Carpe Futurum?

My daughter is switching high schools, for a number of reasons most of which have nothing to do with the quality of education she has received in her present school. She is an excellent student. (I take no credit for any of her good qualities, nor any blame for her not-so-good qualities.) When she was registering and selecting courses for this coming year we had to think of how many honors courses she should have. She wanted all of her courses to be the most challenging that were offered. Now, I know she could handle that but she also has about 10 hours a week of dance classes with much more at the time of shows and recitals. I also know that she is a teenager and her social life is not unimportant. (I hesitate to say it is her highest priority but it was mine.) Because of a number of factors she was not able to get all high honors courses and she was very disappointed, but I was not.

One of the reasons she gave for wanting the most difficult courses was that it would help her get into a better college. I had a problem with this. I was a high school

teacher for a large part of my life and this has colored my thinking but I have come to the firm conclusion that many, if not most of us spend a great deal of our life preparing for the future. We structure our education so that we will be able to be accepted into a good college. College now has become a preparation for a good job. It is even the stated goal of some colleges that they are preparing students to meet the demands of our economy.

I think we have gotten warped. We spend all of our presents for a future which, from my experience is elusive and unpredictable. We lose sight of the day we have. Life is not what is ahead, life is for the living now. School, all of it, from pre-school through post-graduate is for learning, and ideally it should foster a joy and exuberance in the pursuit of knowledge itself. Each year of school should be lived for the experience it is, the failures learned from and the accomplishments celebrated for what they are, not for how they will look on a college application. I believe if we encourage this, not only will our children and society be happier, but they will be prepared to embrace what to future holds, and shape it to fit them rather than having the elusive future shape them into neurotic anxious beings.

Virtually every day I drive past what we used to call a reform school. It is the New Hampshire Juvenile Detention Center. It is actually located on a beautiful site on the Merrimack River. But this is not about justice, or rehabilitation, it is about the weakening of our language. The institution is being expanded and they have a sign out by the road giving credit to the various politicians who are responsible. I have never gotten past reading the tile because I am alternately amused and discouraged. The sign “reads ‘Architecturally Secure Facility For Juveniles”. I think if I were ever arrested I will just tell people that I was travelling to an Architecturally Secure Facility. This is right up there with ‘attitudinally challenged’ for short, but it is not as dangerous as ‘collateral damage’ for dead women and children.

The Customer Is Mostly Always Right

I have worked for the same company for a long time. Normally it would seem to be mind numbing, but I have gone from software technician thorough development engineer, to technical support engineer and now I am what they call a product support engineer. That means I get the problems that no one else wants. My company does industrial automation, so I get called when a factory goes down or an oil refinery stops, or a city’s water supply slows to a trickle. I have to get them running one way or another and, with the help of many very smart people, I do. I love working with people; they are a source of wonder. They are usually very cooperative, and grateful but they are also sometimes not at their best.
When I was in tech support I dealt with engineers from all over the world. They are very intelligent but sometimes, perhaps due to stressful conditions they can lose sight of reality.
As an example one February I got a phone call from the Northwest Territory in Canada. It was an engineer working in a gold mine. Now, maybe it was the cold, or the long dark nights but he had a strange question.
I will call him Jacques, (because I am not sure of his name but he was a French-Canadian.). Here is how the conversation went.
Jacques: “Hello Mike, we have been having a problem with one of our control sheds out on the tundra. It is about a half mile away from where we are and the machinery keeps shutting down.”
Me: “It just shuts down? For no reason?”
Jacques: ”Oh no. It shuts down because of the cold. It gets to minus fifty, minus-seventy out there.”
Me: ”Well our stuff is not specified to that temperature, It will shut down much before it gets that cold. Isn’t the shed heated?”
Jacques: “I know that, and there is heat out there. But the shed door keeps opening and the heater can'’ keep up then. That is what I am calling about. Can you guys figure out a system of control that will detect when the door is open so we can send someone out there to close it? Or better yet get a motor to close the door when it happens?”
Me: “Welllll we could, but it would be very expensive. Why does the door open?”
Jacques: “The caribou nibble the wire that is holding the door closed.”
Me: (after a long incredulous pause.) “Have you tried a padlock?”
Jacques (After an even longer embarrassing pause) “Errr, Nevermind”