LIGHT AND WARMTH

To continue with my thoughts on balancing heart and mind, if you live where it gets very cold in the winter, you know that you can step outside on a January morning and see the sun shining just as brightly in the middle of winter as it does in the middle of July.  Yet, without its warmth, nothing grows.

John Dewey who is recognized as the father of modern educational philosophy added his name to a document known as the Humanist Manifesto back in the 1930's.  What I draw from this effort is that a group of 'smart' people  decided if we can learn to be guided by our intellects, we can stop the cycle of repeating humanity's dumb mistakes.  From an intellectual standpoint, who would ever think war is smart?  This line of reasoning has carried into today's current focus on critical thinking skills and scientific facts in our schools.  What I see  happening is while the school's attention is placed on the mind (light), they're ignoring the heart (warmth).  And our schools are failing.

Just like plants in winter, human beings don't grow on light alone.  We need warmth. 

The danger of light without warmth is pointed out in the following thoughts of Oliver deMille, former president of George Wythe University:

"As Allan Bloom pointed out in his classic bestseller, The Closing of the American Mind, the last society to be highly trained [light] and as poorly educated [warmth] as the current U.S. was Germany in the 1930's.  A significant number of German engineers were highly enough trained to build cutting-edge weaponry, submarines, missiles, airplanes and so on, but not well-read enough in history to vote against Hitler or refuse to do his bidding.

"Same with German scientists, who understood chemicals and genetics enough to experiment on their neighbors when they were thrown immorally into prison camps, but not learned enough in ethics, morals, history, psychology or basic politics to not elect Hitler or refuse to torture their countrymen.

"Critics could say that by the time submarines were being launched and people were being tortured, it was too late to do anything.  But only the combination of top technical training [light] and poor Leadership Education [lack of warmth] could have allowed this all to happen.  A less highly-trained people could not have done it, and a truly educated people would not have done it. "

Put one more way, knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit.  Wisdom is knowing you don't put it in a fruit salad.

Light and warmth; mind and heart; knowledge and wisdom; reason and faith. 

The equation must be balanced if we want to start growing again.

JEFFERSON LIES?

I’ve been following with interest the discussion over Thomas Nelson’s decision to pull David Barton’s Jefferson Lies off the shelves and to stop production over ‘factual errors’.  As I’ve studied the errors in question, I find myself scratching my head as to why these things would warrant such a drastic measure.  Mostly, I ask myself, isn’t it really a matter of one opinion over another?

The day the news broke about the Jefferson book,  I happened to be reading the introduction to a book about Christopher Columbus written almost 120 years ago.   Even then, the world was divided over whether Columbus was worthy of admiration or scorn.   The author addressed this very issue of discerning the ‘facts’ of history.  He asked why it was that several well-educated, learned men can look at identical original source material and draw contradicting conclusions.  Washington Irving greatly admired Columbus and Von Humboldt offered nothing but praise while Harrisse had nothing but cold criticism and Winsor gave a ‘sneering invective’.

I believe his response is worth considering:

“Where this amazing difference in judgment?  Why does Mr. Winsor blame where others praise?  Mr. Winsor thinks that it is due to his own superiority as a critical and scientific historian.  Is Mr. Winsor right?  Where does the province of the critical and scientific historian lie?  In the gathering and sifting of historical evidence, in the full command of historical authorities, in the quick eye that sees historical contradictions and impossibilities, in the faculty sympathizing with the age and the feelings of the men he treats, in the power to see what under given environment is possible or impossible, is likely or unlikely.  All this will aid the historian to form a just and a correct idea of a hero’s character, and yet he may have all this, and err completely in his verdict.

“In every day life knowledge, human nature and knowledge of men is not the exclusive privilege of the man of many facts and varied lore.  Often the plain man of common sense, the man who has studied men in the concrete, living among them with open eyes and keen quick wit, knows his fellow men more truly and do them justice more fairly, than the scholar who has conquered ten thousand volumes and swallowed the dust of libraries for a quarter of a century.

“What is there to hinder the man of action, who has seen again and again how men act in real life, amidst difficulties, and struggles and crises and triumphs and failures,–what is to hinder such a man when put in possession of the facts and placed face to face with the innermost thoughts of any great historical character to judge him and judge him correctly?  Why may he not arrive at a fairer and truer verdict, than the scholar who has mastered dates and details, but fails to see flesh and blood, because the man of flesh and blood does not fit in with the imaginary world which the scholar has created in his mind?

“All honor to the critical historian, when he collects, compares and sifts testimony, but if his judgment of the world’s great men is to stand, he must prove himself to be more than a scientist and a critic, he must be a judge not only of books and facts, but of men–of their hearts, of their sympathies, of their feelings, of their passions, of their actions, of their judgments.”

(Taken from The Voyage of Christopher Columbus: The Story of the Discovery of America (1892))

As a storyteller and a sharer-of-stories with children, you will be called upon to make your own judgment and assessment of the great lives of the past.  Relying on the most credentialed scholar for the ‘truth’ may not reveal the truth at all. Sometimes, you just have to follow your heart.

And I’m pretty sure that somewhere in the world, I just made a scholar cringe.

INTRO BLOG

My grown-up children will marvel that their mother has finally entered the 21st century and is starting a blog.  I still prefer scissors and a glue stick when I cut and paste, but they’re working on me.  We really live in such a wondrous age of instant communication and I happen to have a few things on my mind.  Or, perhaps more accurately expressed, in my heart.  So here goes.

I am revealing my age when I tell you we were still using slide rules in math when I graduated from High School.  Just a couple of years later, when my husband and I were in college,  an enterprising salesman sat down in our living room to demonstrate an amazing new piece of technology: the calculator.  It not only added and subtracted, it multiplied and divided. That’s seriously all it did.  And we just had to have it, even though it had a hefty price tag of $75.00 in a day when we were earning a whopping dollar an hour.

I know, I know.  Get to the point.  You'll give me seven seconds and then  you’re done with me.  Which is exactly the point.   Amazing as our technology is—and I wouldn’t give it up for anything—it comes with a cost.  Researchers claim that young brains have become re-wired in one generation to accommodate the explosion of information that requires minds that are quick to access, assess and move on.  That's a good thing. It is the great age of the mind.

 What is being left behind is the ability to slow down, ponder  and especially feel.  The ability to empathize; to respond to the world in an emotional way is diminishing.   And that’s not a good thing.  Mind without heart is as dangerous as heart without mind.To you young minds that need documentation and verification–the research, the proof--of what I just said, it’s coming.  But not yet.  It’s going to take a little time to unfold these ideas.

So I hope you’ll stay with me.  All I will say for today is, I believe the prescriptive remedy for balancing out the equation between mind and heart---- it all starts with a story . . . .