Module 1-Education

Whole Persons seek knowledge and new skills for the enrichment and

enhanced effectiveness it brings to life and are enthusiastic about continuing the learning process throughout life.

In South Africa, the education system covers from Grade 0 to Grade 12. As the learner grows they pass through the education phases until they reach the end of their high school – grade 12. From grade 10, streaming begins to take place to allow learners to choose higher or lower levels for each subject in preparation for them to begin thinking about their future career and what subjects need to be studied to achieve their objectives. All this is intended to prepare the Learner to enter a college, technicon, university, for higher learning which requires certain standards and subjects as a basic requirement to the faculty.

In South Africa there are numerous tertiary institutions catering for most careers and professions ranging from sports to academia to trades and clerical. Diplomas and degrees need to be obtained in order to prepare the learner for employment in their chosen career. Much thought has to be given by the learner in the selection and execution of the career path chosen in order to optimise the learning experience. Parents, teachers, ministers can all play a very important role in this process.

The material that follows is American but look through the location as the stories unfold and you will see that they apply to us living in South Africa.

Page 1 Module 1- Education

Builders of Their Dreams

‘With grateful thanks to Guy Rice Doud whose presentation this section is based on.’

_{When I was chosen Teacher of the Year}, a reporter phoned me. He said, “Mr. Doud, what does it feel like to have been chosen as the best teacher in America?” _{Now who wouldn’t like to think} you’re the best? The best teacher, or the _{best salesperson in all of America. My head started to get} really big and then, all of a sudden, I realized what he said. And I said, “Sir, you have to stop right
there because I’m not the best. Not in America with two and a half million teachers. Not even in Minnesota where I teach. I hope I’m the best in my classroom, and sometimes I’m not so sure about that. But the whole idea behind this program isn’t to pick the best; it’s to select
somebody to speak on behalf of all teachers and, I’d like to think, on behalf of kids, on behalf of parents, and on behalf of all of us who care about the future of our societies.

It’s been a great honour for me, but I really don’t _{have any claim to fame. If I had anything at all that} makes me really rather infamous, it’s the fact I used to weigh 327 pounds. I was getting ready to start my second year as a teacher. The evening before the first day, a teacher workshop, I went out to eat at Taco Town, my favorite haunt at the time. I had a full order of spaghetti, half of a chicken, and was on my way home after three scoops of butter brickle ice cream, which was my nightly habit. I was leaving Taco Town when into the restaurant, came a very attractive girl, a beautiful girl. She had been my student and graduated the previous May. We ran into each other. I mean literally. I was trying to leave and she was trying to come in. There wasn’t room
for both of us. She bounded off of me. She said, “Oh, Mr. Doud.”

Now I always get nervous around pretty girls so I looked at her and said, “Hi, Julie.”

She looked at me and said, “Mr. Doud, are you still teaching?” I said, “Yes, Julie, just getting ready to start my second year.” Then she looked at me and said, “Are you married yet?”

I said, “No, Julie, I’m not married yet.”

_{She said, “You know, Mr. Doud, you’d} be kind of cute if you’d lost 100 pounds.”
Kind of cute? Why bother? So I went home and had five scoops of butter brickle.
I got up the next morning and turned on the Today Show and Dr. Art Ulene was on with a diet for extremely obese people. And I qualified. I wrote it down and started dieting that day. I lost 127 pounds. I’ve kept it off for 13 years now. I’m proud of that.

When I was heavy, it really affected my self-esteem, the way I felt about myself. There are heavy people that are well adjusted. There are muscular people who aren’t well adjusted. But I didn’t like myself that way. I never dated all the way through high school. I never dated all the way through college. I graduated from college never once having gone out on a date with a girl. And so I figured if I hadn’t started dating yet, it’s probably too late to start. But then I lost 127 pounds and noticed that girls started looking at me a little differently, possibly because I started looking at them a little differently. I thought, I’ve lost over a 100 pounds, I must be kind of cute. To make a long story short, I started going out with a girl after she had asked me
out four times. We went together for three and one-half years before I finally got up enough courage to ask her to marry me. Once we decided to get married, I thought our parents should meet each other. I’m rather old-fashioned in that way. My father was widowed. Her mom was divorced. So I invited my dad and her mom to my house and I made my old fashioned roast beef, potatoes, and carrots and gravy dinner. My girlfriend, Tammy, brought a pie. And our parents hit it off. They clicked. They were tight. So Tammy and I were married in June. Our folks were married in August. Which means, if you stop and think about it for a minute, and it takes
at least a minute, that made my father my father-in-_{law, my mother-in-law is my stepmother, my wife} is my stepsister and that makes both our sons our nephews. And just two years ago, we had our first niece. And, it’s all legitimate! Don’t you question it.

I was a little worried when we came back from the White House and my principal knocked on the door and told me a man from a magazine was going to come and interview me. I said, “Well, what magazine?”

He said, “Star.”

I said, “Star? I never heard of it.”

He said, “Well you heard of The National
Enquirer.”

_{I said, “Well, yeah.”}

He said, “Well it’s sold right along side The National Enquirer.”

I started to worry. I could just envision the headline that was going to appear in Star. I could just see it: “Teacher of the Year Married to His Sister.” Or, “Teacher of the Year’s Diet Plan.” Those magazines love to print diet plans. Don’t laugh because a PR firm from New York called me and asked me if I’d be interested in writing the teacher’s diet book for obese teachers. I said, “Diet book? I don’t want to write a diet book. I want to do a video.” That’s a lie!

I’ve listened to lots of speakers and the truth of it is a lot of them exaggerate, they tell a lot of lies, they tell a lot of stories that have never really happened. I’m a very moral and upright person. The thought of even telling a little lie doesn’t sit right with me. So if I slip and I tell you a lie, like I just did, I’ll let you know right afterwards that I told you one, That’s a lie!

There’s something you should know about me. I don’t have any claim to fame. I’m married to my sister, have two adorable nephews and a niece, and it’s been a great honor for me to be an educational cheerleader. But there’s something you should know about me before I really get to the meat of what I want to say.

When I was in college we were studying Shakespeare and we were reading about Shakespeare’s plays. We were reading what Walpole said about Shakespeare’s characters. He said, “Life is a comedy for those who think, and it’s a tragedy for those who feel.” Now most of us are a pretty good blend of the two; we’re equal thinker, equal feeler. But not me. I’m an extreme. I’m an extreme feeler.

I see things with my heart. I have heart disease, it breaks easily. I didn’t ask to be this way. In fact, I’ve spent half my life denying that that’s the way I am because we live in a society where it still is not very acceptable for men to be too overtly emotional

_{except, of course, in athletic endeavors.}

To show you what I mean about my being a feeler, _{remember that Coke commercial where Mean Joe} Green is walking off the football field? He’s mean, he’s mean. You don’t want to mess with Mean Joe Green. He’s limping to the locker room. He has the jersey over his shoulder. Here stands this little kid with his bottle of Coke. He’s really intimidated by
Mean Joe. He says, “Here, Mean Joe.” Mean Joe grabs the bottle of Coke, he empties it, hands the empty bottle back to the little kid and starts back down the hallway to the locker room. The little kid is watching him go and, all of a sudden, Joe stops, takes the jersey off his shoulder and tosses it back to the little kid.

Then there is that AT&T commercial, the one where the couple is sitting at the table and the mom looks over at the dad and she says, “Johnny called this morning.”

He says, “Johnny, what did he call for?”

She says, “He just called to say love you,
Mom.'”

I’ll tell you, I’m a basket case. My wife sits there staring at me. _{“Will you please grow up?”}

And those Hallmark card commercials! I have them all on video. Whenever I get really melancholy _{I just take out my Hallmark cassette, I plop it in and} I just cry. That’s a lie! But I’m a feeler.

As I travel and people want to ask me about this and this and this and this, I say, “Why don’t you ask me about kids, because I’m in the kid business?”
_{Something happens in school. A recent poll of} kindergartners said 96 percent of them felt good _{about themselves, who they are. A poll of recent} seniors indicated that only about 6 percent are happy _{with themselves. What happens to that self-esteem?}
What happens to that self-concept that’s there in the _{eyes of my little kids? What takes away those} smiles? What makes it so that 1 out of every 10 ofour kids is chemically dependent? Thirty-some percent of girls are anorexic or bulimic and have some kind of eating disorder. Every 30 seconds an adolescent becomes pregnant. Every 70 seconds a young personattempts suicide. Every 90 minutes they succeed.

What happens between kindergarten and the time we’re “ready to enter into the world”? A lot hap-
pens. And what happens has affected where you are today and it’s affected where I am today. It happens
through what I call the hidden curriculum. It’s not prescribed. School boards don’t get together and
design it. But it’s what teaches us where we fit in. It’s what teaches us what our values are. It’s what
teaches us whether or not we have any potential.

You know what I learned in school? I learned I was fat. That’s the first thing. I never knew I was
fat until I started school. Our whole family was fat. We reveled in our fatness. We used to shake it
around. Then I started school and I was the butt of jokes. I learned that my gingerbread man wasn’t
good enough for the bulletin board. Mine and Marilyn Kamedic’s. We were the only two. Every-
body else’s made it up. I could never keep the white pasty glue on the back side. I’d get it smeared all
over the front. I used to eat the white pasty glue. I used to go home covered with white pasty glue. Not
only wasn’t I good enough for the bulletin board, I wasn’t any good. School taught me more and more
things like that. I learned that I came with my box of six crayons, proud to have them, and here came
the mayor’s daughter with her box of 64 crayons with a built-in sharpener in the back. I learned where
I fit in on the social economic ladder. Kids got up at show and tell and told about vacations. We didn’t
have a car. We’d never gone on a vacation. We had a linoleum floor with big holes worn in it. I learned
where I fit in. Why was it in first grade I could have already told you who the homecoming king and
queen were going to be? We had them identified. They were the popular kids. Guess what? I knew I
was not in that group. Nobody had to tell me specifically. I started to learn about myself. And the
tragedy of it is that kids start learning these lessons about themselves and they believe them with their
whole heart and, for many of the kids, it colours their entire lives.

One of the worst experiences I had was in seventh grade. I dreaded going to seventh grade becauseI heard that in seventh grade you had to take gym class. It wasn’t like recess where you just went outside with whatever clothes you’ve worn to school. Inseventh grade you had to change into gym clothes. A note came home from the school, “If you have a son in gym class this is what he’s going to need: staples, cardinals, red and white dynamite.” Need a
pair of white gym shoes, white gym socks, red gym shorts, that other thing, and a white tee shirt. We didn’t have any of those things. Mom went to Batcher’s Department Store and bought those things for me. The first day of gym class came, that long dreaded day finally came. I walked into that gym _{room. I was a nervous wreck and there was my gym
teacher. He had just gone back into teaching after} finishing 20 years in the Marines as a drill sergeant. _{That’s the truth. He came into class and said, “All} right, listen up. I’m going to issue a lock. I’m going_{to give you the combination to your lock. Should you ever forget the combination to your lock I’m} going to write it across your forehead in magic _{marker! Is that understood?” Guess who forgot the} combination?

I didn’t need to go run laps, I was sweating rivers. I’m reaching in my bag, taking out my shoes, my shorts and my socks and my shirt, and that other thing. I had never seen one before. It said “Bike” on the box. I took it out and looked at it. It didn’t look anything like a bike. It looked more like a slingshot. I thought, “What in the heck do I do with this thing?” I was too embarrassed to look over at Steve and see how he was putting his on. Didn’t do any good to look down. I couldn’t even see my feet. You know what I did? I did what you probably would have done. It was a very logical thing to do. I decided to tie into lessons I learned from the past: the tags on things always go in the back. Well, I no more than had it on, I knew something was wrong. It was called a supporter and for the life of me I couldn’t figure out what it was supporting. Now I’m looking over, oh, that’s how it goes. I was too embarrassed to take it all the way off so I thought maybe I could just twist it around. Here I am trying to twist it around and all of a sudden Mr. Webb sees me. “Look at that. Look at that everybody. He doesn’t even know how to put on a jock-strap.” Everybody looked and everybody laughed. You know there’s still a part way down deep inside that still hurts from that.

I missed the next two weeks of school sick. I had gym on Tuesdays and Thursdays and every other
Friday and I was sick an awful lot on Tuesday and Thursday and every other Friday because illness
was a way for me to avoid those heartaches. I was flunking school. I just would have been another drop
out statistic. My dad hadn’t finished school. My sister attempted suicide. I was just following the family
tradition. I would have just been another statistic, except somebody cared. I have come to believe as a
teacher and I believe it’s true no matter what profession you are in, people won’t care how much you
know until they know how much you care. And there was Mr. Cards in my life, my sixth grade teacher.
There was a Mrs. Morey, my seventh grade teacher.
There was a Mr. Kopka, who cared enough to even come to my home, and I hoped he wouldn’t notice
the hole in the linoleum floor. There were teachers who really cared.

If it hadn’t been for those teachers, I don’t know where I’d be today. But how did people handle these
feelings of low self-esteem? Some of them aren’t fortunate enough to find those people who really
care. So I see kids today who are searching, searching. You know what these kids grow up to be as
adults. They are searching for the answers. They have turned to drugs and they have turned to sex and
they have turned to trying to acquire materialistic possessions in an attempt to give them meaning and
purpose in life. And it’s fruitless and it’s empty.

Some people become workaholics. And this searching continues on into adulthood, and mixed-
up, insecure kids become mixed-up, insecure adults. But as adults, we’re better at “wearing the masks.”
Pretending is an art that has become second nature with us. We give the impression that we’re secure,
that all is sunny and unruffled with us, within as well as without, that confidence is our name, coolness is our game, that we’re in charge and that we need no one.

Are you a real person? Do you wear a mask? Have you stripped away the facade and allowed people to

_{see the real you—the you who sometimes} hurts, the you who is sometimes confused, the you who desperately needs the love of God, family and friends?

I remember the night that my mother died. My two sisters, brother and I were sitting around the kitchen table. My father was in his bedroom. It sounded almost as though we heard soft sobs coming from the bedroom, but I couldn’t believe that my father was crying because I had never seen him cry. Suddenly Dad came walking into the kitchen, his eyes swollen from tears. He stood alone as he faced us, and haltingly said, “I _{never told her that I loved her, but I think she} knew.”

The tragedy is that my mother really didn’t know.

Just before they closed Mom’s casket before the start of the funeral, I stood behind my dad as he bent down and kissed mom’s cold lips, and said, “I love you, babe. I love you.”

Four years ago my father died. As the funeral directors prepared to transport his body from the funeral home to the church for the funeral, my brother walked to the lifeless body, pulled up the suitcoat and stuck a letter in the inside pocket of my father’s suit jacket. It was a thick letter. I looked at Pat. He said, “The last time I saw Dad he gave me a big hug and he went to kiss me—on the lips— and I turned away my head. I turned away my head
…” He later told me that his letter contained all the things that he wished he had told Dad but never did.

I’ve come to believe that unless you have learned to love and be loved, learned to be honest and open, learned to share your dreams and your hurts, you’ve never really learned to live. The greatest tragedy of life is to suddenly realize that you’ve only been filling space.

Do you merely “fill space”? Are you a person in touch with your feelings? Don’t wait! Don’t wait! Rush home, grab your spouse, grab your kids, call them, tell them you love them. Do whatever it is you need to do to be at peace in your heart. Don’t wait! Don’t wait! It may be too late.

Realize your responsibility to your fellow man. One of my heroes is the apostle Paul. He wrote a letter to a church in Corinth in which he said, “Your life is a letter being read by everybody. It’s a letter. And it’s a letter that’s not written in ink. And it’s a letter that’s not
written in stone. But it’s a letter that’s written on the tablet of the human heart.”

Our lives are letters. You are a teacher. Parents are the greatest teachers of all. We are all teachers, we’re teaching everybody every day by the life that we live. We are a part of this whole process that we call the human race. I could be a teacher like Mr. Card, who put his arm around me and I hated it, and I loved it.

I could be a teacher like Mrs. Morey, who came to my house and got me involved in speech, who was there for me. You are teaching others by the way you live.

On April 14, 1986, I had the unbelievable honour of being invited into the Oval Office to meet with the President of the United States of America, Ronald Reagan.

He kept me waiting for over an hour and a half. The first thing I told him, I said, “Sir, I do not appreciate being kept waiting.” That’s a lie. When I walked in, he held out his hand, he said, “I saw you on ‘Good Morning America’ this morning.” That really surprised me, because I had read that he didn’t get up that early. Then he looked at me and he said, “When you said, you don’t teach English or Speech or World Literature, but you teach students, that reminded me of some of those teachers I had when I was growing up.”

Then he reached into the vest pocket of his coat and he pulled out a piece of his individualized note card stationery, gold-embossed Presidential seal, his name across the top, you know, so he wouldn’t forget. And on it was a poem written in his own handwriting.

He said, “I came across this poem a number of years ago and it’s about the importance of teachers. It’s by Clark Mollenhoff, a journalist back from my Iowa days. Better than anything else I have ever read, it explains just how important teachers are. If you don’t mind I’d like to read it to you.”

And I said, “Oh, go ahead.”

So he held the poem and he looked at me and he said,

“Teachers. You are the builders of their dreams. The gods who build or crush their young beliefs of right and wrong.
You are the spark that sets aflame the poet’s hand or lights the flame of some great singer’s

song. You are the god of the young, the very young. You are the guardian of a million dreams. Your every smile or frown can heal or pierce a heart. Yours are a hundred lives, a thousand lives. Yours the pride of loving them, the sorrow, too. Your patient work, your touch, make you the gods of hope who fill their souls with dreams to make those dreams come true.”

When he was finished reading it, there were tears coming down this old feeler’s face. The President looked at me and he saw that I was moved and that moved him, and when I saw that he was moved, that _{moved me more—it was a very moving moment.} And my wife was standing there glaring at me thinking “You’re not going to make a scene in the _{Oval Office are you?”}

Then he looked at me and said, “Well, I wrote this _{out in a hurry and, if you don’t mind my chicken} scratches, you can have this.” And he handed it to me, his own handwriting. I couldn’t believe it. _{Improper abbreviation. Incorrect punctuation. Im-}proper capitalization. I read just two weeks earlier _{that his signature alone was worth} $66.00. So I started counting up the words, you know, on a _{teacher’s salary.}

On our way out of the Oval Office, my wife turned to me and said, “While he was reading that _{poem to you, I got a really good ashtray off his} desk.” And she said, “I’m just kidding, that’s a lie.” _{I just knew we’d walk outside and get blown away} by the Secret Service.

But “builders of dreams,” that’s what we all are. And nobody will really care how much we know, _{until they know how much we care.}Christmas Eve night, my family and I came home
from church and the kids were so anxious to open the Christmas presents. My little daughter. Jessica, was having so much fun with the wrapping paper. Next year, Tammy and I have decided that all we are going to get her is wrapping paper. And the phone rang. Christmas Eve is one of those nights when the phone doesn’t ring very often because everybody is with their families.

I said, “I bet that’s Aunt Renee calling from California,” because every Christmas Eve Aunt Renee calls from California.

And Tammy said, “Or it could be Mom.” I went over and I picked up the phone, “Merry Christmas, Doud’s.”

“Is this Mr. Doud?”
“Yes, this is Guy Doud.”

“Hi, this is Chris, do you remember me?”

Chris. How many Chrises have I known? “Could you help me out a little bit, Chris? What’s your last
name?”

_{“Johnson.”}

“Johnson.” I said, “When did you graduate, Chris?”

“Well, I never graduated. Remember, I dropped out of school. You tried to talk me out of dropping
out. Remember? I was in your basic English class.”I only taught that my first year and since that time
those kids have all been mainstreamed. I said, “Gee, Chris, you’ve been out of school for a long
time.”

Silence.

“Well, Chris, what are you doing?”

“Well, I’m in Stillwater, in the prison here. They told us that we could call somebody tonight. My folks, they don’t wantanything to do with me anymore. And I always remembered that you were my favourite teacher. You always seemed to care. I just wanted to call and say ‘Merry Christmas, Mr. Doud.”‘

Then I remembered why I had gone into teaching. Builders of dreams, that’s what we all are. Our lives can either make or break somebody else. I’ve seen the kids who so desperately need love. And I’ve seen adults who desperately need love.

Accept your calling to be a “builder of dreams.” Realize that your life is a letter. Begin “building” _{at home. Make sure that everything that needs saying has been said. Make sure that everything} that needs doing has been done. Drop everything else and make sure your house is in order! Then realize your commitment to your fellow man. Someone has said that there are two types of people in the world: “Life-oriented” and “Death-oriented.”
Death-oriented people take a look at life and say, “Well, this is the way it is, guess I can’t do much about it.” Life-oriented people take a look at life and see it as they would like it to be, and realize that they can make it happen. They can! Be a “life-oriented” person, dear friend. And remember: No-one will ever care how much you know, until they know how much you care!