe

Astral Facts is a monthly presentation of Humanities Science, produced in the bowels of the Humanities Science offices.