The tablets on the desks (the prayer and the one for writing) in Deering, New Hampshire are very far from what we would call a tablet today yet, I am more comfortable with these former ones because they reinforce a number of values I hold dear.
This is exactly the kind of schooling that my grandmother experienced in the thirties in a small village called Olteni, in south-east Romania. It was all about memorizing and wiping out the tablet for the next day; it was about praying and storytelling, complete discipline, the students often in awe of the teacher.
My grandma could only attend primary school then; as much as she wanted to go on, her impoverished family and ten siblings needed her, so she quit school unwillingly and joined the rest of the family to work the fields. Up to this day, at the age of 88, there is this regret that she could have been stayed in school longer because she was a gifted child. However, the lessons on the tablet remained with her and by lessons I mean not only the list of Romanian rulers and mathematics, but discipline, respect, curiosity, generosity and warmth.
Being in Deering, New Hampshire, as a participant in the 2014 MIAS program, in front of the tablets on the desks in the old school, I imagined children in the 1930s in America. Some may have quit school, like my grandma, some others stayed, like Professor Donald Johnson and pursued further education.
Apart from being a great professor, Don Johnson graciously imparted, during the tours of Boston, Lowell and Deering, the same beliefs and values amy grandmother’s Romanian education: discipline, respect, curiosity, generosity and warmth. Otherwise, he and Professor Philip Hosay would not have set up the MIAS program; they would not have gathered the wonderful staff around them and they would not have brought together the 2014 MIAS visiting academics – my new American family – and the amazing community in Deering, New Hampshire. This is “old school” and this is why I like the old tablets better.
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