I’m going to say it. Here goes. Ready…? My Dad was right. Did you hear that Dad? (I can hear him chortling hundreds of miles away). But what is he right about you ask? Well… When I was 15 I decided what I was going to do with the rest of my life. I know, most of you are laughing and asking ‘and how many times did you change your mind after that’? But no, really. I have known from the time I was 15 that I wanted to teach English. I distinctly remember a day, sitting in the living room with my dad, toward the end of my sophomore year in high school. We talked at length about jobs and making money versus being fulfilled in your career. We talked about what jobs would always be in demand, and what jobs were more transient. We talked about what jobs would give life meaning and which would make you seem powerful. Up until that time, when people had asked what I wanted to be when I grew I had answered glibly “a lawyer”. It was something that seemed cool and I knew they made a lot of money, and having grown up without much money that seemed like a good idea. Looking back now, I suspect my dad started that conversation in the living room because he was worried about my soul. He didn’t think lawyer was the job for me, and he wanted to get out in front of it. From where I sit now, 30 years later, I’m glad of it. He was right. Not that I couldn’t have been a lawyer, because I think I could have, but because that wouldn’t have brought the same value and joy to my life that teaching has. But that isn’t even the thing I’m thinking of my dad being right about (oh jeez, I can hear him now…”you mean I was right about two things!”)... The thing that stands out most about that conversation all those years ago is what he said after we settled on my studying English and even getting a Master’s Degree. I remember he said, “But Wendy, you need to understand something…” and his tone was so serious it made me really pay attention. He went on, “Teaching English is great, but what will really save you in an emergency, what will keep you alive when an apocalypse comes, is your ability to sew and make things. No one knows how to do that anymore, at least not in your generation. If the economy crumbles no one will care about essays and literature, but they will still need clothes.” I was dumbfounded. I thought he was crazy, but I have never forgotten those words. Now, you have to understand the climate into which he spoke this idea—or at least the climate of my personal experience. I was not cool in high school. I repeat…I was not cool. I was a choir geek. I was in piano class. I drove a pick up truck when everyone else at school had a BMW (I was a comparatively poor kid in one of the richest schools in one of the richest counties in California). And I made a lot of my own clothes. I even made my own prom dress. Some people found my sewing skills oddly interesting (emphasis on the odd) but most people just thought it was lame. I eventually, as I got into college, learned not to talk about my sewing because I just hated the weird looks I received. I was embarrassed that my interests weren’t cool. To make matters worse, as I got older, I learned more skills—quilting, knitting, cooking, embroidery, baking, canning jam—but I still didn’t really advertise. As time went on, I can even remember co-workers calling me “grandma” when they found out I liked to knit or sew. But at the same time, as I was teaching my own daughters how to thread a needle, I began to realize that home economics classes and shop classes were being cut from school offerings because of budget problems. The small private school my children attended didn’t offer them either. Perhaps society was openly agreeing with what friends and classmates had thought for years..."This stuff doesn’t matter anymore, why should young people learn it?” And yet this itching at the back of my brain nagged at me. I thought maybe it did matter. That itch became a full blown clawing one day when my oldest daughter was in kindergarten. It was Thanksgiving and her class had been encouraged to dress up as Pilgrims or Native Americans. My daughter wanted to be a pilgrim, so I spent the weekend prior to the class event making a rather simple pilgrim costume. I didn’t have time for a fully authentic one, although I could have done that if need be. When we arrived at the party, she was the only Pilgrim. Out of 100 kindergarteners she was the only Pilgrim. Several of the moms came over to me to compliment her costume and to ask where I found it. Apparently most of the girls had wanted to be Pilgrims but due to an inability to buy a costume they had been forced to resort to what seemed to be the standard costume for Native Americans—a beige t-shirt which hastily cut fringe at the bottom and a band around the head with an ugly craft store primary colored feather sticking out the back. When I matter-of-factly stated that I had made it, I was shocked at the response. Every last one of the mothers (and mind you these were women my age who had access to the same schooling I did) said they never could have made anything even remotely like that. None of them owned a sewing machine or would have know how to use it if they had. But it was what my daughter’s teacher said that left me actually speechless. She said, “Oh, gosh, I could never have made anything like that. In fact, if a button were to fall off of my shirt, well, I guess I’d have to go buy a new shirt.” I felt like all the air had been sucked out of the room. This was a woman who had graduated college! The very next day I went and spoke to the Superintendent of the school about starting a Home Ec class. In the end he did, and I ended up teaching it. Unfortunately it only lasted three years, but what I learned in that time was that sewing and cooking and home keeping were not the only skills that our young people were lacking. My generation had so wanted to protect and preserve their children’s youth that we had kept them life illiterate. Not only could they not thread a needle, but they couldn’t balance a check book or write a check. They didn’t understand credit or how to budget or even what bills people in the real world had. We had failed them. Now, sometimes I will talk about making things during my English classes. I have continued to expand my skills and interests and at times off-handedly share things with students in small conversations as I move about the room. Recently, talking to a few beloved students, I fell into conversation about how their generation, and mine, and even my parents’, hadn’t really encountered great hardship. Every year I teach The Grapes of Wrath and every year it is increasingly more difficult for students to empathize with the Joads. Life is just so easy for us. And yes, as one student pointed out, people have hardship in their individual lives perhaps (divorce of parents, loss of a job, death of a loved one) but as a society it has been effectively three generations since we suffered on a national scale. I told those few students in this conversation that I thought we were soft as a nation. I thought that if we were to have a crisis it would hit hard. The interesting thing is…they agreed. What I discovered is that our young people know they are lacking in skills and dependent on technology. They know that if something serious happened that they haven’t been properly trained. They even asked me to teach a Home Ec class again. That was about a week before the closing of all California schools for the COVID-19 quarantine. A day or two into our transition to online learning, one of the students from that conversation emailed me. She said she had been thinking about our conversation. She said she understood what I meant and that she really was feeling her lack of preparedness. At the time shelf after shelf in our local grocery stores were bare as people panic bought out all the bread, all the noodles, and all the rice (not to mention toilet paper). As the weeks have gone on though, a new trend has emerged. Now you can’t find flour or yeast anywhere. Every other youtube video seems to be a bread-baking (or now mask-making) tutorial. I am sewing masks, and baking soda bread, and growing green onions from discarded cut offs in an old mason jar. Suddenly the skills I was teased for as a teen and young adult have become nearly life saving. Seamstresses everywhere are being called into action to make masks for every walk of life. It reminds me of the thousands of knitted caps that were made by humble homefront women during WWII to send to the boys at the front. And in the midst of this panic, I find myself hopeful that tragedy will give birth to knowledge and ingenuity. That our young people will begin to see that Siri does not actually know everything. That the old skills are valuable now and in the future.
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Wendy Picard GorhamWendy lives and works in the midst of words everyday--English teacher by profession, and writer by passion! Archives
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