Teaching tradition

Helping our grandchildren with homeschooling during the pandemic has been a wonderful opportunity and a significant challenge for us. It has made me aware that there are many different ways of learning the skills that are required for a healthy and meaningful life as an adult. Our grandchildren have excellent access to resources. Their father is a librarian and they know how to get their hands on books about all kinds of subjects and they are aware of how much can be learned by reading. Given that their parents and their grandparents are readers who enjoy books, it is natural for them to understand the value of reading.

The power of reading is a very ancient part of the story of our people. As far back as we have common memory and recorded history, we have seen ourselves as people of the book. Even before any of what we know as the Bible emerged as a written document, the value of writing was a part of our tradition. Among the oldest passages in our Bible are words reported in Deuteronomy 26: “A wandering Aramean was my father.” These words make reference to the language of the people of Aram, which is often described as ancient Syria, but predates modern geopolitical lines and includes part of what is known today as Iraq to the east of Syria. The language of Aram is sometimes referred to as a “square” language because of the distinctive shape of the letters when written. From that ancient language emerged Hebrew, the language in which the parts of the bible sometimes called the “old testament” are written. Long before the birth of Jesus, our people put a huge emphasis on written language. All of the gospels report Jesus quoting the words of prophets and other texts from scripture. They report that Jesus read from the scrolls at the synagogue. Among the stories written in the scrolls were the stories of the times when our people drifted farther to the west into Egypt, where they encountered a language that was written with pictographs instead of an alphabet. The old teachers used to say that Hebrew required an alphabet because of the need to speak of concepts that were too complex to express in pictures.

As important as writing is, however, it does not convey all of the truth of our people. There is more to being human than what is written in books. Our ten-year-old grandson knows this. He sometimes tells me of things he knows by common sense. Sometimes he means direct experience when he speaks of common sense. You don’t need a book to tell you that a bicycle helmet is a good idea. After bumping your head a few times, the advantages of a helmet become clear. It is common sense. Some things are good to eat. Others are not. You can discover the difference by putting things into your mouth. When he was an infant, our grandson tasted dirt. He doesn’t eat dirt these days and didn’t need a book to learn not to do so. Experience is an important conveyer of truth and there is much to be learned from direct experience.

Common sense, however, reaches beyond direct experience. It also involves the use of our intellectual capacities. We use reason to discern truth. The use of reason is one of the skills required to teach others. You have to be able to explain concepts in ways that make sense to others. Our grandchildren have been listening to a series of podcasts that contain simple debates and point out the basics of logic. As they age, they will learn more of the power of reason to discern truth from falsehood. They will learn about tricks of logic that present ideas as if they were logical, but contain errors that deceive.

The written word, direct experience, human reason - all three are important in the process of becoming an educated person. There is another part of education as well and this is one that is especially well suited for grandparents as teachers. It is tradition. The dictionary definition of tradition is “knowledge transmitted without writing from generation to generation.” Tradition is taught through apprenticeship. And grandparents can be the teachers of tradition.

Tradition is very important in our religious history. As the character Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof sings, we have traditions fo everything: how to eat, how to sleep, even, how we wear clothes. Another culture, important in the story of our family, that of Japan, is also steeped in tradition. There are concepts critical to Japanese society that cannot be taught by talking. They are learned by showing. In traditional Japanese society, careers were not chosen as much as they were inherited. Wooden boat building, for example, was passed on within families for eight or ten generations. Boats were built without plans and without manuals. The art of building boats was taught through apprenticeships. Young apprentices cleaned up the shop, sharpened tools, and performed all kinds of menial tasks before they were allowed to construct an actual boat. They learned by being in the place where the master worked and seeing how things were done.

In my toolboxes are wood planes that belonged to my grandfather and one that belonged to Susan’s grandfather. My grandsons are still just a bit too young to use those tools. They have to learn a bit more about respecting and caring for tools. I’ll let them use some of my newer planes to shape wood before they will be trusted with the old planes. I can’t tell you how to true the sole of the plane. I don’t know of a book that teaches how to sharpen an iron. These are things I learned by being shown and I hope to one day teach by showing others. Whenever you set down a plane, you lay it on its side, never on its sole. Why? I can’t tell you why. It is a tradition.

Our grandchildren will return to school classrooms next fall. School will give them opportunities to learn that reach beyond what we can offer. Still, I am treasuring the opportunities this pandemic has given us to teach them important things. Among the most important traditions of our people is the belief that each generation reaches beyond previous generations. We trust that our grandchildren will use reading, reason, experience and tradition to go places and do things we never imagined possible.

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