My partner is Mackensie. The first president she clearly remembers is Ronald Reagan whereas I’m old enough to recall when President Kennedy was shot. As the older person in our research partnership, I will contrast and compare our motivations to continue higher education. Mackensie lives in Hancock, Minnesota with her husband and five children under seven. She’s taking six classes on-line this semester while running a daycare in her home and working in a bar three nights a week. When I was her age, I had zero children, was unmarried, worked as a waitress and really had no plans for a career or higher education. Questions I’d like to explore are:

1) What was your family’s expectations of you?

2) What are yours hopes and fears regarding higher education? What do you fear without it and what are your hopes for having it?

3)Where do you draw your support to continue?

4)What does the future look like for those without higher education?

5) What role does higher education play in your life?

Grandma’s small house, clad in pink asphalt siding, sat tucked inside a grove of pine trees, high on a hill. It was a narrow house with the kitchen in front, a main room in the middle, and two side by side bedrooms in the back, their doorways each facing into the main room. Acorns and orange pine needles lined the steep, rutted driveway that led up to it. At the top, across the gravel drive, Grandma grew a garden of tulips that floated color across the yard.

   Two cement squares laid like a short piece of sidewalk led up to her front door. Once inside, there was a landing, then three short steps covered with linoleum that led up into a sunny kitchen. A formica table with three aluminum chairs sat in front of a window looking down toward Sparrow lake. A black wood-burning cook stove, central to grandma’s world, stood across from the window.

Windows were everything in Grandma’s tiny house.  Inside the second room were two rocking chairs, an old bureau with an ornate mirror and another, larger table that sat in front of bay windows also looking toward the lake. In this bay window, I learned from Grandma how to braid, how to crochet, and how to use the treadle sewing machine. It was here that the old woman and the girl pored over black and white photographs stored in cigar boxes stacked inside the bureau drawer. Grandma’s short rounded fingernail pointed out the faces, giving names and shape to time that spanned three generations.

Grandma wore full-size aprons over her dresses that hung looser as she got older. The aprons were made from light cotton prints. They looped over her head and had bib fronts, decorated with rickrack or sturdy binding tape and each had pockets and cloth ties that wrapped behind. 

    She wore sturdy lace-up shoes and thick shiny support stockings. Her two button-up sweaters, worn open except for the top button, were the same two sweaters she’d been wearing for years, and as long as they remained useful she saw no need for new ones. At night, before getting into bed, she took long, thin hair out of its bobby pins and braids and let it fall down her back against a floor-length flannel nightgown. First thing every morning, she wove the hair together again, winding the braids into coils or across the top of her head.

   Most everything in grandma’s house faced toward the windows. The view beyond those windows could leave a city person breathless. The great hill sloping down to Sparrow Lake was “just the perfect place for down-hill skiing!” cabin people told her when they showed up on her doorstep, after “simply hours” of looking for a way to reach the top, “without trespassing of course. You never know, some country folks might shoot you!” Usually Grandma told them no, especially when they talked loud and acted like she didn’t know what it was she had in front of her own nose. Just because she never skied, that long hill was not wasted in Grandma’s mind. She sent them on their way by clamming up and acting shy. But back inside her house she’d say, “If folks knew how to work they wouldn’t have time to look so silly getting exercise.” 

   When Grandma came to visit her son’s house, she hiked down the hill at an angle, passing the plateau where for decades she grew outstanding vegetables. She passed the rock pile on Cemetery Hill named for a baby girl buried there in 1920, back when the Peterson’s still owned the place. Veering gradually away from the lake, she hiked through an open field, pulling up every mullein weed she saw–which is why she had fewer mullein weeds than any of her neighbors, or so she said. She then climbed through a barbed wire fence, crossed over the ditch and up to the black-topped county road that passed right by our front yard. Except for mid-summer when the trees were full, I could watch her going home again, or look across that field at night and see the lights on up in Grandma’s house.

“However, the Krispie, the Plain, and the Peanut are three that recur with more regularity than any other.” This is the sentence that pulled it all together for me (in an otherwise fully loaded paragraph). This is the sentence that defines the theses. Before I read this sentence, I wasn’t sure where I was going. Was he talking about me, who considers sitting in his office, like Homer, overwhelmed with work and emergencies, begging for mercy?

            I got sidetracked by the M&M dispenser. Does he really have one in his office?  Will Homer end up returning for the M&M’s?  Is the truth about M&M’s in their seduction quality?  However, the krispie, the plain, and the peanut sentence put me back on track. Comforted by a familiar structure, I knew now where I was going.

            The Krispie, the Plain, and the Peanut are useful analogies for categorizing a wide range of student personalities. The krispie is fried. The plain is steady and reliable and the peanut has substance. All three categories are well supported by specific details painting a believable trio of characters. However, in the end, I wondered how actual these categories could be. For example, I feel a bit of all three: the krispie, because I want to throw off the stress; the plain, because I’m rooted in that old work ethic that won’t allow me to quit; and the peanut, because I’m still curious about the big questions.

            The Simpsons reference at the essay’s end held a sweet aha. I hadn’t caught the names until I saw them strung together. The essay also made me wish I had some M&Ms.

“To save man from the morass of propaganda, in my opinion, is one of the chief aims of education.”  This sentence in Martin Luther King Jr.’s essay, “The Purpose of Education,” stands out for me as a statement that summarizes his thesis. To save ourselves from the morass of propaganda, we need to think critically, clearly, and without bias. It is not enough that education trains one to read a newspaper, write a brief, or multiply numbers.  Education should also develop character and worthy citizenship through self-awareness, logic, and truth, even if that means going against the grain of majority opinion.

King evokes the late Eugene Talmidge as a man who possessed one of the greatest minds in America.  “By all measuring rods, Mr. Talmidge could think critically and intensively; yet he contends that I am an inferior human being.  Are those the types of men we call educated?” While he uses Talmidge as an example of a well educated man, limited in experience and unable to look outside his race, King is speaking to an audience at an all-black college, Morehouse, calling on his “brethren” not to do the same.  He is calling on them to raise their standards for what the purpose of an education is.  He advises them to view their education as more than a means to make themselves noble or a way to join the class of men now able to exploit those less fortunate.  His defining message is “Intelligence plus character—that is the goal of true education.”

After reading this essay by Colson and Morse, I remembered an e-mail I received back in December, 2004, regarding the gay marriage issue, a mass mailing from someone responding to similar hysterics. I can’t credit the original author because they remain anonymous but I enjoyed their humor three years ago, and when I finally managed to retrieve it again last night, enjoyed it just as much the second time around. The letter was originally addressed to someone else but in deference to my reaction to their essay, I’ll address it to the above mentioned authors:

Dear Colson and Morse, Thank you for doing so much to educate people regarding God’s Law. As you said, ” in the eyes of God marriage is based between a man and a woman.” I try to share that knowledge with as many peoople as I can. When someone tries to defend the homosexual lifestyle, for example, I simply remind them that Leviticus 18:22 clearly states it to be an abomination…

End of debate.

I do need some advice from you, however, regarding some other elements of God’s Laws and how to follow them.

1. Leviticus 25:44 states that I may possess slaves, both male and female, provided they are purchased from neighboring nations. A friend of mine claims that this applies to Mexicans, but not Canadians. Can you clarify? Why can’t I own Canadians?

2. I would like to sell my daughter into slavery, as sanctioned in Exodus 21:7. In this day and age, what do you think would be a fair price for her?

3. When I burn a bull on the altar as a sacrifice, I know it creates a pleasing odor for the Lord - Lev.1:9. The problem is my nieghbors. They claim the odor is not pleasing to them. Should I smite them?

4. I have a neighbor who insists on working on the Sabbath. Exodus 35:2 clearly states he should be put to death. Am I morally obligated to kill him myself, or should I ask the police to do it?

5. A friend of mine feels that even though eating shellfish is an abomination - Lev. 11:10. it is a lesser abomination than homosexuality. I don’t agree. Can you settle this? Are there ‘degrees’ of abomination?

6. Lev.21:20 states that I may not approach the altar of God if I have a defect in my sight. I have to admit that I wear reading glasses. Does my vision have to be 20/20, or is there some wiggle-room here?

7. Most of my male friends get their hair trimmed, including the hair around their temples, even though Lev. 19:25 expressly forbids this. How should they die?

8. I know from Lev. 11:6-8 that touching the skin of a dead pig makes me unclean, but may I still play football if I wear gloves?

9. My uncle has a farm. He violates Lev.19:19 by planting two different crops in the same field, as does his wife by wearing garments made of two different kinds of thread (cotton/polyester blend). He also tends to curse and blaspheme a lot. Is it really necessary that we go to all the trouble of getting the whole town together to stone them? Lev.24:10-16. Couldn’t we just burn them to death at a private family affair, like we do with people who sleep with their in-laws? (Lev. 20:14)

I know you have studied these things extensively and thus enjoy considerable expertise in such matters, so I am confident you can help.

Thank you again for reminding us that God’s word is eternal and unchanging.