THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, August 31, 1994 TAG: 9408300155
SECTION: ISLE OF WIGHT CITIZEN PAGE: 12 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Back to School '94
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
When teachers in Isle of Wight County gathered recently, School Board Chairman Richard L. Peerey delivered the following message of welcome:
In an attempt to visit family and friends from west Tennessee to southern Louisiana and Alabama, my family and I traveled 2,200 miles during two weeks in July.
As we visited six towns and cities in those states, the local newspapers all had something in common: Their front pages and editorials reflected the dissatisfaction, frustration and restlessness of people in their communities with public education.
The focus may have been on the superintendent, school boards, teachers' benefits, taxes, safety, race and what children were and were not learning - but all six localities had a commonality of theme,the problems of public education.
The difficulties we face in public education are many. In some cases, those frustrations and problems seem insurmountable. However, lest we despair, education at its best is not afraid of problems.
Rather, as educators, we are called to confront the problem of ignorance, the problem of our inhumanity, the problem of our remaining small-minded in our thinking, and the problem of our experiencing life only marginally.
Education at its best confronts, experiences, learns from, changes and shares its ``maps'' with others.
Education at its worst is only a tool of someone in a bureaucracy who uses it to make money, manipulate and offer panaceas. Education is about equipping people for life. It is not a job, a position, or even a profession.
Education is people. Education is a teacher living with his or her students in the trenches of reality, equipping them for life. Education at its best is about educators (parents, teachers, all of us) confronting the immense obstacles which prevent an awareness of life from happening in the minds and hearts of our children.
In 1793, one of a family's nine children was born in Rockingham County. However, because of family difficulties, the clan was soon moved to the mountains of eastern Tennessee. When the lad last born was 13, he had been in school a total of less than six months his whole life.
When he began school in Tennessee, he hated it. When forced to study the math of Euclid, he quit school and declared he would never recite another lesson as long as he lived. Although the lad could read, school was not for him.
Not long after this incident, the young man ran away to live with the Cherokees. However, in the sack containing his valuables someone had put a copy of ``The Iliad.''
As the young man read it, a strange thing happened - the book he possessed began to possess him. It seized his imagination.
In regard to the boy, it has been said, ``He caught the `wonted fire' that still lived in the ashes of the Greek heroes, and his future life was to finish the materials of an epic more strange than many a man's whose name has become immortal.''
The young man to whom I am referring became a self-taught scholar, a teacher, an attorney, governor of Tennessee, defender of Texas independence, and later president of the Republic of Texas.
General Sam Houston, lover of ``The Iliad,'' became a true visionary and champion of public edu-ca-tion.
General Houston was concerned about moving into the face of problems which prevented people from being truly educated. Whoever the educators were who taught Houston, the lad, to read and put ``The Iliad'' in his ``runaway sack'' helped him get the ``wonted fire'' which moved him with courage, integrity, and an unyielding determination to live and engage life as he reshaped his world. That's education at its best.
On behalf of the Isle of Wight County School Board, I want to welcome you to the 1994-95 school year. Thank you for exercising your gifts in helping prepare our children for life. May you have a productive week and year.
May God bless us all! ILLUSTRATION: Photo
Richard L. Peerey
School Board chairman
KEYWORDS: ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY SCHOOLS
ISLE OF WIGHT COUNTY SCHOOL BOARD
by CNB