Though it may not show, they are learning
The children are listening, and the children are watching. They may appear closed, almost as if they’re deaf and dumb. Not the case. They’re just sifting through the information they are given and storing it for a rainy day.
A 1993 graduate of Central Valley High School, Capt. Michael Pottratz gives us a glimpse of this truth.
From November 2003 to November 2004, he was deployed in Iraq. Serving as commander of Headquarters 44th Corps Support Battalion, he kept a record of his experiences. Following are excerpts.
“May 2003 … worst rocket attack since we arrived … quite scared … pondering the impact crater, I had an epiphany … I located a Global Positioning Satellite system, tape measure, notepad, and pencil, and returned to the impact site. After a few minutes of measurement, and the application of Sir Isaac Newton’s projectile equation, I had the distance and angle from origin. Then I used the Pythagoras Theorem for right triangles to determine the grid coordinates with the GPS.
“As I submitted the GPS coordinates to the command section, I pondered my senior physics class at Central Valley High School.
“I wondered what my physics teacher, Mr. McGuire, would think if he could see me using Newton’s laws of motion in Iraq to determine the point of origin for a 107mm Soviet rocket. I can recall the statement spoken by students since the beginning of time, ‘Why do I have to learn this … I will never need to know this …’
“Of all things I learned in school and applied to real life, this time I wished it were under other circumstances.”
They found the abandoned launch site, and Pottratz gives the credit to his high school physics teacher. This is a startling example of the power of education and how what a child learns plays a part in his/her future.
Not only do they learn from books, but also from the actions of others. “Moral education for youth starts with us adults; the lives we lead and thus project,” is from Nancy and Theodore Sizer’s book, “The Students Are Watching.”
In a nutshell, you cannot demand a certain behavior if you yourself do not model that behavior. A teacher who does not listen to students cannot expect to be heard. A parent who yells and screams cannot expect quiet and thoughtful conversation.
We speed, go through red lights, litter, and speak unkindly about others all within sight and sound of our children. What can we expect in return?
At a lecture I attended some time ago, a specialist in the prevention of child abuse recalled an incident that changed his life. He was living in an orphanage and a nun stopped him in the halls. He was not one for keeping himself clean, and she firmly told him to clean himself.
“No one will respect you,” she said, “if you do not respect yourself.” He stayed clean from that moment on, and, though he was no more than 12, he remembered it vividly as a turning point. The nun of course was a vision of perfection, and he could not argue with her. Would the impact have been lessened if a slob had said the same thing to him?
These quotes are words to live by: “Parents can tell but never teach, unless they practice what they preach” – Arnold Glasow, and “Example isn’t another way to teach, it is the only way to teach.” – Albert Einstein.