Tag Archives: education

Axis

Axis: (n) a line about which a body rotates.

What makes the world go ’round?dictionary with letter A

I’ve heard rumor that it’s love. Some people like to say that. It’s a safe statement, since nobody really has an adequate definition for love.

I can tell you what has made my life roll better and revolve as it evolves: finally coming to a conclusion that the axis of purity is, “no one is better than anyone else.”

And my God, I am tempted to be prejudiced.

But it leads to all sorts of evil. I believe we had a president who even referred to it as the “axis of evil.”

For instance, we have politicians who argue that raising the minimum wage might enable some people to make a living from their present job, but it would cause suffering to their bosses, and threaten the bottom line.

Whether we like it or not, or whatever your political persuasion is, that thinking places you in the “axis of evil.”

You have decided that this group of people over here–because they’re employees–are not as good as this group of people over there–because they are employers.

We should be looking for a compromise. How can we make sure the employee gets his or her due and still guarantee a decent profit for the employer? But we aren’t going to do that.

So we develop another axis of evil: “Those people are not as good because they don’t have enough education. If they had education, they could be employers instead of employees” (even though there is nobody who can employ without finding people who are employable.)

At the core–or at the axis–of the truth, is the notion that we need each other.

If the employer and the employee found themselves stranded on a desert island, such relegation would become irrelevant. The one who found the water and brought it to camp would be no better than the individual who collected the coconuts.

If they developed any kind of caste system, they would either die of starvation and thirst, or kill one another.

Such foolishness is only permitted in a society which has been granted the blessing of plenty.

As there are no atheists in the foxhole…there are no bigots in the breadline.

 

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Apprentice

dictionary with letter A

Apprentice (n): a person who is learning a trade from a skilled employer, having agreed to work for a fixed period at low wages.

Perhaps it is too late.

Yes, maybe Donald Trump has ruined the word “apprentice” for all time by misusing it as the title of his NBC show.

But I will take a risk. Yes, I will step out and say that if we could return the word “apprentice” to our lives, and especially to our business practices, we would be much better off than we are today in our commerce.

For the truth is, we send people to college, hopefully to gain general knowledge and for them to finish wild-oat-sowing, only to place them in an occupation where they start all over again as an apprentice. Because after all, every company has policies and practices which are different from the competitor next door.

To think that we can teach art, business or education in a college atmosphere and transfuse the blood of the business world into a student is absolutely ludicrous.

What we are hoping is that a twenty-three-year-old is going to be more prepared to apprentice than an eighteen-year-old.

We are assuming that the four or five years of maturity garnered by attending college, being forced to interact with other cultures and races, will make our potential employee a more well-rounded individual. Truthfully, it is dishonest to convey that a college education prepares someone for success in the market place.

It does not.

It does keep them learning until they can finally arrive in a place where they truly do learn.

It keeps the edge and acuity of thinking in practice while we prepare a place for them in line, to see how they measure up against the other applicants.

Are there occupations that demand higher learning instead of apprenticing? I will probably frighten you by saying that even a doctor could apprentice a student. Certain things would have to be done slowly and patiently, but eventually terminology and certainly, more importantly, operations, could be transferred from physician to intern.

So am I saying that a university degree is meaningless? Absolutely not. For some people in our culture just aren’t ready at eighteen years of age to listen to anything but their ear buds.

During the time of Dickens and Mark Twain, young men were allready mollified by the age of fourteen. It is not so with our rendition of humanity.

So college gives young men and women the chance to be kicked in the face enough to learn how to handle a punch. At least, that’s what we hope.

But we will do better in this country when we finally admit that no one walks from academia into the board room.

Everyone spends some time sorting mail before they get the privilege of receiving it.

 

 

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Appendix

dictionary with letter A

Ap·pen·dix (n.): a tube-shaped sac attached to and opening into the lower end of the large intestine in humans and some other mammals.

They tell me that no one knows exactly what the appendix does. That got me thinking.

What is the appendix of other things in life?

The appendix of politics is all the negative ads put on the air to try to prove the rottenness of the competition.

The appendix of entertainment is all the remakes which discuss the beauty of the cinematography instead of offering insight, gentleness and possibility to human beings.

The appendix of marriage is the belief that commitment is enough to sustain a relationship between two people without an ongoing lustful affection.

The appendix of weight loss is the notion that fat people want to be fat and therefore should be ridiculed and punished into submission.

The appendix of education lies in the contention that the more you spend for it, the smarter you become.

The appendix of shopping is very similar–the thought that name brands always have more quality than knock-offs.

The appendix of humanity is the belief that we’re “all different” instead of seeking our similarities.

The appendix of the relationship between men and women is the abiding presumption that they are so ill-suited that peaceful co-existence seems unlikely.

The appendix of self-esteem it that it can be achieved by bolstering ego instead of offering opportunity.

The appendix of lying is the misconception that we can actually pull it off.

And the appendix of religion is that it tries to please God by hurting people when God made it clear that loving people is the only way to please Him.

 

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Apex

dictionary with letter A

Apex: (n.) the top or highest point.

“Getting high.”

It’s too bad that phrase has been sullied by the drug culture, because it is so rich in truth and promise.

Everything in life has an apex, even though we often settle for the valley.

  • The apex of politics is a decision to be responsive to the needs of the people instead of chasing their whims.
  • The apex of the military is to convey a strength which discourages our enemies instead of using new weapons to experiment with their lethal carnage.
  • The apex of friendship is really honesty–having someone in your life who will tell you when your breath is bad.
  • The apex of spirituality is “love your neighbor as yourself” instead of debating “who is my neighbor?”
  • The apex of education is infusing knowledge which is workable to the student who wants to go out and pursue a craft.
  • The apex of sexuality is mutual pleasure.
  • The apex of finance is having enough for your needs, a little for your desire, and the balance to help others.
  • The apex of athleticism is the payoff of being in shape, whether you win the trophy or not.
  • The apex of commerce is to make a decent profit while feeling soul-satisfaction because you’ve delivered a quality product.
  • The apex of parenting is seeing the good parts of yourself in your children and allowing them to rebel against the bad.
  • And the apex of faith is working towards having the will of God done on Earth instead continually speculating on heaven.

I am in favor of getting high–just not chemically induced.

For finding the apex in life may be the true definition of “the high road.”

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Annotate

dictionary with letter A

Annotate: (v) to add notes of explanation to a text or diagram

It is my contention that education is knowledge followed by experience. It can even be experience that gradually garners knowledge.

But the idea that the more information imparted to us, with a variety of opinions, insights, notes, complete with bibliography, will make us smarter, is a bit erroneous.

I’m not so sure we learn until we take something that we kind of basically understand–and then try it ourselves.

Does anyone really become an engineer when they graduate from college, or does that actually occur some Thursday morning three years later, while working on the job?

I think this is particularly annoying in the fields of business and religion. So many books, commentaries, opinions and guides for the novice are penned in these categories, with the aspiration that an insight from someone other than ourselves will give us an edge.

Of course, we need to know what we’re talking about, and have a basic understanding of what we’re doing. But candidly, it is in the handling of circumstance and difficulty that we discover the true wisdom of each and every endeavor.

I grow weary of a culture that creates a learning class, which receives more finance than a working class that actually pulls the load. And not only finance–but status.

Case in point:

  • I studied music. It didn’t make me a musician. Somewhere in my third set, playing keyboard in a dive, discovering a new bridge chord, I gained the confidence to have the music in me.
  • I studied the Bible. It didn’t make me a Christian. It was a series of encounters, where I chose to think for myself and selected to bless instead of curse, when the mind of Christ actually inhabited my cranium.
  • I even studied sex in an attempt to become a better lover, but it was on the 121st attempt to please my partner through sensitivity that I actually had the words “Don Juan” whispered in my ear.

Notes are good. Testimonies are interesting.

But none of us are saved by someone else’s experience. The salvation of our lives … is the word of our own testimony.

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Alienate

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Alienate:(v) cause someone to feel isolated or estranged: e.g. an urban environment that would alienate its inhabitants

Some words are symbiotic twins. (Are the words “symbiotic” and “twins” redundant? I’ll have to look that up.) Anyway, they work together to create a good or to create the potential for evil.

You will never need to alienate another human being as long as you’re willing to confront the mediocre in your life.

For instance, if you run across people who are better than you at some task, rather than trying to attack their acumen, you evolve and learn from them. If you accept the mediocre in your life, it becomes necessary to foster a disgruntled attitude and discover something unseemly about your competition.

All prejudice is grounded in a sense of mediocrity. I will tell you, if the white people in the South prior to the Civil War had raised offspring who could work the fields, toiling with the same diligence as the Africans, they wouldn’t have felt the need to alienate the hostages as inferior, but instead, would have joined them, shoulder to shoulder, pursuing their cotton-picking minds.

I know when I start becoming critical of others, it is a warning sign that I’ve accepted mediocre behavior, and because some strangers have dared to be superior to me, I begin to find fault and separate them from my field of play and stable of friends.

We do it in politics. We certainly do it in religion. We do it in corporations, by trying to spread rumors about another company’s hiring practices instead of allowing for the product itself to find place in the market.

Mediocre and alienate are twins.

If you are alienating somebody from your life right now, it’s because you’ve accepted some sort of mediocre attitude as normal. And if you’re mediocre, you will eventually need to alienate people who dare to excel.

It’s why in the United States it is more popular to talk about our uniqueness than it is to review our plans and critique our progress. When the stats and facts about our world placement in education, health care and even personal relationships is measured against other countries, we are not always found at the top. So this demands that we alienate. Some of our favorite terms:

  • third world
  • backward
  • non-Democratic
  • and ignorant

Great people don’t have to criticize anyone. They just evolve towards the new understanding instead of staying entrenched in tradition.

When you get rid of mediocre, you no longer feel the need to alienate other people. When you’re alienating people, it’s always a sign of some mediocre part of you trying to justify … blah.

 

Algebra

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Algebra: (n) the part of mathematics in which letters and other general symbols are used to represent numbers and quantities in formulas and equations.

X marks the spot.

Actually, it marks the spot where I crinkled my brow and totally ceased to understand mathematics.

My high school algebra teacher was a recent immigrant from Japan who had a mastery of numbers and a limited capacity for language. He created a double whammy–I was trying to learn something that was Greek to me, with a Japanese accent.

On top of that, it was his first teaching position, having just graduated from The Ohio State University, and although he was eager to be an instructor, he was less than versed in some of the more humane possibilities.

So after he tried to explain algebra to me for the fourth time, he became frustrated and started to curse. It was in Japanese, but I will tell you that swearing has the same intensity in every langauge.

I don’t know what it was about algebra. For some reason, I was granted a B in the subject, even though I have no concept about the process whatsoever.

Imagine my glee when the next year I discovered that I would be taking Algebra II. It was very similar to the sensation of, “even though I’ve never been on a date, here is the woman I am going to marry.”

Honestly, I have never used algebra in my whole life. Perhaps I could have put it to some practical purpose, but that would have required that I understand its value, in order to know what purpose would have been practical.

Candidly, I toil under the concept of eduction. What I mean is, I do believe there are things we are taught which may not have any immediate value to our lives, but still have an esoteric importance.

Flatly, they make us seem civilized.

So I’m happy to report that I actually survived a semester of algebra, and Algebra II, and then ran out of the room in horror at the mere mention of calculus.

So for me: X=the 24th letter of the alphabet.

 

Ale

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Ale: (n) a type of beer with a bitter flavor and higher alcoholic content

There are three important words that must be understood, otherwise each one of us teeters on the verge of falling over the cliff into the great abyss of obnoxious.

If you don’t know the difference among these words, you will start using them interchangeably, which renders you ineffective and nearly inert.

  • Prejudice
  • Opinion
  • Insight

When I looked at today’s word from the dictionary, I realized that nearly everything I would write on this subject was not only irrelevant, but certainly should be cast into the great vat of useless.

I don’t drink beer. So since ale is stronger, it hasn’t passed my lips. Therefore, for me to pontificate on this subject would not only be ridiculous, but harmful to the general good of those ale-drinkers  who are much wiser in their tastes than me, and who would be willing to offer insight instead of producing opinion and prejudice.

I have often told people that my one and only experience with beer led me to believe that it tasted like what I thought fly spray would be like if I was stupid enough to ingest it.

I am weird. I don’t like to put things in my mouth that don’t taste good–which normally, to me, is sweet or salty–just to prove that I have the kind of buds located in my tongue that are versatile and universal.

Mine is not a moral objection; mine has no social implication. Beer and ale just taste like beer and ale to me, which honestly, leaves me ailing.

So please forgive my lack of contribution to this topic. What I tried to do was avoid opinion and prejudice as much as possible, while admitting my lack of insight.

Now if we could just get people in academia, pulpit and government to do the same, we might arrive at our ignorance much more quickly … and alleviate it through education and experience. 

Aerialist

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Aerialist: (n) a person who performs acrobatics high above the ground on a tightrope or trapeze.

We will trust in something.

  • Those who do not put their faith in God find great solace in education, knowledge or science.
  • Folks who are not physically inclined are comforted by reading, writing or thinking.

It always astounds me when I watch folks working a trapeze–how they overcome their fear of heights–until I realize that it has little to do with that. I suppose it would even be possible to have such an apprehension, and as long as you placed your faith in the skill of maintaining your craft, you would be fine.

After all, an aerialist does not trust the wire he or she is walking across. The wire is the obstacle. Certainly, they are careful to maintain the integrity of the line, but they place their faith in the jungle control and well-trained connection they have with their muscles and bones.

Walking across a high wire is not about trusting the surface nor even your balance. It is having the physical tone to know that when you place your foot down anywhere, the tendons and ligaments that control that appendage are strong, firm and sure.

It’s true of anything in life.

As I write this article today, there are millions of people who would insist they are incapable of such a task. They would find it nerve-wracking, if not foreboding, to put together sentences or ideas that possess interest.

But I trust the muscle. As I think, I say.

It’s a confidence that has grown in me as I have arrived at the moment of composition, without any idea ahead of time about what I’m going to share. I dig deep into my soul and find not only a topic, but a personal insight.

An aerialist is not a person who places his faith in chance, but rather, someone who knows that his body will respond the same, whether walking in the air, or on terra firma. An aerialist is a human testimony of working what we do well until we can have total enjoyment in the experience because we have logged the hours of practice.

It’s true for all of us–or else the lack of the truth leaves us feeling inadequate or meaningless.

I cannot walk on a high wire, but I do understand what gives them the impetus and confidence to do so: it is the same muscle and moxie that grants me the window to open every day … to let the fresh air of ideas sweep through me and from me.

 

Accredited

by J. R. Practix

dictionary with letter A

Accredited: (adj.) of a person, organization or course of study officially recognized or authorized: e.g. an accredited chiropractic school.

I often chuckle when people ask for a resume. Have you ever thought about it?

A resume is a statement of what you’ve already done–which reeks of “has-been.” Or it insists on what you desire to do, which sniffs of being  a “wannabe.” But it certainly proclaims that you’re not doing much right now. Otherwise why would you be looking for a job?

A resume is humbling–but it is where people expect us to pull out all the information that is accredited:  all the schools we attended which have the seal of approval; all the companies we’ve worked for which have some sort of visual recognition to the reader, and all the skills that fall within the spectrum of society’s present favorites and understanding.

I don’t have a college education. Due to a mixture of ignorance on birth control and persistence to honor the pregnancy of my girlfriend, I found myself launched into adulthood right out of high school, trying to acquire my pedigree in the dog-eat-dog world. Once I decided I was not going to cannibalize by eating my fellow-dogs, I lengthened my journey toward success.

Yes, sometimes there are short-cuts, but they take you through the woods where you generally run into the Big Bad Wolf.

So I tried to work on ME. I gave myself two great gifts. Here they are:

1. Don’t assume you’re good enough. There are always new ways to try new things to tap new talents to create new possibilities.

2. Don’t compare yourself to other people. Such comparisons always lead to judgment, criticism and self-delusion.

Once I started working on myself and stopped critiquing others, I got better. In the process of getting better I also got older.

It’s amazing. Some people don’t even CARE if you’ve been to college once you cross your thirtieth birthday. By the time you’re forty, they don’t even ask, unless they’re nerds.

What they want is what every human being wants: “Excuse me. Do you have anything in your knapsack that will make my journey easier?”

So I try to always bring along a provision to cover my needs and a little extra for those who forgot to pack for a rough hike. It gives me a sensation of being “accredited.” My fellow travelers look at me and say, “Thank you for taking on the burden of caring for yourself–and for giving enough of a damn to bring an extra portion for us.”

I have nothing against formal education. But the thing about “formal” is that eventually the prom is over. You need to slip on work clothes instead of long dresses and tuxedos. “Pomp and Circumstance“ stops and the new song is “Whistle While You Work.”

It’s what really makes us accredited. It’s what makes a resume leap off the paper and appear to be filmed in 3-D.

So get your education–and with all your “getting” of knowledge, acquire some wisdom. And with that wisdom, have the generosity to pull your load.

And bring along an extra sandwich for a stranger.