Close Your Eyes

Close your eyes and rest your head back into your seat.  What do you see?  Is it just dark and foreboding or do you eventually see light and colors as a new world emerges?

When I was in college one of the Psych classes I took was on relaxation and how to put your body to rest.  I think this has been for me one of classes that have served me well through life.  We all get stressed and anxious in life and having the tools to compartmentalize that stress and allow your mind to wander free into sleep means, for me, I can face whatever life throws at me.

Speaking of classes, what do you think are the most important classes you’ve had in high school and college?  Have you ever sat down to consider what ones have had the greatest impact on you?  Well I have, and since I am now drugged up on cold medicine and can’t think of much else to write about I think I shall write about them.

In High School there were three classes that have had a profound and lasting impact on my life.  If I were to say English Literature, Western Civilization, and Art I would be pompous and a complete liar.  The first class was typing.  Back then it really was typing, with paper, ribbons, erasers and Smith Corona typewriters.   Now it is much more sophisticated and it is called keyboarding.  I didn’t do great, I never learned to type at 100 words a minute, but being able to use all my fingers without looking at the keyboard has made a huge difference in my use of the computer.  Of all the things I learned this is the class I think back on as a game changer.

The second was driver’s education.  It opened up the world to me and allowed me to get my license to drive.  I had mobility and freedom because of that class.  True, I probably would have gotten a license without it, but because of it I think I am a little bit better on the road, and Mr. King also built airplanes, how could I lose?  Our school had driver simulators and I can remember when I first came to Florida it was like coming home because all the training movies were made somewhere down here where they mixed coral with the asphalt.   I think I even had to swerve to miss the same door opening unexpectedly I did in my little Ford Falcon simulator.

The final, and perhaps the most important class I took in High School was the Humanities class.  I’m not sure how I ended up in the class but it was probably through the good graces of Mrs. U. my English teacher.  This was started my senior year and it was a team teaching class where we had three or four different teachers.  We studied art history, architecture, music history, dance, literature and a couple of other things.  I think each area of concentration was about six weeks and had a field trip to New York City to reinforce the lessons.  I can remember going to “The Cloisters” a museum in NYC devoted to medieval art and architecture and seeing the great tapestries, the Cathedral of Saint John the Devine with its flying buttresses, the Museum of Modern Art, the Guggenheim, studying the architecture of I.M. Pai, we went to Kennedy Center to see opera and an almost endless variety of things that opened my mind to what can be.   When we lived in Europe I tried to share the wonders of the architecture with my kids, but I don’t think I was as effective a teacher as the team that taught me.

I think we do our young a disservice with the current concentration on math and science.  The idea we should spend most of our time on this, at the cost of the seeing the colors of the world we live in will make this younger generation myopic to the potentials we have and how all the pieces can fit together.  But I am not a professional educator trained to know what is right.