Large Fierce Mammal

Speak the word “education” and the most common image conjured is that of a set of knowledge and skills conveyed under the auspices, and bearing the stamp of approval, of some official grantor of credentials. People seek to learn by enrolling in classes so they can emerge bearing a certificate or diploma they can display as evidence of accomplishment. Their children are over committed in extra curricular classes ranging from karate, to dance, to piano, and everything in between. Everywhere we see a population that has abandoned self-education through diligent and rigorous application of the mind to research. To books. To exploration and calculated risk. To experiment and practice. That no longer trusts itself to know when the time has come to go forth in search of a Teacher.

Yet some of the greatest accomplishments in history were achieved by the self-taught, and then as now, woe be it to a society that devalues tried and tested capabilities in one who but lacks the stamp of official doctrine. After all, knowledge and skills either work within the context of the real world, or they don’t, documentation of official recognition notwithstanding.

I was blessed with a very rigorous Education that was delivered to me both in and outside of the formal classroom setting, but the greater part of what I consider most important in my Education did not come from the official halls of learning, at least not directly. Born in 1957, and growing from infancy into young adulthood in small town Nova Scotia, I was literally surrounded by people of the Olde School, and it is to those of my immediate community that I knew outside of school that I will be speaking today.

Neither of my parents had formally administered education that went beyond the elementary school level, both having grown up in times when going further was a possibility denied to all but the privileged. Yet in areas of literacy and practical mathematics, performance in the so called “three R’s”, they were both more than capable of leaving a 21st century high school graduate in the dust. In this, they were far from unique. Aside from our family Doctor whose office and residence were in a big house just across our back yard, another couple who lived next door to him, likewise across our back yard, of which the husband was an Engineer and the wife a Registered Nurse, the Principal of the town’s school who lived at the end of our block with whose grand sons I played every summer when they visited from Ontario, the Anglican Minister who lived across the street, and the Presbyterian Minister who presided over the church my parents attended, no other adult I knew had completed a school level beyond Grade 6, and had certainly never even sniffed the grass cuttings of a university campus.

Sticking strictly to North America, my ancestry goes back to the German settlers of Lunenburg in 1753 (both sides of my Father’s family, and the paternal side of my Mother’s), and to my maternal Grandmother’s arrival as a war bride from Great Britain in 1919. Throughout family history I was the first to attend university, with all the preliminaries pertaining thereto, and yet long before I got there, the skills and knowledge that contributed to making me me were already well entrenched. Was this because I was a “gifted” child? I wouldn’t say so in the scientific definition of the word, but I was gifted by the quality of the people around me. Who noticed me. To whom I mattered and I found myself wanting to matter to, if you get my meaning.

So, to define the point of the day – Education – let me illustrate by naming names and giving thanks to some of those notables who contributed to bestowing upon me a credible claim to being Gifted in the most profound and valuable sense. While I was blessed with traditional schooling by exceptional Teachers of whom I will one day speak specifically, and there are Worthies in my experience as a young man, all the way up to my present day small but no less Respected assemblage of those I name Esteemed Friends, I will here confine myself to those who surrounded me as I grew, lending their hands, hearts, and minds to helping the boy they knew find himself. I would be far less than you know me today if not for these:

My Father, Lawrence, taught me to stand straight and tall, look others in the eye, and that there is a difference between making an enemy and recognizing one. He taught me that a good technician, confounded by his failure to diagnose a problem or to make a thing work, blames himself first, steps back to first principles, and moves forward yet again until he finds his answer. That he always respects and maintains his tools, eschews borrowing those of another, and except in the most dire emergency, never substitutes one tool for another that is best suited to the job. That sometimes a Man just has to put the tools away, stuff the problem into a dark room at the back of his mind with an equally dark piece of his intellect to incubate, pour a sound drink to be enjoyed in his favourite chair, and come back at it tomorrow.

A self-taught guitarist and accomplished vocalist in the genre then called “Country and Western”, he taught me the joy inherent in making music, in singing, and the doing of both among Friends. He taught me how to recognize when another man has shown disrespect to you; worse, to a woman you are escorting; and worst of all, to your Woman. The subtle distinctions defining when to suggest someone leave, to tell them they need to leave, to assist them in finding their coat and hat, when and how to appropriately show them the door, and not least of all, to know when and how to employ hand, foot, or both in giving them, as he used to say, “a send”, in their gracious compliance with your suggestion they depart.

My Father taught me to tie a neck tie, and that there is no place in life for one that clips on. He taught me to tie my shoes, and how important it is that, no matter how worn an item of footwear might be, or any other item made of leather come to that, it must never appear neglected for one’s gear is a reflection of he who wears it. That a Man must own at least one good suit, it must fit, and he must know when and where to be in it. To know when to remove a hat. How to woo a woman just by showing up with panache, and the social importance of laughter, both giving and receiving.

He taught me to change furnace filters, lay flooring, hang drywall, work safely on high ladders and scaffolding, hammer a nail straight, and how to solder the most delicate of electronic components to his standards, meaning perfection.

To have time for a child’s questions.

He taught me the joy of masterfully crafting necessary and useful items from natural materials – wood, metals, and leather – and that a Man must have the know how, skills, and tools to maintain and mend his kit. That you must think long and hard before acquiring anything that you can’t maintain and repair on your own, but that there is a time to call in a specialist instead of tackling the job yourself.

My Mother, Evelyn, taught me to read, sound out words I didn’t know, spell (including my own full name and those of both Parents, the names of all the major African animals, as well as those of what I considered the most interesting dinosaurs), count forward and backward to and from 100, recite the alphabet forward and backward, perform basic mathematical functions, and tell time; all before the age of 5. So much to be described in one sentence, for the value of these alone could fill a tome.

She taught me the importance of personal hygiene and the all important feminine take on what is and is not representative of Gentlemanly conduct. That manners are paramount. That only in the gravest extreme does one call at meal times, by phone or in person, and that should the matter at hand require it, under no circumstances should an offer to join the table be accepted, even under threat of your own imminent death by starvation. That soiled clothing is no disgrace if the dirt was acquired in an honourable pursuit and the task is still at hand, but one is clean and well turned out in all respects before coming to the table, and a step beyond that if the table isn’t your own. That a Woman’s self-respect shall be mirrored by the Man who escorts her, and by her appearance and demeanor she will make him proud to have her at his side. That a couple present a unified presence before others and resolve their disagreements privately. That there is no such thing in a marriage as “his money” and “her money”, only Family money.

My Mother was an exemplary cook and justifiably proud of her culinary skills, regarding them as important among the Womanly Arts as the ability to walk correctly in high heels – another skill in which she excelled. She taught the importance for a Man to know how to cook, and to mend his own clothes.

My Mother had a pathological fear of amphibians and reptiles – most particularly snakes – and I was a boy possessed of extreme scientific curiosity that encompassed a fascination in anything that lived under rocks and logs, and in bogs, forests, or meadows. And yet she encouraged my keeping live specimens provided that they were properly cared for and released to the Wild again before Summer’s end. I learned much from them, and only later how much courage this required on her part.

My maternal Grandmother – named Violet but known to me throughout her life as “Granny” – lived in the district of old Montreal called Verdun. She lived in a small and tidy flat on the second floor of an old brick building, each floor of which was reached by means of a stout wrought iron spiral stairway. My Mother was born in Montreal, had grown up in Verdun, and in fact my parents had gone to live there after they married. My Father studied the dark arts of radio and television repair at night school while working as an elevator operator in the Dominion Square building during the day. I was conceived during this time in their life together, and they moved to my Father’s home town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia three months before I was born. Nevertheless, we had much family in Montreal, and went there most summers. My parents and my sister (3 years my junior) would stay with other relatives, while I preferred to stay with Granny, with whom I had a particular, and mutual, closeness.

As I mentioned earlier, Granny was British, and had come to Canada as the war bride of my Grandfather in 1919 (more on this here and here). Small, calm, soft spoken, and in her manner the very definition of a Lady, she had a portrait of Queen Victoria over the stove in her kitchen. From an early age I had come to know that my Mother and Grandmother were somewhat estranged from one another, but this never interfered with my relationship with either, and spending three to four weeks a year with my Grandmother from the time I was four until I was 17 left a permanent and welcome impression on my soul.

She taught me the Art of Conversation. How to listen, and how to appropriately respond. She taught me of social rank, and how one must be deserving of it. Of discretion in all things.

I learned the importance of a cup of tea, and that it must never be refused if matters of any size or urgency are to be discussed. That alcohol is normally reserved for the time when urgency and danger are past, but that it may, on occasion, be called upon to ceremoniously steady the hand. That no Man worthy of the name would go to it as a substitute for courage or moral fortitude.

My Grandmother was of a generation wherein pregnant women were often advised to take a pint of Stout daily as a tonic, and long after raising six children to adulthood had maintained the practice. Two PM each afternoon was “stout time” and this was taken seated at the window that overlooked the street in front of her flat. When I was visiting, I was invited to join her, and this was a time to learn to sip and converse. As I grew, so too did the size of my glass, and in this I learned not only the give and take of respectful conversation, but the timing of things, and most importantly, how and when to be silent without bringing awkwardness into the room.

My Grandmother taught me subtlety, and on my visit to her in the Summer of my 17th year she introduced me to a, “… nice French girl …” named Monique who lived in the flat one floor below. Monique often visited and did errands for her of the sort I did when there, and it was suggested with no small amount of urging on the part of my Grandmother that a strapping lad such as I might lend a hand to pretty, ever so French, dark haired and equally dark eyed, 23 year old Monique in helping her rearrange some newly arrived furniture.

And so my first sexual liaison was orchestrated, with the utmost of subtlety, by my very own Grandmother, a story previously disclosed to but a few that can be counted on one hand, until today. She merely arranged the situation and the rest was left to Nature, but for a young Man bursting forth into the full flower of his youth, and after years of tutelage in the Arts of Manliness, it was, in truth, a treasured rite of passage, and to you, sweet Monique, I wish you the best of everything, wherever you may be.

I could go on at length to tales of still more vital lessons taught to me by important personages in my history, but I’ll stop here and reserve those stories for another day. In truth, I am saddened by the current fascination with the headlong dash toward shaping the child into the peg that fits the hole they’re aimed at practically from birth. My own 13 years in the Nova Scotia school system and four more in university, gave me knowledge of value, to be sure, but at the same time served to illuminate that most of what I know, and will ever come to know about truly Living in the World, has come to my life through paths that lay outside the classroom.

Think on your own life, good reader, and if you have the ear of a child, don’t forget it.