Fireworks and the Gray Whale

To celebrate the Fourth of July in true Carr Family tradition, we piled in the Gray Whale and headed to my grandmother’s farm. Now, the Gray Whale is the fifteen passenger van belonging to my dad’s office. “We” included my parents (now called Pop and Granny), my brother Jeff, his wife Cynthia, their children Noah (7), Micah (4 next month), and Amelia (21 months), my cousin Brian, his girlfriend Anne, Adam, Luke, and me. If you’re counting, we had seatbelts for three more people, but then there wouldn’t have been room for the cooler containing lunch. After an hour and forty-five minutes of lively conversation amongst adults, a very competitive showing of the quiet game between Micah and Noah, and Brian and Adam cheering on their favorite and antagonizing the opponent which resulted in waking the babies who napped maybe 30 minutes, we arrived at Grandmother Carr’s.

The boys (small and large) were all very excited, because thanks to this low pressure weather system hanging out over Texas, Grandmother who cannot remember a time in her life when her land has received so much rain, gave the okay to set off fireworks for the first time in more years than my generation can remember. So, after lunch, we trundled to the front yard during the break in the clouds and exploded fireworks. Yes, they would have been more spectacular after dark, but all the kids would have been asleep by then.

By five o’clock all were exhausted, so we piled back into the Gray Whale to head home. Ten minutes down the road, the babies were out cold, as was Micah who succumbed to sleep during another highly charged round of the quiet game, and the adults were once again chatting. Chat morphed into discussion as Anne, an elementary school teacher, reported on her recent trip to Washington DC where she attended a conference on model schools. Each of the “model” schools they looked at used a great deal of technology. Anne began explaining how what our local schools are missing is the technology element.

Perhaps I should have mentioned that my dad owns a software company at which my mother, brother, and cousin work. So, my family jumped on the conversation, enthusiastically cheering the incorporation of technology in the classroom and bemoaning the lack of said technology in our local schools. I sat nodding along until I heard:

“We need to spend much less time making our kids read things like Don Quixote and teach them things that are relevant to the world today.”

Now, if you know me, you are probably thinking that I pounced on that one like a two-year-old on a cookie. But, I am ashamed to say, I sat there too shocked to speak. My horror grew as my family continued to chew over how seventy-five percent of what kids learn in school is useless information, after all, do you really remember and use all that stuff? Who needs Shakespeare? What kids really need these days is technology, technology, technology.

I must admit, I agree technology should be in our schools. I just think it should be a classroom tool rather than the substance of a lesson. Most third graders are far more advanced in technology than I am already. As I see it, kids today don’t need a lesson in how to get the most out of their cell phones. They learn that stuff on their own. I’m not saying we shouldn’t teach our kids how to use the latest technology. I just don’t think that should be the entire substance of education. Newspapers are useful, but they don’t replace literature, something else that was proposed in the belly of the Gray Whale.

We do learn through great works of literature. We learn a higher level of thinking. I acknowledge that in most high school English classrooms, teachers are probably questioning the whats of Romeo and Juliet rather than the whys, but that doesn’t mean that literature is a waste of time. It means we need to better educate our teachers.

This morning as I was getting dressed it hit me how ironic it is that the work that started the discussion in the van was Don Quixote. I hated reading Don Quixote. The uselessness of Don Quixote’s quest irritated my drive to reach people where they are in reality. There he is, so unwilling to move forward with society, so unwilling to let go of the chivalric values that he holds so dear, that he hurts those closest to him for the sake of something that his culture left bleeding in the dust of progress.

Now I sit wondering am I Don Quixote? Do I cling to the educational methods of yesterday because they are what I know and love? Should we move to educate the next generation in what is coming rather than what has been? Where is the balance? What do you think?