Talking about UCR again.

Reflecting on my life, I notice things in BOLD RELIEF that I took for granted. My tendency toward unselfawareness is with me still. But retirement and age have given me time for reflection and I cherish the illusion (I hope it’s not just illusion) that what I say may be of interest, have some value. The desire to do good, altruism, motivates some people with money to donate to causes. Philanthropy can become a way of life, or at least a big part of it, and is its own reward. I don’t have money, but I can donate words, ideas, a friendly attitude.

Sometimes I feel like Richard Chamberlain in the movie The Last Wave, as he stands before the towering wall of water.

Sometimes I imagine myself in a world with few survivors, and I share a last crust of bread.

And sometimes, just sometimes, I sustain myself with memories. It’s all part of my master plan to make the world better, because it can be.

Students from the long ago come back to tell me, “I remember when…”

So I keep sharing when, and now it’s UCR, my glory days of origin.

How lucky I was to have gone to UCR when I did. They thought the way I did, and reinforced me.

Education, real education, liberal arts humanities based underpinning every major, so that graduates in every field would emerge into the world as human beings.

English 1 was a universal requirement.

Everyone in the Freshman class learned the same core, had the same foundation. They, UCR, took education seriously.

We came from high schools across the state, the country, from around the world. Our learning was varied.

Here is the example of what I want to notice. They taught us grammar. I don’t know if the Professors chose it because they liked it themselves, or if they were assigned to teach it because they were good at it.

Here I was in class, in college, and we were diagramming sentences. At first I thought, “We already did this in high school. Maybe some of those other students didn’t get the same preparation that I did at Mark Keppel High, and UCR is just leveling the field.”

Then we dug into grammar, word origins, the development of language, and I was in uncharted territory. But I loved it. I was learning, things I should know, needed to know, especially for the English Major I finally agreed was my choice and direction.

The two weeks of grammar made me appreciate language as words. I haven’t been the same since.

I was glad we all had the same experience. It homogenized us.

Then I discovered later that it didn’t “take” with everyone. Even other English Majors, future English teachers, sometimes merely went through the motions. How can that be? I asked myself. And why are they teaching English if they don’t love the language, don’t read and write it without being forced to?

UCR made the effort. They wanted us all to be educated and entrenched in the liberal arts humanity. Many (maybe most) were.

But years of teaching in the classroom showed me a profession at odds with itself. We don’t all agree on what education is, what books to read, the way to relate to students. Is it points and tests and grades? Is it literacy? And how do you measure that? Are students real people, human beings?

If we could “get our act together,” find consensus, then we’d “be in business.”

Some teachers are open to discussion. We should start there.

Some just want to be included, or are willing to “see the light.” Some just need to fill in the blanks of their own education, and we who know better can help them do just that.

Not everyone was able to go to UCR. Not every English teacher had two weeks of grammar.

But that’s correctable.

And then our united profession can save the world.