Sticking Up For Education

Harry T. Cook

By Harry T. Cook
2/27/15
 

 

Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker, touted by some as a presidential candidate, won't say if he "believes" in the Theory of Natural Selection as if Charles Darwin's epoch-making observations have not been adopted by the scientific world as the best available explanation to date for the evolution of Earth's species.

 

That millions of American voters seem to have bought into the evangelical Right's campaign to trump evolution with Holy Writ drives that kind of political pusillanimity.

 

The governor also tried to rewrite the mission statement of his state's prestigious university, wanting to delete the idea of seeking truth and pursuing knowledge. In their place, he wanted curricula redesigned to make graduates ready to enter the state's job market -- as long, one supposes, as such jobs would have nothing to do with the hated unions.

 

Marco Rubio, who wants to be president as much as he wants the Brothers Castro to be erased from the hard drive of human memory, avoids comment on evolution and climate change and echoes his state's governor, Rick Scott, by saying, "I am not a scientist." Obviously.

 

It makes one wonder what -- aside from being a bona fide citizen of 35 years of age or older and having a noticeable pulse -- should be required of one who thinks she or he is qualified to be president. As soon as you say that the person should have at least an undergraduate degree, you are reminded that neither Abraham Lincoln nor Harry Truman had one.

 

At least Lincoln read for the law. Truman was a haberdasher before his entry into politics. Yet, mirabile dictu, both turned out to have been well-read. Lincoln was deeply versed in the vocabulary, diction and cadences of the King James Bible -- if not some of its impossible theology. That familiarity made his speeches sound sometimes more Shakespearean than Shakespeare himself.

 

Nonetheless, what one who applied himself or herself could learn, say at the University of Wisconsin -- apart from Gov. Walker's desire to turn it into a trade school -- would be enormously helpful in dealing with the complexities of domestic and foreign policy.

 

Beyond the joy of falling in love with English and American literature and classic philosophy in my undergraduate days at Albion College in the late 1950s, I learned to think. In my case, the professor who saw to that was the late Joseph James Irwin. He taught literature, but what he was about was coaching his students in the art of synthesis -- i.e. to figure out how things are related.

 

On the basis of what they would have had to absorb before being graduated from Albion, I can think offhand of six of my fellow alumni of that era, who, plausibly, could have been credible candidates for the presidency in their later years.

 

I shall name them: Robert Teeter, now of blessed memory, Virginia Baldwin, Ted Everingham, James Boxall, Jim Kingsley and Dennis Cawthorne. Teeter reached the political heights as the pollster for George H.W. Bush. Bush should have listened more carefully to him. Cawthorne had a long and distinguished career in the Michigan Legislature. Kingsley is a much-admired judge, now retired from the bench.

 

Boxall will forget more about politics and policy than a good many presidential hopefuls of this era put together will ever know. Baldwin, a Phi Beta Kappa and double major -- English and economics -- had pitch-perfect poise. Everingham acquired a plummy voice from his work in radio, which only enhanced his legal acumen as a University of Michigan Law School graduate and long-time practitioner.

 

These were and are serious people against the likes of whom those who seek high office must be judged.

 

It is worrisome when those who aspire to leadership of a country as rich and powerful as the United States of America devalue education and suggest that "intellectual" is a bad word. As has been observed, Lincoln had no ordinary academic credentials. Yet the Great Emancipator was sometimes nearly driven to distraction by competing ideas as he wrestled with the moral issues of slavery and the necessity to defeat the South in order to end it.

 

Read his Second Inaugural address and see for yourself how troubled he was as he sensed what he took to be the presence of divine judgment in the catastrophe of the War Between the States. Lincoln weighed the facts and brought forth ideas based upon them. That very process is what education is about.

 

Education is not like observing which way the wind blows and allowing the ship of any state to be carried willy-nilly in that direction. It is about understanding the nature of the wind itself and, if need be, take measures to use its force to bring the ship safely into port.

 

A good sailor tacks into a prevailing wind in such a way that his craft is actually moved forward in the direction he knows his boat must go lest it founder. He can run before the wind if he pleases, but eventually he will have to come about and deal with it. His education as a sailor will have taught him that.

 


Copyright 2015 Harry T. Cook. All rights reserved. This article may not be used or reproduced without proper credit.
 


Readers Write
Re essay of 2/20/15 Saying Goodbye to the Last Train
 

Dave White, New Orleans, Louisiana:

What a joy to read! What sadness it recalls. This is a great piece.

 

Caroline Lipski, Aurora, Colorado:  

Your essay about the "last train" made me cry. I'm wondering what that train represents for you now. You write so lyrically.

Carolyn Ouderkirk, New York City, New York:

I loved this. It made me think of the times we would go to the train station in Chicago to meet my grandmother arriving from Brooklyn on the Commodore Vanderbilt.  I loved watching as the train arrived, the porters stepped off, and we looked up and down wondering out of which car my grandmother would step. Another era.  

 

George Musselman, Grand Haven, Michigan:  
I especially enjoyed your essay recounting your memories of the Resort Special.

Blaine MacDonald, York, Ontario:

I happen to live near a Canadian National railroad line, and as I read your wonderful column this morning about the last train, a very long freight train labored by. I am in a wheelchair these days and sit by the window frequently just to see the trains pass. You evoked some wonderful memories for me.

Father Gene Curry, Ann Arbor, Michigan:

Strikes me the old orthodoxy we loved and depended on has made its last run to our town. The tracks are being pulled up. We will find a new way. There is a way, but it's not the same way. We are not allowed to wallow in nostalgia. The Kingdom of God is not like that.

 

Earl Troglin, Spartanburg, South Carolina:

I usually give about as much attention to the responses to your essays as I do to the essays. This interaction stimulates a limited form of dialogue which is useful in thinking through what you are saying beyond the time of your focused thinking in each essay. The interplay of secularism and the last train makes the case for what secular really means as a more reasonable option than what is voiced by David Brooks. Brooks structures his views and opinions with positions of closure and fixed boundaries. Take it or leave it, no room for a flow of expanding thoughtful dialogue, somewhat akin to the comment of response you received about bible schools below. Secular thinking enables us to be aware of and acknowledge that we are perishing already, or perishing with the uneven tides of time. We can only articulate the current meaning of the flow with a lens that extends beyond the now experiences to what will come down the tracks. Along the way we create lists of "the last train" experiences that enable us to grieve along with unexpected events that inspire us to continue the journey as long as the fuel permits. The comment by Bradley Hunter reminds me of the sadness inherent in a stance of perishing based on not knowing Jesus in the right way. "Rescue the perishing, care for the dying, snatch them in pity from sin and the grave..." It was good to open my computer and find that you have not perished already. I did notice in a response to your current essay that you received a voice a pity. These comments serve to affirm the content and substance of your essays while being open to voices of dismay. Who knows? Perhaps a day will come when the trains will be resurrected and run with secular wisdom.                                                                                                                                                                         

Nicholas Molinari, Brick, New Jersey:  

[Your essay] was sentimental in that I was able to picture young Harry Cook at that train station. Also a lover of locomotives, steel rail and crossties, I too sense an inexplicable loss. It seems to be as much a loss of youth as it is of a beloved means of transportation. Trains are still around, of course; but, alas, that almost mystical experience of boarding, counting clickety-clacks of the welds, then happily disembarking at one's destination is long gone.

 

Paul Golliher, San Antonio, Texas:

The Last Train article brought a wee tear to my eyes. My small hometown in Southern Illinois (less than 10,000) actually had three railroad lines and each one had passenger service at least to St. Louis. One line went to Mobile but the other two just fed to mainlines in St. Louis or Carbondale, IL. But that could connect them to that big other world you talked about. One by one they dropped the passenger service and I always thought it was to get out of the way of the real "money makers"-- the freight lines. Eventually, as I saw the same thing happen to the small airports, I realized that the automobile had taken over most of the small intercity travel and the glory days of rail travel were doomed. But I rode the Illinois Central to and from St. Louis well into the '60s. Many of those right-of-ways in Illinois have been turned into bike trails.

 

Jonathan Turner, Santa Monica, California:

America will be very sorry if the Republicans succeed in putting Amtrak to death. It's the last thing of its kind. Why does the richest nation in the world have a Third World passenger train service?

 

Carolee Moss, Northville, Michigan:

Yours is a wonderfully nostalgic article. It was 1957 as well that I rode a "steam engine" locomotive for the last time. It was a one-hour ride on the Pennsylvania Railroad from New Brunswick, New Jersey, to New York City for an afternoon show off-Broadway with a friend. (It was The Miracle Worker starring Anne Bancroft and young newcomer Patty Duke.) I still love train travel but yearn for those old fashioned steam engines. Do children nowadays even know what a "choo choo train" was? Maybe with the help of Thomas stories, they have an inkling. Thanks for the memories.

 

Michael Warren, Bexley, Ohio:

You were speaking to me this morning, Mr. Cook. I grew up around trains, rode them a lot during the war and know exactly what you meant by the Pullman berth. Never slept so well before or since. Amtrak just doesn't fill the bill, but it's all we have.

 

Tracey Martin, Phoenix, Arizona:

Poignant piece. I've only reverie recollections of the Michigan Central station in Detroit -- once one busy place alive with criss-crossing travelers and/or those embracing them in farewell or welcome. By the time of its last-train-departing, rail travel had been replaced for me by air and road. Its passing neither lamented or noted. A few years ago, I was in Chicago's Union Station.The place was as devoid of bustle as an all-night supermarket at midnight. Recently, we've seen the recurring lasts of print journalism. A friend of mine, who refuses to own even a cell phone, was forced to buy a computer so he could still read his newspaper. How many species are we seeing lasts of?

 

Lee Ewald, Central Lake, Michigan:

A very enjoyable read.  I relate to it very well.  As a kid in Detroit, my experiences with the railroad were quite different. At age 7 or 8, I would watch as the big trains pulled freight for the mighty auto industry. But when I moved to Central Lake in 1975 the tracks of which you wrote were still in service, albeit for a single freight train once a day. We had a charming little depot here for the Pere Marquette as did Bellaire and other small towns. When the rails came up, the depots came down. The only one locally that survived was Alden. Traverse City, Charlevoix and Petoskey still all have their beautiful Pere Marquette depots with historical groups preserving their heritage. I am involved with the preservation of the Alden Depot, which is quite lovely. It has been restored to its original colors. Layer after layer of paint was removed until we reached the bottom color layer of a beautiful green. That is its color today.

 

 

What do you think?
I'd like to hear from you. E-mail your comments to me at revharrytcook@aol.com.