Her name was Persis which she said meant a Gift of God. She was my great-grandmother, but I always called her grandma. Before I was born she had already raised my grandmother, and my mother. She had lost children in the influenza epidemic of 1918, lived through two world wars, the Great Depression and two husbands. One had drowned and the other had divorced her.
She was in her sixties and I was an infant when she became my guardian. For the next 18 years she saw to it that I went to school, was fed, housed, clothed, and had medical attention when necessary. This she did with only her Social Security and an Aid To Dependent Children supplement (welfare) from the state of Michigan.
When I was still in grade school, she began telling me the world was filled with educated fools. She was bitter about it.
By the end of my senior year in high school my grades were mediocre, we had very little money and I was not scholarship material. So I did not apply to college. I saw three possibilities. After graduation I could work in the auto factories in Flint or Lansing, wait to be drafted into military service, or enlist. I enlisted in the Marine Corp. It was 1968 and the prospect of going to Vietnam was more appealing than working on an assembly line. It was my service in the Marines and the G.I. Bill that finally made it possible for me to graduate from Michigan State University.
As an adult I better understood grandma’s bitterness and her perception that she had been held back and cheated by so many educated fools. And I understood her concern that, as a college graduate, I was in danger of becoming one.
Lately I have been thinking of grandma’s disdain for educated fools. Our current economic meltdown is mostly the fault of deceitful, power hungry, greedy and inept individuals. Most of them are well educated men and women—lawyers, bankers, MBAs, Professors and CEOs—educated fools with degrees from places like Yale, Harvard, MIT and Westpoint.
Today I discern no clear escape. I’m am too old to enlist or be drafted and the auto factories have closed.
© Michael Maurer Smith 2009
Well, as you can see, I’ve been absent for a few days — and you’ve been mighty prolific and deeply thoughtful. I’m going to have to wait till I’m on high speed to return to the others, but I’ll start with this one and say I think your gran was a wise woman. I see a lot of educated fools everyday. Sometimes I wonder — Am I one, too? I hope not, but suspect that somewhere along the way, that’s true as well.
You hit the nail on the head with the educated fools who have managed to get our country into all sorts of problems — and with seemingly little conscience to go along with it. I daresay a happy medium isn’t a bad thing… And by the way, I’m glad you’re too old to be drafted!
Jeanie: Welcome back.
I’m glad I’m too old to be drafted too. Nonetheless, at least once a year I have a vivid and lifelike dream that is some variant of, “I was never released from duty and I have to report in again.” Sometimes in the dreams I actually show up on base and am amazed how much younger everyone in the barracks are. Maybe this is what they meant when they said, “once a Marine, always a Marine.”
Such a perceptive post. It reminds me of my favorite “modest proposal” which never quite leaves my mind, and which I’m quite serious about.
I began varnishing in 1990 – almost 20 years ago. The world I left was populated with a good number of educated fools, who really were nothing more than 10-year-olds in the clubhouse in the tree, with abstruse vocabularies as their secret handshake and enough by-laws to choke any reasonable human being.
The farther I moved from that world, the more clearly I saw it, and my proposal is this: that every five years, every lawyer, preacher, professor, accountant, CEO, legislator – in short, everyone who could possibly fall into the category “works with mind” – be made to spend one full year doing manual labor. Every day, from sunup to sundown. Bankers digging ditches. Politicians pouring concrete. Professors working assembly lines. CEOs alongside roughnecks.
Perhaps it would help to remind them that behavior has consequences, and that the quality of their effort determines the quality of the results.
Again, a wonderful post.
Linda: Thanks for yet another thoughtful reply.
I love your proposal, and I’d suggest the following addition. Every congressperson and senator should be required to spend at least one month each year with the troops in a combat zone–actually going on patrol. I’ll bet we’d see far less enthusiasm for using force instead of diplomacy.
Mike.
I remember Grandma Smith, and I think she was talking about Ed P. when she was talking about an educated fool. Perhaps it applies more so to the younger rather than the older Ed P.
The talk of our childhood brings tears to my eyes. Maybe it’s allergies.