The Great American Walk-About

Ed Raymond

 About fifty years ago, an anthropologist wrote about an exploratory trip he and his crew took through the 4,000 miles of the Great Australian Outback. They figured it would take about 20 tons of equipment, vehicles, food, water, and other supplies for each man involved in the trek. As they started out on their great adventure, they noticed an Aborigine wearing only a loin cloth trudging along on a parallel course carrying only a spear and boomerang. A member who spoke the man’s dialect asked him what he was doing. “I’m going with you.” As they traveled across the outback, they often saw the Aborigine on the horizon, although sometimes he would disappear for days. He never joined them for food or water although they often pleaded with him. At the end of their 4,000-mile journey, he was still there with his spear, boomerang, and tattered loin cloth. They had practically used up their 20 tons of supplies per man, including worn-out trucks.

Living Without Politics, Math, And Writing

   Even after World War II there were about 500 rather small aboriginal tribes speaking over 700 dialects left in Australia. About 200,000 were killed by the English in the late 1800s as they settled the coastal regions. Most of the tribes were composed of traveling nomads, with each family carrying about 20 pounds of possessions: two rubbing sticks for building fires, two knife-shaped stones for butchering game, one boomerang, one spear, one spear thrower called a woomera, a container of high-protein worms, and a few baskets and wooden bowls.
   They ate insects, kangaroos, worms, birds, snakes, and rabbits as diet staples, and a few desert plants. They lived without metals, the bow and arrow, pottery, the wheel—and without politics, math, or writing. Finding water in the deserts was always a problem. They learned to follow rain clouds and showers for days. In the rare situation when this didn’t work, they would dig their own graves and die in them.
   Most aboriginal families had leisure time. They made many very artistic drawings and paintings in 60 major places in Australia. The aboriginal culture fused man, nature, art, belief, life, and death. A thought was powerful in their culture. If they pointed a human fibula at an opponent or enemy, that person would often pine away and die. That’s the power of culture.

Graduation From The Hard Knocks School

  Up until almost the middle of the 20th century, adolescent Aborigine boys went through trials to graduate to adulthood. It was called the walk-about. First a boy was circumcised and one of his front teeth was knocked out, resulting in pain at both ends. The missing tooth (they had no tooth decay) represented beauty and bravery. Kinda like our hockey and football players.    
   After these physical indignities, he was given a spear and boomerang and taken to a remote spot and left for three weeks. If he returned to the family in three weeks, he passed all of his curriculum. This was like our version of Leave No Child Behind. But in this teenager’s case, if he failed some of the aboriginal standardized tests, he died during his walk-about. If he didn’t return from his walk-about, his parents were blamed for his failure and were cast out of the tribe for a time. That sounds like a good idea to me. But if the boy returned, he was fully accepted as an adult and took part in decision-making.
   His curriculum based on his local culture was very important to his survival. First, he had to know the white man’s culture so he could avoid deadly confrontations. Second, he had to know biology and zoology because he lived off the desert and the sparse environment. In the desert he had to leave something for growth. Waste would, in the end, kill him. In his environment there was usually nothing edible or drinkable in sight.

   Third, he had to study the local languages carefully. Over 700 dialects but no written alphabet. He had to learn to communicate in literally hundreds of tongues. Fourth, he spent more time throwing his spear and boomerang than a modern Olympic javelin thrower because his survival depended upon accuracy. Fifth, his education in family relationships had to be thorough and complete. To keep warm at night the Aborigine family curled into a ball around a small fire. The boy who left the family ball on a cold night was in deep doo-doo because he broke the coil of body heat. He was in deeper trouble than the modern teenager who runs away from home, school, and family.
   But, as in The Wizard of Oz, when Dorothy says to her dog in the middle of a tornado, “Toto, I have a feeling we are not in Kansas anymore,” the aboriginal kid in Australia is no longer protected by his culture. And our 2014 walk-about graduate is no longer protected by his local culture. He can fly to any place on Earth in about 20 hours—within the world culture.

Local Control Of Education? You’re Kidding!

   We are currently having a battle royal about the implementation of Common Core education standards and interminable testing, promoted by Bill Gates’s money and the political desires of both Republican and Democratic governors to control something they have the power to control. Teachers know that students who have to globally compete with smart and educated kids around the globe must have a “common core” of knowledge and bursts of creativity fostered by a broad study of the humanities. That means physical education buttressed by art, music, literature, debate, civics, etc. Billionaires such as Gates want educated workers dominated by science, mathematics, and technology. They are not enough.
   We need people who can solve why geckos can walk on ceilings, why certain breeds of goats fall over and faint when surprised, why in 2012 American police shot and killed 409 humans in “justified” shootings while British police fired one shot and killed no one, and why banksters who defrauded the American people of $7 trillion in wealth during the recent recession are still not in jail. Banks have paid fines, but CEOs have already figured out how to screw their customers into covering those costs.
   We still have not figured out how insects can fake death, which some scientists call thanatopsis. Some insects, mammals, birds, snakes, and fish can fake a death spiral, stay immobile for a period of time, and then fly away if the predator blinks for a moment. A few humans have faked death and survived bear attacks. Well, I think it’s an interesting subject.
   Even some retired teachers don’t get it. Joe Henry of Puyallup, Washington, says, “Local districts deserve the right to determine what’s best for their communities.” Baloney. Local districts have to recognize that their children must compete globally and must have a well-rounded curriculum to prepare them for the economic, social, and civic wars of the future. We need a Common Core curriculum without all that useless assembly-line testing.
   We need to encourage thinking like this first grader who might have been a lot quicker but was a little different from his classmates. A teacher was telling her class of first graders about a lamb that had strayed from the flock and been eaten by a wolf. “You see,” she said, “if the lamb had been obedient and stayed in the flock, it wouldn’t have been eaten by the wolf, would it?” “No, ma’am,” answered one little boy. “It would have been eaten by us.”

Our Lives Have Become More Complex Than The Life Of Survival Of The Aborigine

   Our students must learn like the French philosopher Voltaire, who said, “We must live this life as if every minute were precious except the last—a bad quarter of an hour about which we can do nothing.”

  My warning to today’s students:

(1) If you have not learned your history, you will repeat the mistakes made by your ancestors. It might be another war, or a depressed economy.

(2) If you have not learned your language, you will have problems communicating with those people who could play leading roles in your development.

(3) If you have not learned what humans are, how they act and react, you will have difficulty relating to other people in a society that demands we establish good relationships.

(4) If you have not learned what beauty and ugliness are, whether in art, music, literature, or life, your life will be barren because it will not be enhanced by the creativity that surrounds us wherever we go. By the way, Aborigine artists have left thousands of examples of their well-developed skills in the Australian outback.

(5) If you have not learned some survival skills in some technical field, and the most important skill, how to learn, then your chances of failure are rather high.

Our Main Problem In Education Is Money—Not Race, Not Teacher Evaluations

   A headline on Robert Reich’s blog tells it all: “Inequality Is at the Heart of Who Gets a Good Education and Who Doesn’t.” Reich is a former Democratic secretary of labor who teaches at the University of California. His research supports his headline:

(1) Thirty years ago, the average gap on SAT-type tests between children of families in the richest 10 percent and bottom 10 percent was about 90 points on an 800-point scale. Today it’s 125 points.

(2) Children from high-income families score 110 points higher on reading skills than those from poor families.

(3) Residential segregation by income has increased during the past three decades and in 27 of the nation’s largest major metro areas. This matters because 42 percent of the money to support public schools comes from local property taxes. The feds supply only 14 percent, and states supply 44 percent. Some states try to give more money to poor districts, but schools in low-income areas have fewer resources. The wealthiest, highest-spending states provide about twice as much money per student.

(4) Rather than pay extra taxes, wealthy parents set up foundations to pay for many extras for their “public schools,” such as gyms, buildings, artificial turf, and special programs. About 12 percent of school districts are funded by these foundations supported by wealthy communities.

(5) Money buys the most experienced teachers, less-crowded classrooms, high-quality teaching materials and equipment, high-speed Internet, the best extra-curricular and athletic programs, and an adequate number of counselors.

The Difference Between Two Stones Axes, A Boomerang, And A Microchip

   A history teacher at Harvard University in the 1950s kept two stone axes prominently displayed on his desk to remind himself and his students of the 10,000 years endured between the discovery of a rough-hewn one and the finding of one that was smooth and polished. That was the only technological advance. Somewhere between those two stone axes, and for many centuries after, an outback Aborigine heaved his spear and threw his boomerang at dinner.
   Back in the 1950s, the first computer was three stories high and weighed 60 tons. It could perform rather simple math functions. Now a single microchip weighing less than a gram out-performs it by a mile. In the 1970s a computer programmer forgot to put a -0 in a flight program, and a satellite was off target by 60,000 miles. The age of technology was upon us.
   Teaching is a marvelous, complex marriage of science and art. Teachers teach humans. They don’t make plastic widgets. In spite of Leave No Child Behind, in spite of our attempts to invent teacher-proof materials, and even in spite of Common Core curricula, if students do not see teachers as human beings, they do not learn. Teaching is the art of being human and using science, history, and the humanities to pass knowledge on to the next level of a society. If a teacher is not part of the ball surrounding the warm fire of the culture, the whole family of humanity collapses.

Raymond is a former Marine officer and school board superintendent and resides in Detroit Lakes.

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