Brandon Mitchell sent me his experiences with higher education on 1/26/2013.

Shortly after high school, like many kids my age I started attending the local state university to get training for my career.

I took a few introduction classes in accounting and computer science to decide which one I would choose as my major.

I quickly chose computer science and proceeded to get my bachelors degree, graduating with honors. After about eleven years as a successful software engineer I decided it was time to further my education by getting a Masters in Business Administration.

While studying for my entrance exam I learned that Monticello College was starting its first year of online studies for a bachelor degree. After some pondering I decided to go with Monticello College and put off getting my masters degree. After one year at Monticello College I would like to share my experience of my two college experiences.

For my first degree I was at school to please my professors and conform to what they thought and said so I could receive a good grade. When questions were asked there was always just one right answer which the professor was expecting. Asking questions or challenging the professors when you thought they might be wrong or that an idea could be improved upon was discouraged.

At Monticello College my mentors always encouraged us to question and challenge.

It was very clear that students and mentors were learning together and improving themselves.

Everything was open for discussion.

At Monticello College I also had one-on-one time with my mentor every single week to talk about studies and just life in general.

If I was struggling with my studies one week because of personal issues my mentor was aware of it and could work with me. I never felt like just another student or that the mentor was just there to get a paycheck.

While getting my first degree I purchased textbooks but rarely read them since the contents were spoon fed to me in lectures. I usually had to spend over one hundred dollars per book and had no use for them once class was over. If I was lucky I was able to sell them back for around ten dollars. I would usually only have one book per class, which ended up being two to four books a semester.

Monticello College uses classics and original sources instead of textbooks. Books for the first semester were a little expensive but that is only because I had to purchase The Great Books of the Western World. Since these books are used every semester it makes the book purchases for following semesters fairly inexpenxsive. The cost of the rest of the books ranged from three dollars to twenty dollars each.

I was required to read around 40 books and documents each semester; this gave a wide variety of thought on the subjects that were studied.

Every one of the books has a place in my personally library and will continue to get used outside of school.

Since almost every class at Monticello College holds a discussion on the readings it was required to actually read the books.

It was very obvious to the entire class if you were not prepared so the books actually got used.

While getting my first degree I made no lasting friendships since each person showed up to class, listened to the lecture and then went on with their life.

I could not give a single last name of another student from my college.

At Monticello College I feel as though my fellow students and my mentors are my friends. I keep in contact with them outside of school and I am interested in how their lives are going.

During all the discussions you learn a lot about each other and quickly become friends.

I can’t even imagine the bonds that will be built with the on-campus students.

I am amazed at the quality of both the mentors and the students at Monticello College.

After experiencing just one year at Monticello College I don’t have any desire to return to a modern university.

As I visit with my co-workers, who are all working on their master degrees from local universities I constantly hear them complain about the classes and projects they must complete.

All they hear from me is how much I am learning and enjoying my studies. Monticello College has shown me what a true education should be and I will not settle for less. I would highly recommend everyone investigate Monticello College whether for a degree program or one of their continuing education programs. These programs will change who you are and put you on the path to being the best person you can be.

This young college graduate, turned self-styled poet, takes a strong stance on schooling, urging the world’s youth to “understand your motives and reassess your aims.”

“Let’s look at the statistics,” Suli Breaks says, pointing to moguls worth billions of dollars as examples of those who succeeded without graduating from a institution of higher learning: the late Steve Jobs, Oprah Winfrey, Mark Zuckerberg, and Michael Jackson.

He also points to icons who are famous not for their money but for their impact such as Jesus, Muhammad, Socrates, Mother Teresa, Malcolm X, Spielburg, Shakespeare, Jesse Owens, and Beethoven.

He is not saying that education is a waste; on the contrary, he is simply saying that there is a huge gulf between education and schooling.

“Redefine how you view education; understand its true meaning,” Suli Breaks says. “Education is not just about regurgitating facts from a book on someone else’s opinion on a subject to pass an exam. Look at it. Picasso was educated in creating art. Shakespeare was educated in the art of all that was written. Colonel Harland Sanders was educated in the art of creating Kentucky fried chicken.”

Sometimes if takes a young black poet to help us see what is right in front of us.

Why I Hate School But Love Education Video

This post is a tribute to Earl Shorris, one of my favorite writers on education who passed away in 2012. I am reprinting  the April 16, 2013 Wall Street Journal Book Review of his latest book, The Art of Freedom.  This piece was written by Naomi Schaefer Riley.

In The Art of Freedom, Earl Shorris describes his efforts to establish a set of courses that would teach the core texts of Western civilization to people living in poverty, whose school experience had scanted the canon or skipped it entirely.

Almost two decades ago, Earl Shorris, a novelist and journalist, told the editor at his publishing house that he wanted to write a book about poverty in America.

The editor, to his credit, said that he didn’t want just another book describing the problem. He wanted a solution.

So Shorris, who had attended the University of Chicago on a scholarship many years before and who was greatly influenced by its Great Books curriculum, hit upon the idea of teaching the core texts of Western civilization to people living in poverty, whose school experience had scanted the canon or skipped it entirely.

His Eureka moment came when he was visiting a prison and conducting interviews for another book he was planning to write.

He asked one of the women at New York’s Bedford Hills maximum­ security prison why she thought the poor were poor.

“Because they don’t have the moral life of downtown,” shereplied. “What do you mean by the moral life?” Shorris asked.

“You got to begin with the children . . . ,” she said. “You’ve got to teach the moral life of downtown to the children.

And the way you do that, Earl, is by taking them downtown to plays, museums, concerts, lectures.”

He asked whether she meant the humanities. Looking at him as if he were, as he puts it, “the stupidest man on earth,” she replied: “Yes, Earl, the humanities.”

Poverty, Shorris concluded, was a condition that required more than jobs or money to put right. So he set out to offer the “moral life” as well. Beginning with a class of 25 or so students found through a social ­service agency in New York, Shorris—along with a few professors he had recruited—taught literature, art history and philosophy. The first classes included readings in Plato, Aristotle, Thucydides and Sophocles.

Thus was born the Clemente Course in the Humanities, which is now the recipient of broad philanthropic support.

It is offered to the poor in more than 20 cities around the United States, as well as in other countries, from South Korea to Canada.

“The Art of Freedom” is a narrative of the program’s founding experience as well as a meditation on the Western classics and their effects on readers.

The book, sadly, appears posthumously. Shorris died last year at the age of 75.

The idea of the Clemente Course—named for Roberto Clemente, the baseball player who gave his name to the Manhattan community center where the course debuted—was to “educate a self­-selected group of adults living in poverty,” in classes taught by professors from nearby colleges and universities.

The spirit of the Great Books program was a key part of the idea: There would be no chasing after trendy reading lists or narrow relevance. When Shorris went to recruit students in the South Bronx, in New York City, a white social worker asked him if he were going to teach African history. “No,” he said. “We will teach American history. Of course the history of black people is very important in the development of the United States.”

15 years ago Clayton Christensen published a best selling book entitled The Innovator’s Dilemma. 

Christensen is considered a leader in the field of business development especially in times of vast technological advancement and improvement.

Christensen explores the phenomenon of why firms fail despite being leaders in their market, willing and able to compete with the best, and capable of continuous innovations within their industry.

He explains the differences between what he calls “sustaining technologies” and “disruptive innovations.”

“Sustaining technological changes” are not the problem for leaders in an industry. Time and time again, they showed their ability to compete in the high end of their market, innovating and at times dealing with radical technological changes.

And because these are sustaining innovations, these improvements are almost always best utilized by the firms that already have a prominent position in an industry.

New businesses attempting to compete by means of these sorts of innovations often fail, because the established firms nearly always have more money, more established relationships with clients, a better reputation, and more technological prowess in the market. According to Christensen, “the leaders of an industry don’t fail because they become passive, arrogant, or risk-averse or because they can’t keep up with the stunning rate of technological change.”

Industry giants only face real trouble when it comes to what are called “disruptive innovations” – these are the changes that topple industry leaders.

These are not radical improvements – quite the contrary, disruptive innovations are usually innovations that are either so inexpensive that they open a new market, or start in a niche that the industry doesn’t care about because it’s too small.

Under the radar disruptive technology often grows faster than users’ needs and with time catches up to and surpasses the more high-end or mainstream technologies that are the domain of industry leaders.

An example that has nothing to do with “high tech” comes from the mechanical excavator industry. This industry was dominated by “steam powered,” “cable driven” mechanical shovels until the 1920’s, when gasoline powered engines began to replace them.

This was, however, not a disruptive innovation but a sustaining one. The design of the machines changed radically from that of a steam-powered engine moving a system of cables, to that of a gasoline engine driving a system to extend and retract the cables connected to the bucket.

The new engines were more capable than the old ones, and were better at doing more work more reliably, and cheaper than the old system.

But even though the power source changed and the machine design improved, it was still a cable technology driven machine, so despite the radical change in the industry, the same firms that were strongest in steam shovels stayed on top.

The disruptive change came with the introduction of hydraulics after World War II.

The new hydraulic-actuated systems (replacing the network of physical cables)—a change that eliminated nearly all of the established players by about 1970—opened the door for new untried companies willing to take a chance on this new radical technology.

The first hydraulic-based excavators were less capable than the cable systems that were in existence, and certainly couldn’t compete with them. However, they were small enough that they could be deployed for jobs previously done by hand, opening up a new market, in which the desired attributes were quite different from the big jobs that the cable actuated excavators were used for.
The technology involved in hydraulics continued to improve, however, and with time eventually equaled and then surpassed the needs formerly filled by cable-based systems.

While all of this new innovation was going on, the established firms were still going strong, and didn’t take much notice, if any, of the new technology or the new businesses using it (the newcomers were not considered competition as they could not compete with the big industries existing client base).

Suddenly, so it seemed, (really a period of a decade or two) the new arrivals were “in the midst of the mainstream market.”

By the time the established companies realized what was happening and introduced their own hydraulics it was too late, and the fledging businesses that had appeared to be of no account were better positioned with the new technology.*

Moving from the world of mechanical improvements into our universe of high tech, Clayton Christensen had this to say about disruptive technologies in a March 2013 Wired Magazine interview:

Howe (interviewer): If you had to list some industries right now that are either in a state of disruptive crisis or will be soon, what would they be?

Christensen: Journalism, certainly, and publishing broadly. Anything supported by advertising. That all of this is being disrupted is now beyond question.

And then I think higher education is just on the edge of the crevasse. Generally, universities are doing very well financially, so they don’t feel from the data that their world is going to collapse.

But I think even five years from now these enterprises are going to be in real trouble.

Howe: Why is higher education vulnerable?

Christensen: The availability of online learning. It will take root in its simplest applications, then just get better and better. You know, Harvard Business School doesn’t teach accounting anymore, because there’s a a guy out of BYU whose online accounting course is so good. He is extraordinary, and our accounting faculty, on average, is average.

Howe: What happens to all our institutions of advanced learning?

Christensen: Some will survive. Most will evolve hybrid models, in which universities license some courses from an online provider like Coursera but then provide more-specialized courses in person. Hybrids are actually a principle regardless of industry. If you want to use a new technology in a mainstream existing market, it has to be a hybrid. It’s like the electric car.

If you want to have a viable electric car, you have to ask if there is a market where the customers want a car that won’t go far or fast. The answer is, parents of teenagers would love to put their teens in a car that won’t go far or fast. Little by little, the technology will emerge to take it on longer trips. But if you want to have this new technology employed on the California freeways right now, it has to be a hybrid like a Prius, where you take the best of the old with the best of the new.

Monticello College is certainly not a disruptive technology, nor will we be competing with large universities any time soon. But we are positioned perfectly to take advantage of emerging disruptive technologies and we do occupy a unique niche and employ the hybrid concept creatively.

We believe that just like the bursting of the 2008 real estate bubble, there exists a higher education “tuition” bubble and that over the next five to ten years it will burst creating a real crisis for higher education.  Our business model and academic structure is designed to accommodate these coming changes and provide stability and high quality liberal education for decades to come.

*Thanks to www.squeezedbooks.com

Charles Schultz

Although this philosophy has often been attributed to the creator of Charlie Brown and Snoopy, there is no evidence that he actually penned it.  Regardless who the author is, it still makes my point.

In our capacities as fathers and mothers, family protectors, and business decision makers, we all have to measure other people.

We have to judge who to trust, to help us, and who to lead us. Who will I trust with my kids?  Who will I do business with? Who do I trust as a political leader? Who do I trust for investment advise?

The list goes on.  What I am really saying is that we have to make judgments about others everyday.

The question is what criteria are we using when we make these judgments?

In the quest to build leaders it is easy to say that we want them to have impact in society, to make a difference, to “be the change we wish to see in the world.” Ok, I agree with that, but what character qualities, what skills, what disciplines do we want to inculcate in these future leaders to achieve the desired “change?”

What follows is the philosophy of Charles Schulz (or someone else).

1. Name the five wealthiest people in the world.

2. Name the last five Heisman trophy winners.

3. Name the last five winners of the Miss America pageant.

4 Name ten people who have won the Nobel or Pulitzer Prize.

5. Name the last half dozen Academy Award winners for best actor and actress.

6. Name the last decade’s worth of World Series winners.

How did you do?

The point is, few of us remember the headliners of yesterday.

These are no second-rate achievers. They are the best in their fields.

But the applause dies. Awards tarnish. Achievements are forgotten.

Accolades and certificates are buried with their owners.

And we seem to be little effected by these momentary achievements.

Here’s another quiz. See how you do on this one:

1. List a few teachers who aided your journey through school.

2. Name three friends who have helped you through a difficult time.

3. Name five people who have taught you something worthwhile.

4. Think of a few people who have made you feel appreciated and special.

5. Think of five people you enjoy spending time with.

6. Identify 2 mentors who helped to open the doors of life for you.

7. Recall one act of kindness that forever changed your perspective on life.

Easier?

The lesson: 

The people who make a difference in your life are almost never the ones with the most credentials, the most money…or the most awards. They simply are the ones who care the most.

In fact, I submit that people who make a positive difference in your life are probably making a positive difference in the lives of others at the same time.  Good people are usually good to everybody.

These criteria should also apply to our leaders. High achievement is contagious and helps to raise the standard for all of us, so yes when possible we want our leaders to be the best in their fields, but we also need leaders who are not afraid to admit mistakes, we need leaders who genuinely care for others, we need leaders who are charitable in their private lives, we need leaders who are truth and principle driven, and who are self-deprecating and humble.

^“Moreover thou shalt provide out of all the people able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them, to be [their] rulers . . .”

(Exodus 18:21)

It is time we reexamined this whole leadership thing.

After all, we are the ones who decide who we are going to follow—a basic requirement for leadership.

So if we get to decide who the leaders are why are we choosing so many bad leaders?

Or maybe bad leadership is not the issue here.  Maybe bad choosing is the real problem.

When we choose leaders, are we more concerned about what is in their hearts or are we more interested in what is in their wallet and how much that will benefit us?

When we choose leaders do we care more about how they think or who they know?

When we choose leaders are we more interested in what they do when few are looking or do we value the intuitive skill of smelling out a good photo op?

Again I say, it is time we reexamined this whole leadership thing.

This post is dedicated to the lesser known side of our curriculum—the manual arts.

Manual arts are not something that the average American thinks about in the 21st century.

But a hundred years ago, the vast majority of Americans were engaged in the manual arts everyday.

In fact, excluding the last 60 years of developed nations, manual arts were the reality for nearly the entire global population. Even now, most of the seven billion inhabitants on earth engage in the manual arts daily.

Without the manual arts, most of what we enjoy almost unconsciously, would not exist.  In our high-tech, synthetic, and artificial world, we have reached a “roman” sense of existence—the only difference from then to now—we just have more sophisticated slaves.*

In a very thought-provoking article by Oliver DeMille, The Future of American Education: 8 Trends Every Parent Should Understand, DeMille gives us a glimpse of what we have become:

 

Since 2001 a number of social commentators have noted that as a society we are outsourcing more and more of the things that were typically done by families (one of the best works on this is The Future of Business by former U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich).

 

For example, the following list includes things done almost entirely by families in the year 1900:

Childcare

Education

Eldercare

Counseling

Food Growing

Cooking

Cleaning

Reading Bedtime Stories

Sexual Intimacy

Home Repair

Taking Care of Animals

Yard Care

Role Modeling

Teaching Religion

Massage Therapy

Entertainment

 

The list has changed in the past century, and the victim has been the family.  Perhaps the “Big 5” on the list are:

 

Childcare, which has been outsourced, especially in urban America, to professional childcare institutions.

 

Food Preparation, which has been outsourced to fast food and pre-packaged meals.  For example, 1999 was the first year in which expenditures in the U.S. for fast food exceeded expenditures for groceries. 

 

Entertainment, which used to consist of families reading together or activities like group picnics and outings.  Today, even when families are together, they usually sit facing away from each other toward a television, movie screen, or sporting event.

 

Teaching Religion, which was once seen as the role of parents with the preacher lending a helping hand, is now almost entirely outsourced to the pastor or Sunday school teacher or to some secular alternative.

 

Education, which historically was overseen by parents who hired and evaluated teachers and did much of the instruction themselves, has now been almost fully outsourced to “the experts.”

 

Another huge trend, which already has drastic consequences that are only beginning to be understood, is the outsourcing of counseling between husband and wife (discussion of their fears, anxieties, worries and fondest dreams) to expert counselors.

 

Perhaps the 54% divorce rate in the U.S. is connected to this; as Allan Bloom** pointed out in 1987, people live, sleep and sometimes eat together, but they don’t think, dream and work together toward a common goal in the same way that our grandparents did. This delegation of intimacy to the experts may yet be the biggest trend of all.

 

And what is the impact of using videos or DVDs in the place of reading bedtime stories to toddlers?  The outsourcing of our families and the things only families can do well is a growing trend, and a very sobering commentary on the future of our society.

 

Historians might compare it to the fateful practice among French women in the 1750s-1780s of not nursing their own children—of instead turning them over to wet nurses. Few would argue that this was the only cause of the bloodbath and societal fall in the French Revolution in the 1780s, but almost everyone agrees that this was a significant part of it.

 

So, with all these duties being outsourced, what is left that only the family can do?  According to the new economy – nothing.  The leading view today is that “It Takes a Village,” that even love can be outsourced to teachers, coaches, clubs, and mentors.

 

The truth is that it does take a village, a community, but a community of families working, playing, cooperating and facing obstacles together, not a community of government institutions.

This idea of outsourcing seems to be a national pastime, albeit there does appear to be a small underground resurgence of the manual arts illustrated by websites such as theurbanfarmingguys.com.

One of the reasons we have disowned the use of the manual arts is due to the steady progression of technology.  The advent of labor saving devices (LSDs) has improved our lives in many ways.  It has also been the underlying source of a whole host of sedentary lifestyle diseases. Where is the balance?

Labor saving devises or the greater concept of saving labor has an interesting history.

From the advent of the Industrial Revolution, saving labor changed the world from mere survival to producing a cash crop beyond subsistence or allowing a farmer increased discretionary time for more favored pursuits.

By the 1970s the workingman was able to produce much more with a fraction of the backbreaking labor required a century before which stabilized into a 40-hour work-week…increasing discretionary time even further.

It also freed the American housewife of many undesirable chores, and like her spouse, freed up significant “my time”…but to what end?

If it was to allow them to relax a little more, no harm down. If it permitted more time to give to others or to develop talents that would be good too, but unfortunately for most of people, it led to their less ambitious side with copious amounts of time being devoted to the latest entertainment and diversion– Television– late morning and afternoon soap opera TV series such as the “Dark Shadows” or “General Hospital”, and time devouring shows such as “The Price is Right.”

It allowed them more time to engage in recreation and entertainment on the weekends, often ignoring family, relationships, and service to neighbors, and expanding into long weekends which monopolized the traditional Sabbath for non-Sabbath day activities.

By the 1990s we were thoroughly absorbed by a numbing consumerism, life had gotten pretty easy so labor saving was really no longer the goal, but keeping up with the “Jones,” and securing the latest fashions or gadget, or the newest car, or a bigger house was—this really exploded with the advent of computer technology, gaming, and home entertainment from the late 1990s to the present.

The latest chapter in our American LSDs story is resulting in skyrocketing obesity— 70% of all adults and 30% of children in America suffer from poor health and diseases not seen two decades ago.

According to Popular Mechanics (2011), every man should possess certain basic manual art skills.

They provided a list for men to become more manly, clearly an indication that males no longer possess these skills.

Removing anything on the list that was technology related, I am including the remaining 16 manual arts that the modern man has apparently lost:

1. Sharpen a knife

2. Patch a radiator hose

3.Frame a wall

4. Back-up a trailer

5. Build campfire

6. Use an ax properly to chop wood

7. Fix a dead outlet

8. Navigate with a compass and map

9. Fillet a fish

10. Get a car unstuck

11. Paint a room

12. Mix concrete

13. Clean a gun

14. Change oil in a car (and know that the filter needs to be changed too)

15. Paddle a canoe

16. Fix a bike flat

While writing this post, my 22-year-old daughter looked over my shoulder, saw the topic and stated that of her closest 15 male friends ( ages 20-30) only one had competency with all the items on this list. Things that four decades ago any self-respecting man did himself–only specialists can handle today.

3rd World farmer is just a game, but it gives you a taste of what reality can be like in some parts of the world.

Today there are 184 million active facebook users in America (that’s 60% of our entire population) spending more than two hours a week on facebook, but if you factor in all online activities (all social media, all gaming,  all youtube viewing and other online videos, etc) the percentage sky rockets to almost 25% of our awake time.

For the average American over the age of 16 that can be as much as five hours a day, every day or the equivalent of an entire work week per month. This does not include texting, and playing games on our iphones.

This is all time wherein we are distracted from our loved ones, our community and our social responsibilities.

How do we not see that this is a monumental waste of our national resource of labor, not to mention a decline of our national character?

We are so far removed from reality that we even believe that we can get a sense of the plight of the third world farmer through playing a video game!

LSDs and the specialization of the consumer age has not only made us inept to care for ourselves, it has driven the cost of living many times over what it was just fifty years ago.  Are our lives really better and more satisfying now compared to the 1940s?

Working as a youngster on a dairy farm in the mid 1970’s, I worked along side sixty year-old men who never had high cholesterol and very little arthritis. They had no weight problems (a little pudgy—they were in their sixties) and were active in every other way. They could put in a 12-hour day of hard farm work as easily as I could.  Yet today I see countless 30-something men who are overweight, soft, and would likely expire at the thought of hard physical labor.  What has happened to us?

We have forgotten the enjoyment of using our hands, the sense of pride and accomplishment that comes from “doing it ourselves” and the security of self-sufficiency.  We have forgotten that human beings are still needed for the most basic necessities of life—food still grows in the ground and must be harvested, fruits still needs to be picked from the tree, cloth is still manually fed into the sewing machine, and fossil fuels and natural resources are still wrenched from the earth— by hand.

Not having personal experience in the manual arts is one level of losing our humanity and threatens civilization—not remembering that someone is practicing the manual arts right now—is a much deeper and catastrophic failure.

We believe that every congressman, every police officer, every corporate CEO, every surgeon, every diplomat, every teacher, every real estate agent; every American citizen would make better decisions, have better morals, and lead happier lives if they were more engaged in the manual arts. In fact, we challenge our reads to do just that– find ways to more deeply engage in the manual arts.

The manual arts are a natural cure for egoism, self-deception, and obesity.  The manual arts are an instinctive remedy for a troubled mind and eliminate the need for sleep aids. The manual arts will increase health, vitality, and improve your view of the world.  The manual arts enhance our powers of observation and appreciation.

Many of the manual arts involve dirt or soil or being outside in the fresh air—it is spiritually grounding and emotionally balancing.

Some of the least stressed and happiest people I know are masters of the manual arts.

*At the peak of Roman culture there were seven slaves for every roman citizen. The Romans had for the most part completely shunned the manual arts, becoming increasingly dependent on slave labor and the importation of their food supply. We have reached a similar existence.  We are becoming more and more dependent on exports and even the manual labor done in this country is emotionally and culturally relegated to a certain segment of our population.

** Closing of the American Mind, Allan Bloom

The article begins by summarizing the recent decision of over 800 Texas School Boards to lower high school graduation requirements.

Mr. Charles Cook, a co-author of this piece, makes the simple claim that decreased graduation requirements lead to decreased learning expectations, which lead to ignorance of the world we live in and failure as a nation:

Ever-lower expectations lead to one predictable outcome: a profound ignorance of the world among young people in an era when international events and evolving fiscal and trade policies have a personal impact on communities, businesses, and individuals in every corner of the U.S.

Citing the 2008 report “Still At Risk: What Students Don’t Know, Even Now,” Cook points out that its not just jobs that we should be concerned about but the greater concept of citizenship:

Allowing young people to graduate as historical or geographical illiterates is myopic for another reason.  Training them for getting jobs is not good enough; graduates of public schools are also citizens. Ask any physician today whether politics impacts his livelihood.

Cook, the CEO of Responsive Ed, which operates sixty charter schools in Texas, then goes on to give an overview of the education for citizenship:

We have a different approach to equipping students to face the future, one that has the weight of millennia of human experience behind it: a rigorous classical education. Such an education (called liberal-arts at the college level) does not shortchange math and science. On the contrary, those subjects are studied with more rigor than can be seen in today’s public schools.           

 

Students also learn the fundamentals of English grammar; American and World history through the reading of primary documents; and the great stories of human struggle and yearning told by the greatest storytellers Homer, Shakespeare, Milton, and Melville.

 

They study the principles of liberty and self-government as articulated by the Founding Fathers and the ennobling beauties found in painting, sculpture, and song. Yes the children have to learn Latin, too, just as the Founding Fathers did, because that language gives the greatest insight into the vocabulary and grammar of our own tongue and the Romance languages, including Spanish.

Cook, then articulates what is on the mind of most every employer and what every employee entering the workforce should pay close attention to:

Certainly America needs as many engineers and computer scientists as the country requires in the 21st century.  But that does not describe what lies ahead for the vast majority of young people entering the marketplace. 

 

The most common complaints of American employers are that job applicants and recent hires lack communication skills and higher-level thinking skills. More plainly, many applicants cannot read a memo, they cannot express themselves in speech or in writing, they lack the ability to think through difficult problems.

 

We think that students who have been taught to write forcefully by studying Shakespeare and Tom Paine, who have learned to speak by studying the speeches of Cicero and Abraham Lincoln, who have learned to think through difficult problems by studying the Constitution through an analysis of the Federalist Papers, and who revel in the rigors of Latin grammar will have no difficulty in reading the boss’s memo.

 

Training Young people in the liberal arts and science also will better prepare them to become the “boss” when it is time for the present cohort of bosses to retire. Those on the front lines of hiring employees in this state see the need for a classical education.

Cook ends the article with this pointed paragraph:

 

Jobs do not create the human mind; the human mind creates jobs.  As a result, the very best education—the kind the Founding Fathers had—is what will produce good workers and good citizens.  The challenge for those who want to eliminate testing in world history and geography or the other subjects in Texas is to explain how students are prepared for a global economy when they are not required to learn anything about either the globe or the economy.

Thanks to my friend Pam O’Dell of New York who continues to scour the WSJ for pertinent articles.

That period of history has just commenced.

We believe that when Senator Rand Paul stood on March 6 to filibuster the U.S. Senate John Brennan consent vote, and spent nearly 13 hours to call the executive branch of the United States government to account for its unclear policies regarding the use of unmanned drones in U.S. airspace, he unwittingly triggered a movement back to the principles and values upon which this nation was built.

Paul’s determination to personally take a stand against the executive branch—an act many in his own party have rebuked him for—shows the triumph of personal conviction over party hierarchy.

Much of his testimony and debate during this famous filibuster, detailed the convictions that all lawmakers should espouse: principles of sound government, accountability, the value of the rule of law, acknowledgement of Divinity, and the firm foundation and lessons from history.

Rand stated that he had not planned this filibuster in advance, so I think it is fair to surmise that the stream of support from both sides of the aisle was fairly spontaneous and genuine.

It shows that when someone leads out for truth and right, others will follow.

Not all Americans will instantly embrace these ideas and values—in fact, we predict that most Americans won’t—but we firmly believe that enough mothers and fathers will refocus the education of their children, that enough business leaders will reevaluate the purpose and methods of their businesses, and that enough political leaders will rise up as statesmen to lead the charge for liberty—to make a real difference.

This is why Monticello College exists, we are dedicated to cultivating an education and environment that foster public virtue, induce moral character, and emulate the courage and foresight of the American founding period, preparing our graduates to guard the principles of liberty.

It will take time to clearly discern the impact of this event.

But we predict that Pandora’s box has been opened and more and more Americans will look to Paul’s example and begin to take such measures in their own lives, which will undoubtedly lead to an increased interest in the founding principles, that have set America and the United States as a light on a hill.

P.S. I challenge you to watch all 12.5 hours of the filibuster (C-Span or youtube) as a show of solidarity for his act and as a means of responsible citizenship.  We did at Monticello College.

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To wrap up this series, let’s rely on history to show us a way out of Bondage. As was mentioned in part two, we not only rely on the 250-year society oriented Tytler Cycle to show us the way, but the more personal 80-100-year Century Cycle or Saeculum.

This last post is dedicated to the fourth and first turnings/seasons of the Century Cycle as described in chapter seven of our book, A Thomas Jefferson Education for Teens. What follows is that chapter in its entirety.

History runs in cycles, and there is a pattern of four seasons repeated over and over, each about 20-25 years long.  Like the seasons of the year, they come naturally and each feels different.  These four seasons are called “turnings,” like turnings on a cycle, by authors Strauss and Howe in their book The Fourth Turning.  The four seasons are:

1st: Founding. New institutions are built up to progress after the last crisis, like the United Nations, Social Security, World Bank, International Monetary Fund (IMF), NATO, and other organizations being created right after the Great Depression and World War II.  Lots of businesses flourished in this period also.

2nd: Awakening. Youth grow up and challenge the old establishments, like the 1960s counter-culture movement at Woodstock, the Civil Rights movement led by Rosa Parks and Martin Luther King, Jr., among others, and strong pushes for Feminism and Environmentalism, etc.

3rd: Unraveling. Two big viewpoints and political parties fight for power, and everything seems like it will come apart.  Economies boom.  The last unraveling happened between 1984 and 2001, and the one before that in the “Roaring 1920s.”

4th: Crisis.  Big problems come.  Actually, crisis seasons usually consist of three crises in a row, sometimes overlapped.  First is the wake-up crisis that shocks everyone, like the Boston Tea Party, the election of Abraham Lincoln, the 1929 stock market crash, which started the Great Depression.  In recent times, it appears that 9/11 was such an event.

Second comes a major economic crises, and then, third, usually a major war, pandemic or a mixture of these all at the same time.  The last several crisis seasons include The Revolutionary War and Depression, The Civil War and Depression, and the Great Depression and World War II.  Sounds bad, huh?

We live today in a crisis era, and you will grow up and start your life, family and career in a Crisis or Founding season. The good news is that a Crisis Season is always followed by another Founding, just like winter always ends with spring!

The bad news, which is also the biggest challenge in all of this, is that when the Crisis comes almost everyone over thirty years of age is totally immersed in the rules of the last phase.

This means that even though the economic boom times and long periods of peace are over, most people keep making choices that reflect what worked before.

They make a lot of bad choices, because they don’t realize that the rules have changed.

For example, parents educated in 2nd or 3rd seasons often think that their kids should see education as job training.  For 4th and 1st seasons, however, that is a big mistake.

Teens need to be prepared for entrepreneurship and initiative much more than specific job skills.  There are many other differences between seasons.

Here are the leading rules of success in each turning.  In each season, success is found in:

2nd and 3rd: Big Institutions, Professional Careers, Investment, Credentials and Resume, Leisure and Entertainment.

4th and 1st: Family and Community Relationships,  Entrepreneurial Ability, Initiative and Leadership Skills.

The way to fail in 4th and 1st seasons is to try to live in the rules of the previous seasons.  The way to succeed is to engage the new reality.

As teens, you may need to help your parents and grandparents with this!

Those who will thrive in times of recession, depression, slow growth economies, even war and other major crises, are the ones who focus on home, community and entrepreneurship.

Again, the problem is that older generations define success the old way: a good major in college, good career, fun entertainment almost every evening, a really nice house, several new cars, and good retirement.  They also want the same for their kids.  This is a 3rd Season view.  It will be available again, if the cycles hold true (as they have for over 3,000 years) somewhere around the years 2070-2080.

The generation before them saw success as: public schools as central to the community, a stable job at one company for life, husbands supporting families with wife staying home, savings in the bank and home ownership as the best investments.  This is a 2nd Season view, and it will come back again somewhere around the years 2045-2055.

As for real life from now through the 2020s, 2030s, 2040s and maybe into the 2050s, it is time to get real!  Success now and for most of your life will be determined according to the rules of 4th and 1st Seasons.  The new economy is here, and the new realities with it.  These new realities need all your idealism and enthusiasm, but they can’t and won’t be like the past, which too many adults are just pining for.  Those days are gone.

Another key of leadership is to focus on what’s next, not on the past or even the challenges of now.  Overcoming current challenges is important, but the focus should be on what’s ahead.  Those who thrive from now to 2029 will be the ones who focus on and embrace the rules of the coming 1st Season ahead!

Be one of those who thrives, and help others do the same!

Because of the cycles and seasons, some of the most important classics to study as a teen are those written during 4th and 1st Seasons, or by authors who lived through them. One of the best of these, with a focus on family and entrepreneurship, is Our Home by C.E. Sargent.

Sargent lived through the 4th season of the Civil War period, and built his career and family in the 1st season which followed.  His book is one of the Great 100 Teen Classics listed in chapter two.

Following are fourteen “rules” for financial success, family leadership and overall happiness in 4th and 1st seasons, as taught by C.E. Sargent.  We have added a lot of commentary to these, geared specifically for our time.  Still, all fourteen of these guidelines apply to any 4th and 1st season period in history.  These are so much more helpful than many of the things suggested today for success by 2nd and 3rd season experts.

Fourteen Rules for Success Over the Next 50 Years

First, embrace the new.  And the now.  Forget 3rd season goals.  They are gone, over, done, and it is time to move on.  As a teen, you may not have gotten caught up in a lot of 3rd season planning, but if you did it is time to embrace something else.

Those who pine away for the old will not succeed, nor will those who wait around for the old days to come back.  Forget the old measures and methods of success, and get excited about the new opportunities!

Second, spend evenings and Sundays with family.  This principle is so simple, and yet so powerful.

People bond naturally in the evening, and in our modern world the best entertainment is family time.

So much in financial and career success in 4th and 1st seasons depends on family support and relationships, and close bonding is vital.

Such bonds also build a closer community around the family, and this is also needed for financial and social success in this season.

Where Shanon lives, (it is kind of a time warp) they still live this way for the most part.  It has just begun breaking down over the past 5 years, (they are about 20 years behind the times) but for the most part, families there are very tight. You can always see them taking walks as family groups almost every night.

The community does a ton of things together: baseball, community festivals and parades, local fund-raisers and neighborhood parties etc. This community will do much better than others in the future as they already know each other very well and are comfortable with focusing heavily on the family and community.  Tough times are easier for them because they already know how to work together.

Shanon remembers when he first moved there, it snowed about 3 feet in 2 days.  Before city employees could begin the process of removing snow, family members had already dug out the widows and elderly of their families.  It was inspiring to see how everyone just pitched in and helped.

Third, strengthen your self-culture.  In 2nd and 3rd seasons, much of life is built around popular culture, fitting in, looking “right” to others.  In contrast, in our time happiness is much more important than impressing anyone.  Figure out what makes you happy, and live it!

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Fourth, clearly articulate and write out your individual rules for life.  Plan them.  Live them.  Leaders are needed, not conformists.

Your family, community and those around you need you to know who you are, what you stand for, and for you to truly stand for something.

Of course, true leadership and excellent rules include conformity to core morals and goodness.  Decide what is most important to you, who you really are, and be it!

Fifth, instead of raising children, the focus of families will be on raising adults!  This means that the teen years won’t be seen as times of all fun and games, but rather teens will be considered young adults who are needed to help the family succeed.

In addition to their education, they will help the family flourish by doing a lot more work than the last three generations of teens.

Also, the educational focus will be less on training accountants, attorneys or engineers and more on preparing youth to become good parents and wise citizens.

Indeed, in 4th and 1st seasons we need 18-year-olds who can go to war, lead communities, start businesses, etc.

Some might see this as a loss of youth, but that is just old seasons thinking.  In truth, teens flourish in 4th and 1st seasons because they are given opportunities for leadership and responsibility.

Sixth, make Meaning a central focus of your learning, conversations and thinking.  In 2nd and 3rd seasons the emphasis is often on prosperity and getting ahead.  In current times the national emphasis shifts to things that really matter.

Tests, trials and struggles bring important lessons, and the opportunity to consider what is truly important and what isn’t.  Look for meaning in everything, and you’ll often find it.  Learn to be grateful, to see the “silver lining” in challenges, to learn from mistakes, and to get up whenever you fall down and just keep trying.

The 4th and 1st seasons are great times to turn to great classics and learn the best lessons of the past.

Seventh, spend a lot of time serving widows, orphans, grandparents, the elderly, the sick, and any who are down or struggling.  These should be the focus of much family time.

In 2nd and 3rd seasons these are simply service projects, but in 4th and 1st seasons they become true community—much more than an after-work project once in a while.  Make this one thing a priority in the 4th and 1st seasons, and you will find happiness and thrive in other ways too.

Boredom is a 2nd and 3rd seasons’ disease. Bored? Go serve. Make service the default.  If you have nothing else to do, serve.  By the way, doing something that seemingly blesses only you is doing something worthwhile.

But if you are just looking for entertainment all the time, start looking for things to do that help other people.  Sometimes the best service (and most entertaining activity) is spontaneous service.

If there aren’t enough projects already organized by others, organize some yourself or with a group of friends.  Don’t wait on this one—get started right away.

Eighth, make marriage the central focus of your life.  Even as a teen, preparing to be a great wife or husband is a vital project.  Note that the focus usually changes with the seasons:

2nd: Job over Parenthood

3rd: Parent over Spouse

4th: Spouse

1st: Spouse

In 4th and 1st seasons families grow stronger, and a large part of this is that spouses really need each other and turn to each other for help.  This blesses all levels of family.  Unfortunately, a shift to such times often starts with a lot of marriage struggles—unless people understand and apply these fourteen principles and other guidelines of good relationships.

Teens and other singles often do this focus on marriage better than married people, because they think in terms of romance, dates, etc. rather than children or career as top priority.  In their search for a spouse, they put marriage first.

The key is to maintain this after marriage.  This doesn’t decrease the value of parenting, but in fact increases it.  Truly happy parents do the best parenting.

Ninth, get a true leadership education, what you might call an Impact Education.  Consider the varying focus of education in different seasons:

2nd: Job Training

3rd: Career Training

4th: Impact Education

1st: Leadership Education

Leadership Education includes the skills of initiative plus ingenuity, tenacity, quality, creativity, persuasiveness, etc.  Nothing teaches this as effectively as classics, mentors, simulations and the seven keys covered in earlier chapters.  Indeed, Leadership Education was specifically designed to prepare people for success in challenging times.

Tenth, engage entrepreneurship.  This is a must for almost everyone in 4th and 1st seasons.  Even those with stable jobs, which are much fewer in these seasons, seldom have the opportunity for spouses to have a job too or to get extra money through overtime or extra jobs. Spouses or teens help support the family through entrepreneurship. The majority of people will have to be entrepreneurs to make a living.

Note that different generations have very different views about entrepreneurial ventures.  Here is what being an entrepreneur means to most people in the different seasons:

2nd: “You can’t get a real job!”

3rd: “Build a business and sell it, retire young.”

4th: “Entrepreneur to survive, until the economy is better.”

1st: “Build a business, do it right, take it big!”

The key is to adopt the 1st season view, no matter when you are entrepreneuring.  It is the only one that really works.  In a 4th or 1st season, it is vital to adopt this mindset for your career whatever it is—even if you have a stable job (only employees with this view will keep the company stable).

In 4th and 1st seasons, entrepreneurship is the key to survival and also success.  It requires all the skills and knowledge that naturally come from a good leadership education.  The best place to start as a teen is the great reading list in chapter two of this book!

Eleventh, produce wealth.  Seriously, there is no time to create and build wealth like 4th and 1st seasons (this is easiest in 3rd seasons, but much of the wealth created then is lost as quickly as it is gained; besides, the next 3rd season will likely come in about the year 2070).

It may seem strange to emphasize producing wealth in times of recession, depression, war and challenge, but that is exactly the best time.

This is not to say that you should put greed first, but rather that in such times a focus on entrepreneurial building is exactly what your family, the community, the society and the nation need most!

In 4th and 1st seasons, building businesses is among the most charitable and patriotic things you can do for the society.

People desperately need jobs and nations desperately need successful businesses.

More than anything, the world needs the leadership education that you can only gain by building something!  The classics are a great start, but once you leave the classroom the best leadership education is found in building organizations and making them work!

This is called being a producer, not just a consumer, or dependant or victim.  Author Dennis R. Deaton calls this having an “Ownership Spirit.”  He writes in his book by that title: “When we think in owner terms, we live independent of circumstances.  The ups and downs of the day don’t define who we are, our mood, demeanor, or commitment.

When something goes awry, owners can be disappointed and frustrated, but they don’t find someone to blame or resent, as Victims often do.  Owners tend to focus their thinking on what to do—what options they have and what courses of action to pursue . . . . When people treat them rudely, owners seldom take offense.

They could, of course, but they see that as a waste of time and energy . . . . Owners understand that life is not easy, and they don’t expect it to be.”

In addition to this vital mindset, society needs rich people more than ever in 4th and 1st seasons, and people who are creating riches.  Society needs you to be a producer, or owner.

Of course, the popularity for creating wealth is different in each of the seasons:

2nd: Savings and security for the family (from a steady job and bank savings accounts)

3rd: Money to retire young and relax (from entrepreneurship and/or investing)

4th: To help the needy, by giving them jobs and where needed charity (by building and growing a successful business)

1st: To build society, including the needed new institutions of strength after the crisis season (by building and growing businesses)

Twelfth, develop your creativity and inventiveness.  This is needed so much in 4th and 1st seasons!  Creativity is needed to find ways to be more frugal, individually and as a society; and also in producing things, money, jobs, wealth, philanthropy, etc.

Creativity and inventiveness are needed in finding ways to give yourself and others needs, wants and luxuries.  They are necessary to fix society’s problems and take advantage of its opportunities.

Times of challenge are always the seasons of greatest opportunity, and success in such opportunities depends on your creativity!  Leadership education in the classics and using the seven keys is the best way to start a truly creative education, and add to this with your own initiative and the guidance of parents and mentors.

Thirteenth, dig deep and find your inner resiliency.  Whatever happens, success goes to those who keep trying and never give up.

After one great crisis season, Winston Churchill taught that the key to success is never to give up.

He also said that courage is the most important virtue because without it the others aren’t used.

Part of resiliency is to stay optimistic and enthusiastic in the face of whatever happens.

Life is hard, and in 4th and 1st seasons it is harder than in the others, but that just means that we have more opportunity than ever to really help improve the world.  Very little progress or positive change occurs during 2nd or 3rd seasons, but in times like now much can change very quickly.  Of course, the change depends on leadership, which is why leadership education in your youth is so vital.

Fourteenth, and finally, grow your ambition!  You were born to do great things, so don’t settle for anything less. Ambition sometimes gets a bad name, but that is mainly because it means different things in each of the seasons:

2nd: Personal Status

3rd: Personal wealth

4th: Making Sure the Right Side Wins

1st: Making Sure the Right Changes Happen

As you can see, even if great ambition were negative during 2nd or 3rd seasons, it is all-positive during 4th and 1st seasons.  For example, the American founding ambition to make sure the Colonies beat Britain is a great thing.  Likewise the Northern ambition to end slavery in the Civil War and the Allied ambition to stop Hitler in World War II.  Thank goodness for such high ambitions!

But the truly great ambitions came after these conflicts, in 1st seasons where the people set out to improve the world.  Some of the changes were good, while others were bad.  The difference was the quality of the leadership, based on the education of that generation’s leaders while they were in their youth.

In your generation, the world cries out for great change.  So much needs to be fixed.  So many things in this world today need to be improved.

Your generation can do it.  But like past generations, it will depend on the leadership of the next fifty years.  And that will depend in large part on the education you and your generational peers get in the next five to ten years.  Will you follow old thinking of 3rd seasons and focus on career training?  Will you accept mediocrity?  If so, the future of freedom and prosperity will not be an improvement on what you inherited.

If not, you need to learn right now, in your youth, what the new 4th and 1st seasons rules are and become a master at them.  Lead out in the new way of dealing with and solving challenges and crises and improving the world.

What will be your mark on the world—improvement or further decline?  It depends in large part on your teen and college education.  It is up to you, and to others your age.

It is time for a generation to change the world, to drastically improve it.  We believe it will be your generation that does it.  Are we right?

We started this book by promising to tell it to you straight, to tell you the real deal.  We have done that.

The future depends on you.

It doesn’t get deeper or more real than that.

We also started with the thought that when God or the Universe wants to change the world, he sends a baby—perfectly timed to grow, learn, prepare and then take action at the right time.

But there are times when one baby won’t suffice, when the challenges facing the world are just too great, and so instead of a great reformer or a few key thinkers what is needed is a whole generation of leaders.

This happened in the Sixth Century B.C., and in the first decade of the Common Era, then again in the American Founding generation.  George Washington, Benjamin Franklin, James Madison, Alexander Hamilton, Thomas Jefferson and so many more were part of this generation.  In their youth, they worked to learn and get a great leadership education.  Then, when the world needed them, they were ready.

It is happening again today.  You are such a generation.  But will you succeed?  That remains to be seen.  One thing is certain: to do so, you will need a superb, leadership, Thomas Jefferson-like, education.  In five years, you will either have such an education . . . or not.  The ones who do will lead.  Our challenge to you is to be one of them!

It is who you were born to be, it is the real, genuine you.  The world needs you.

Jesus said unto him, “thou shalt love the lord thy God with all they heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.

This is the first and great commandment.

And the second is like unto it, thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” Matt 22: 35-39

This is perhaps one of the best-known scriptures from the New Testament. But the quotation is incomplete.  The next verse is the real message:

“On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.”

Service is not a new concept in our culture.  Lots of people engage in service and do a great deal of good.

But how many of us love our neighbors—as ourselves—and from the perspective that “all the law” hangs on our doing so?

Don’t misunderstand, in my opinion there is nothing wrong with the standard service project, a bunch of people getting together and raking leaves from an elderly citizen’s yard or painting a house or planting a garden.

These are good and we should do this kind of service often.  But loving our neighbor as our self is a deeper, less public, more personal form of service, and as it turns out, it is often needed more than a new paint job.

To offer this kind of service requires a new view, a different perspective, a change of heart.  The more subtle service I speak of here requires a different motive than group service.  It is more personal and up-close; it requires real interface and acknowledgement.  Rather than rakes or paintbrushes, it requires the use of our heart as the primary tool for rendering action toward our fellowman.

When we speak of service at Monticello College, we speak of this latter concept—loving our neighbor.  Why?  Because as it turns out, the Lord knew what he was talking about, lots of neighbors need to be loved in more than superficial ways.

Allow me to spend a little time here detailing how to render service in a “love your neighbor as yourself” approach.

Educator and theologian Neil A. Maxwell, said, “So often what people need is to be enveloped in the raiment of real response.

So often what people need is to be sheltered from the storms of life in the sanctuary of belonging.”*

One of the greatest impediments to this quiet, noble service is self. Self-regulation is very important when rendering service.

Because we live in a selfish world, it is easy for us to justify or to become hyper-focused on ourselves.

Selfishness comes in many different forms but it always includes an over-abundance of self-concern.  Selfish people are forever taking their own temperature, asking themselves, “Am I happy?”

As Maxwell states, “The sermon on the Mount, for instance, clearly requires, for implementation, selfless individuals who have an unusual capacity to love—even if their love is not returned. How many peacemakers can there be if too many are too concerned about winning and asserting their rights and their prerogatives?

“If selfish confrontation reigns supreme, from where will reconciliation come?

“How many poor in spirit can there be if inflamed egos constantly seek to enrich and to vindicate themselves at the expense of others?

“How many pure in heart can there be as many people become sensually selfish and lose their capacity to feel?

“How much genuine compassion for others can there be if too many people are filled with self-pity?”

To be aware of this tendency and stay clear of it is the road to increased happiness for ourselves—and our neighbors.

Traditional ways of service are as much needed now as ever, but we should balance the more traditional kinds of service with this more personal, heart-to-heart service.

Here are a few examples of “Love Thy Neighbor” service:

• Genuine Listening – a listening that is more than just being patient until it is our turn to speak; rather, a listening that includes real response, not simply nodding absorption.

• Righteous Receiving – Often it is a service to be on the receiving end.  It brings great joy to the giver and builds a bond of love when we graciously receive.

• Unassailable Integrity – We serve others when we are always true. This is more than being honest until it becomes too expensive.  In the crowds of chameleons in the world today, daring to be the same good self is being different.  When our goodness is constant we are on the road to the unvaryingness of God-like love.

• Restrained Conversation – Let our service at times include a willingness to hold back in conversation when what we would have said has already been said—and perhaps better.  To contribute time and space, so another can expand is to reflect a quiet nobility.  There are so many times when to forgo is to make way for another.

• Professional Craftsmanship – Let our professional lives be models of excellence even if others care more and more about pay and less and less about quality workmanship.  This is the mark of a true craftsman.

• Honest Appraisal – We serve others when we take a hard look at ourselves from an “others-focused” introspection that is more centered around “did I do enough?” rather than, “how did I look?,”  “self-oriented” personal analysis.

• Sincere Acknowledgement of Others – Love is not glad when others go wrong, rather true service to our neighbor means sincere rejoicing when others do well—even when their success seems to somehow change our own place in the corporate or social pecking order.

• Shun Worldliness – We can serve our neighbor by not endorsing, in word or deed, the seductive slogans of the world, by refusing to be trendy when those trends would take all who follow towards destruction.

• Eradicate Negative Cyclical Behavior – There are times when one of the greatest acts of service we can perform is to stop something.  The emotional chain reaction and overreaction can come at us like electric voltage; it is very tempting to simply pass along. But we must say, “Let it stop with me.”  Brave but battered French soldiers in World War I finally held against an invading enemy at a place called Verdun, where the solemn password was “They shall not pass.”  At times we too should be willing to expose ourselves to misunderstanding and pain in order to keep undesirable things from spreading any farther.

• Endure Bravely – We can serve by enduring well, for our steadiness will steady others who are otherwise on the verge of giving up.

• Persistent Praise – We can serve by giving deserved, specific praise. The militarily brilliant and much decorated Duke of Wellington was asked late in his years what he would have done differently. He did not say he would have fought the magnificent Battle of Waterloo or any other battle differently. He said quite simply, “ I should have given more praise.”

• Live Righteously– Evil people exist. The in-betweeners merely survive.  But those who have really lived will be those who have lived righteously, because they will have lived and served selflessly in a time of stunning contrasts.  They will have managed to keep clean in dirty world. And the process of staying clean will have kept them free from the enslaving elements of the culture. Being free, they will be happy in otherwise sad times, and all their experiences will be for their good.

William Blackstone articulated this “love thy neighbor” kind of service well when he talked of the relationship between obeying God and loving oneself:

As, therefore, the Creator is a being of not only infinite power and wisdom, but also of infinite goodness, He has been pleased so to contrive the constitution and frame of humanity, that we should want no other prompter to inquire after and pursue the rule of right, but only our own self-love, that universal principle of action.  For he has so intimately connected, so inseparably interwoven the laws of eternal justice with the happiness of each individual, that the latter cannot be attained but by observing the former; and, if the former be punctually obeyed, it cannot but induce the latter.” Blackstone – Commentaries on the Laws of England, Book I, Introduction, Section II

The word service like leadership, has been overused and under applied. In the times facing us ahead, true service from the heart and plenty of it will be the glue that holds society together.

The best kind of service to render our fellow man is the very service we wish others would perform for us.

* Much of this article comes from concepts articulated by Neil Maxwell in his book, All These Things Shall Give Thee Experience.