Re: Ref: The Ultimate Test

[Richard Gibson <rgibson@PIPELINE.COM>]

But what of the social context of Morrie and Albom, who scabbed on the
Detroit Newspaper strike? Today, one does not love one's country and love
the world.

At 02:43 PM 11/12/99 EST, you wrote:
>Colleagues, Students & Friends:
>
>My friends on the ARN listserv were concerned about the "urban legend" aspect
>of some of the recently posted stories.  So I went digging and found a story
>I thought we can all read, to which we can all lend our individual and
>collective interpretation.  The story was originally published in French as
>Le Petit Prince, and has since been translated worldwide, and it is quite
>appropriate for our present review,  considering all the latest hoorah about
>standardized testing in the US, and the concern with standards, curricula,
>and the teaching and learning process.  I offer it to you now in English, but
>you may choose to read it in your language as well.
>
>By the way, I have agreed to translate Tuesdays with Morrie into Vietnamese,
>and students are checking for me to see if it is being translated into their
>language(s) as well.  I highly recommend the teaching methods of Morrie.  In
>Mitch Albiom's recounts of the Tuesdays he spent with his teacher, you
>realized the master was constantly testing the student.  Enjoy:
>
>"Once when I was six years old I saw a magnificent picture in a book,
called T
>rue Stories from Nature, about the primeval forest.  It was a picture of a
>boa constrictor in the act of swallowing an animal.  Here is a copy of the
>drawing.
>In the book it said:"Boa constrictors swallow their prey whole, without
>chewing it.  After that they are not able to move, and they sleep through the
>six months they need for digestion."
>I pondered deeply, then, over the adventures of the jungle.  And after some
>work with a colored pencil I succeeded in making my first drawing.  My
>Drawing Number One. It looked like this:
>
>I showed my masterpiece to the grown-ups, and asked them whether the drawing
>frightened them.
>But they answered:"Frighten? Why should anyone be frightened by a hat?"
>My drawing was not a picture of a hat.  It was a picture of a boa constrictor
>digesting an elephant.  But since the grown-ups were not able to understand
>it, I made another drawing:  I drew the inside of the boa constrictor, so
>that the grown-ups could see it clearly.  They always need to have things
>explained.  My Drawing Number Two looked like this:
>
>The grown-ups' response this time was to advise me to lay aside my drawings
>of boa constrictors, whether from the inside or the outside, and devote
>myself instead to geography, history, arithmetic and grammar.  That is why,
>at the age of six, I gave up what might have been a magnificent career as a
>painter.  I had been disheartened by the failure of my Drawing Number One and
>my Drawing Number Two.  Grown-ups never understand anything by themselves,
>and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to
>them.
>
>So then I chose another profession, and learned to pilot airplanes.  I have
>flown a little over all parts of the world; and it is true that geography has
>been very useful to me.  At a glance I can distinguish China from Arizona.
>If one gets lost in the night, such knowledge is valuable.
>
>In the course of this life I have a great many encounters with a great many
>people who have been concerned with matters of consequence.  I have lived a
>great deal among grown-ups. I have seen them intimately, close at hand.  And
>that hasn't much improved my opinion of them.
>
>Whenever I met one of them who seemed to me at all clear-sighted, I tried the
>experiment of showing him my drawing Number One, which I have always kept.  I
>would try to find out, so, if this was a person of true understanding.  But,
>whoever it was, he, or she, would always say:
>"That is a hat."
>
>Then I would never talk to that person about boa constrictors, or primeval
>forests, or stars.  I would bring myself down to his level.  I would talk to
>him about bridge, and golf, and politics, and neckties.  And the grown-up
>would be greatly pleased to have met such a sensible man.
>
>Antoine de Saint-Exupery
>
>So, what do you think?  Are you a person of real understanding?  Or has the
>study of geography, history, mathematics and grammar stopped you from being
>clear-sighted?
>
>And is there a way to be both?  To love one's country dearly, and still be a
>citizen of the world?
>
>Quan
>
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Rich Gibson
Program Coordinator of Social Studies
Wayne State University
College of Education
Detroit MI 48202
http://www.pipeline.com/~rgibson/index.html

        Life travels upward in spirals.
        Those who take pains to search the shadows
         of the past below us, then, can better judge the
         tiny arc up which they climb,
        more surely guess the dim
         curves of the future above them.





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