tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post1965315124495949662..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: School's Out -- A Hundred Years AgoUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger9125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-12802225241021127562014-06-05T16:39:59.939-07:002014-06-05T16:39:59.939-07:00Duncan,
That Beckett poem does indeed come closer...Duncan,<br /><br />That Beckett poem does indeed come closer than the Dickinson to fitting this post.<br /><br />The kids breathing that bad nicotine air will probably remember it forever, in their cells.<br /><br />And as to the loutishness...<br /><br /><br />Michael,<br /><br />I hear you. These are our histories, such as they are. My own maternal grandparents came over from "the old country" in that same epoch. The point of entry, in all these cases, would have been New York. My grandmother, eldest child of a family that ran a country store in County Westmeath, came over first, cleaned people's houses (standard work, of course, for all Irish immigrant girls of the period), sent a bit of her earnings back home to assist in the transportation of the next child in line, then went West, and in Chicago met up with my grandfather, whose family had come over from Kerry to the Dakotas, and who had done and would do those kinds of work young Irishman then did -- demanding physical labor, first lighting gas lamps in the street, then driving a streetcar, finally becoming a policeman.<br /><br />My grandfather often joked that he was a graduate of the best school in the world, "the School of Hard Knocks". While explaining this, he would, in kindly fashion, dig his enormous fist into my feeble little bicep, as if to drive home his point.<br /><br />I spent a fair share of my own childhood at my granparents' house. They were both up before dawn every day, and off to work (in his case) or Mass (in hers, before the housework chores began).<br /><br />For me, the lives and struggles of those people, and the millions like them, now seem as remote as events on another planet.<br /><br />Approaching my own departure from this world, I'm embarrassed to acknowledge that nothing I've ever done can ever stand up to that standard of common effort.<br /><br />This is a topic that makes oldtimers like ourselves into cartoons of ourselves, I guess -- always whinging about the deficiencies of the young. On a radio talk show this morning, I heard a fellow complaining that he'd taken his kids to a miniature golf course. <br /><br />"There were a lot of kids there. The girls were having fun. The boys -- what's happened to little boys? They were swinging those putters like drivers, I kept having to duck to get out of the way of the backswings. And their dads just stood there. What's happened to spanking? It's the only way little boys ever learn anything. I spank my kids all the time, in public if I have to. Other parents gape at me as though I were a serial killer." <br /><br />(The speaker of those words: ex-major league baseball player Aubrey Huff.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-11313265119789163692014-06-05T12:59:06.857-07:002014-06-05T12:59:06.857-07:00They are wonderful photos - fascinating to see the...They are wonderful photos - fascinating to see the variety of approaches to education from the Noble Experiment to the Raja Yoga Sunbeams.<br /><br />The shot of the Italian kids is most enchanting.<br /><br />This Beckett poem came to mind (as an echo of Dickinson):<br /><br />Spend the years of learning squandering <br />Courage for the years of wandering<br />Through a world politely turning<br />From the loutishness of learning.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/may/14/us-tobacco-fields-child-workers-nicotine-danger" rel="nofollow">On an uglier note, read this report recently.</a><br />Mose23https://www.blogger.com/profile/01100756913131511440noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-53039958075663044372014-06-05T09:01:21.953-07:002014-06-05T09:01:21.953-07:00Tom, another brilliant post for which I am gratefu...Tom, another brilliant post for which I am grateful. My father was born in 1899 to Irish immigrant peasant parents and dropped out of school in seventh-grade to go to work, which included more than one job, like newsboy and "sweeper upper"—as he would say—in a hardware store. He bought that store from the owner when he was 21 and was a big success through the 1920s, then lost everything in The Depression, when, as he used to say, "The big boys bought it off me for a dime on the dollar, and sometimes a nickel." Ended up over a garage with my mother and three oldest brothers until an accidental fire in their one little wood burning stove burnt the garage down and then had to stay on others' couches etc. He ended up with a little home repair business I went to work in as a boy for my "room and board" every day after school and Saturdays (I worked regular jobs as a busboy etc. on Sundays and in the evenings) and was happy to leave behind when I left home at 18 to "make my mark" as I saw it. Just a little story of what one of those lives in the photos may have turned out to be like, and on of their children. Lallyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05310472614196384595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-16659707991253896862014-06-04T20:08:46.801-07:002014-06-04T20:08:46.801-07:00Thanks very much, David.
"Field Day" wa...Thanks very much, David.<br /><br />"Field Day" was the working title for the post, which I'd forgot -- so thanks for seeing what was meant to be said.<br /><br />And that tremendous photo of the Italian pupils, representing a whole gamut of human emotions, each distinct and credible, as these young people hover at the brink of becoming the grown-ups we can almost recognize already -- while at the same time wondering about all the baggage of circumstance, contingency and accident we can't yet figure into the equation, as we see these young people preparing somehow to go out into a world.<br /><br />It's plainly a New World, for them, but still the term "knowable community" comes to mind -- or perhaps that's merely what I want to think I am seeing, in a picture like that one.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-52109029548219300992014-06-04T19:40:38.920-07:002014-06-04T19:40:38.920-07:00Tom,
The expressions of the children in these pho...Tom, <br />The expressions of the children in these photographs are arresting. Every emotion is registered from determination to suspicion to terror to joy--even in a single photograph, the first one from the Italian school. School, for those who were able to go, was undoubtedly highly regimented 100 years ago, but still there seems to have also been a belief in the value of play. Exactly what's being squeezed out of school at the expense of "standards" and "accountability." Ah, well, summer is almost here... Field day!<br />-DavidBe the BQEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/11621320435990191224noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-35473517296750634202014-06-04T14:40:26.178-07:002014-06-04T14:40:26.178-07:00It ought to be remembered that in this period, not...It ought to be remembered that in this period, not all children got to go to school. Circumstances forced many into the streets and into various taxing forms of labor. The heroic work of a single great photojournalist with the mind and vision of a social reformer, Lewis Hine, documenting the ragtag out-of-school lives of the children of a century ago for the American Child Labor Committee, was instrumental in getting legislation passed that ensured kids would be in some kind of school, somewhere, or at least not out toiling for a living while still in short pants.<br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2012/10/lewis-w-hine-where-boys-are.html" rel="nofollow">Lewis W. Hine: Where the Boys Are</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/lewis-w-hine-enforced-rest.html" rel="nofollow">Lewis W. Hine: An Enforced Rest</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/lewis-w-hine-child-labor-kentucky-1916.html" rel="nofollow">Lewis W. Hine: Child Labor, Kentucky, 1916</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2012/01/lewis-w-hine-child-scavengers.html" rel="nofollow">Lewis W. Hine: Child Scavengers</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/lewis-w-hine-cotton-she-jess-works-for.html" rel="nofollow">Lewis W. Hine: Cotton ("She jess works fer pleasure")</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/04/lewis-w-hine-days-work-of-humphrey.html" rel="nofollow">Lewis W. Hine: Day's Work of the Humphrey Children, Elizabethtown, Kentucky</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/lewis-w-hine-exposure-get-father-watch.html" rel="nofollow">Lewis W. Hine: Exposure ("get father a watch")</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/lewis-w-hine-junk-gatherers-just-kids.html" rel="nofollow">Lewis W. Hine: Junk Gatherers (Just Kids)</a><br /><br /><a href="http://tomclarkblog.blogspot.com/2011/01/lewis-w-hine-truant-newsboys-oklahoma.html" rel="nofollow">Lewis W. Hine: Truant Newsboys, Oklahoma City ("didn't know his name")</a>TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-3926104890844884962014-06-04T12:18:44.383-07:002014-06-04T12:18:44.383-07:00Many thanks, Manik and Red.
Looking at a thousand...Many thanks, Manik and Red.<br /><br />Looking at a thousand photos to prepare this post was surprisingly happymaking, as is the experience of looking at it now that the weeks of labour are over and the red eyeballs and swollen knobbly digits have ceased complaining about it all.<br /><br />The absence of smartphones, of "security" (well, there are the helpful bowler-hat policemen carrying off the collapsed pass-ball girl, but still), of frantic moms parked outside the schoolgrounds in SUVs -- and yes, Red, of that particular blight of bloat which seems to have fallen over the indulged, airbrained, supertech children of the future, much as an endarkening mantle -- makes these pictures a joy.<br /><br />Innocence and sincerity and wonder we should no longer expect to find in this world, even in kids, I guess. But oh, that dizzying pleasure of the first day out of school. There appears a distinct memory of one such day. Pack of kids loitering on a patch of city parkway greensward, playing mumblety-peg. The pocket knife sticking in the grass, the dandelion profusion, and the delicious sense of total relief, the pure joy of temporary release from all forms of order and discipline (aka the necessary iron regime of the nuns).<br /><br />For about two hours... before that familiar itch to get into trouble set in.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-49998718983039266622014-06-04T11:21:34.346-07:002014-06-04T11:21:34.346-07:00An epoch of optimism, patriotism, self-reliance, h...An epoch of optimism, patriotism, self-reliance, hope, ambition,<br />purpose....<br /> <br />And, geez, an absence of obesity.Poet Red Shuttleworthhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06053848100740944133noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-34585497965872555692014-06-04T11:16:41.152-07:002014-06-04T11:16:41.152-07:00Tom,
Seeing this photos,one can't help but go...Tom,<br /><br />Seeing this photos,one can't help but go back..living the making of something grand,a dream on every underlip,a rapid belief in everything unrolled as part of a program-to not fain meant you were a survivor(already a competition won-an ego boost)<br /><br />Making a living now,rolling the underlip inward and fainting almost inadvertently at every cross-check of the continuity algorithm..manik sharmahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18055072451804840121noreply@blogger.com