Back to School

School Scene, early 20th C
by J. C. Huntington

“The Lord God has given me the tongue of a teacher,
that I may know how to sustain the weary with a word.”
Isaiah 50:4

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~ some advice from my earliest years of teaching ~

"Although speakers and listeners, writers and readers, are in one sense engaged in a cooperative effort to understand one another, they are also in conflict over the amount of effort that each will expend on the other. That is, the speaker or writer wants to say what he has to say with as little energy as possible and the reader or listener wants to understand with as little energy as possible. . . . Thus anything that facilitates the transfer of meaning is important in this tight economy of energy."

from Errors & Expectations, pp 11 - 12]

by Mina P, Shaughnessy (1924 - 1978)
Innovative and Inspiring Teacher of Writing
See also ~ Mina P. Shaughnessy: Her Life and Work

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“The high-school English [or college composition] teacher will be fulfilling her responsibility if she furnishes the student a guided opportunity, through the best writing of the past, to come, in time, to an understanding of the best writing of the present. She will teach literature, not social studies or little lessons in democracy or the customs of many lands. And if the student finds that this is not to his taste? Well, that is regrettable. Most regrettable. His taste should not be consulted; it is being formed.”

by Flannery O'Connor (1925 – 1964)
American novelist, short story writer and essayist

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DLTBGYD
~ some advice dear to my heart from grad school days ~
Linda Gray Sexton: "My mother, the late poet, Anne Sexton, wore a medallion around her neck—which I inherited and still wear—that is inscribed with the Latin phrase: “Illegitimi Non Carborundum.” This means, in rough English (if you will excuse the expletive): 'Don’t Let The Bastards Grind You Down.'”
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Inequity

The Arc of Justice?

Millennium Sundial
On the John T. Myers Pedestrian Bridge
between Lafayette & West Lafayette, Indiana
[See also "Interstellar Thanksgiving"]
I had an interesting listening experience a couple of Sundays ago. During the Old Testament lesson, I kept hearing the word inequity, though the word on the page was clearly iniquity:

. . . we all do fade as a leaf; and our iniquities, like the wind, have taken us away. . . . thou hast hid thy face from us, and hast consumed us, because of our iniquities. . . . we are the clay, and thou our potter; and we all are the work of thy hand. Be not wroth very sore, O Lord, neither remember iniquity for ever: behold, see, we beseech thee, we are all thy people.

Isaiah 64: 6 - 12 (King James Version)
Perhaps my brain was tweaking the message just a bit to make it more relevant for citizens of the 21st century. Whether we should or not, do we much bemoan our iniquities? No, not really. Inequity, on the other hand, fills the news and plagues us daily. We struggle with how to redress the racial inequity of American history, how to correct the economic inequity that leaves so many basic needs unfulfilled, and how to establish social equity among all persons and environmental equity upon the earth.

As the reading came to a close and the next hymn was announced, I was still pondering the contemporary relevance of my inadvertent rewording. Imagine my surprise, not to mention the ultimate satisfaction of connection and coincidence, when we reached the last word of the first stanza:

Hail to the Lord’s anointed, great David’s greater Son!
Hail in the time appointed, His reign on earth begun!
He comes to break oppression, to set the captive free;
To take away transgression and rule in equity.

There you have it -- equity! Thus confirming my intuition that somehow inequity was a more appropriate watchword for the day than iniquity. This hymn's emphasis on equality reminded me of two more references:

1. The message of social justice embedded in the beautiful Christmas carol "Oh Holy Night":

O Holy Night! The stars are brightly shining
It is the night of the dear Savior's birth . . .

Truly He taught us to love one another
His law is love and His gospel is peace
Chains shall He break for the slave is our brother
And in His name all oppression shall cease . . .

2. This brief but powerful reminder that if ever there is to be peace on earth, we must address inequity and close the gap between poverty and prosperity:

Who is weak, and I am not weak?
who is offended, and I burn not?

2 Corinthians 11:29 (King James Version)