The Class of '64 Reunion Committee hopes you will use this blog to write something about yourself that you would like to share with your classmates - anything at all. Below are five questions that might inspire you... or not. Question 6 allows space for answering your own questions.
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Tuesday, April 22, 2014
2. How did Fieldston shape your perspective, your values, your aspirations, your attainments, your regrets, over the years?
It is hard to think of a way Fieldston has not had a hand in shaping my life and who I have become, and that is without ascribing a value good or bad to their influence. They did teach me and I eventually learned, whether I paid attention or not, everything from the fundamentals of the Golden Rule to calculus. When I arrived at Carnegie-Mellon U. as a freshman, although I loved the place, I was surprised to find it utterly valueless. More properly, the college valued nothing but polite-seeming profit.
It's not just that on most issues it supported the status quo while making huge profits through research for the Viet Nam War, but that there was no historical evidence of the school ever having believed in anything - ever having tried to influence the ethical behavior of its graduates. The school's motto, a quote from Andrew Carnegie had it exactly right, "My heart is in the work." There was nothing in the school that questioned whether the work was good or bad. Intuitively, to me that undermined the integrity of the institution.
Of course at Carnegie I had teachers with strong beliefs, and in those days there were plenty things we argued over. Some set examples. There was no shortage of political activism, and back then most of us had a self-interest in being active.
I never expected to become a high school teacher, but when I did I remembered that it was in Mrs. Mortenson's sixth grade class that I was first asked to think about the role of unions in the "profession" of teaching. By the time I was a teacher I understood how essential teachers' unions were to any hope of attracting good people to the profession and providing teachers with a standard of living that would let them afford to send their own children on to higher education. Now retired from teaching I'm not only proud of the teaching I did but of work I did in curriculum and union work that significantly raised and made more just the rates of teachers' pay in my district and in CT. Mrs. Mortenson and Fieldston had a hand in that effort.
It served only to reinforce the idea that privilege carries obligation to help
ReplyDeleteamen!
DeleteIt is hard to think of a way Fieldston has not had a hand in shaping my life and who I have become, and that is without ascribing a value good or bad to their influence. They did teach me and I eventually learned, whether I paid attention or not, everything from the fundamentals of the Golden Rule to calculus. When I arrived at Carnegie-Mellon U. as a freshman, although I loved the place, I was surprised to find it utterly valueless. More properly, the college valued nothing but polite-seeming profit.
ReplyDeleteIt's not just that on most issues it supported the status quo while making huge profits through research for the Viet Nam War, but that there was no historical evidence of the school ever having believed in anything - ever having tried to influence the ethical behavior of its graduates. The school's motto, a quote from Andrew Carnegie had it exactly right, "My heart is in the work." There was nothing in the school that questioned whether the work was good or bad. Intuitively, to me that undermined the integrity of the institution.
Of course at Carnegie I had teachers with strong beliefs, and in those days there were plenty things we argued over. Some set examples. There was no shortage of political activism, and back then most of us had a self-interest in being active.
I never expected to become a high school teacher, but when I did I remembered that it was in Mrs. Mortenson's sixth grade class that I was first asked to think about the role of unions in the "profession" of teaching. By the time I was a teacher I understood how essential teachers' unions were to any hope of attracting good people to the profession and providing teachers with a standard of living that would let them afford to send their own children on to higher education. Now retired from teaching I'm not only proud of the teaching I did but of work I did in curriculum and union work that significantly raised and made more just the rates of teachers' pay in my district and in CT. Mrs. Mortenson and Fieldston had a hand in that effort.