Summer would end and we’d head back to the city, and for us kids, that meant back to school.
School back in the 40’s and 50’s was an adventure, albeit an entirely different kind of adventure than summertime at the lake.
Photo: Clairton High School, Clairton Pa. I guess I was really lucky in some ways. The schools I attended were, compared to today’s schools, really really good.
My teachers were more than dedicated, they were the very best. They seemed to love what they were doing and somehow impart that love to a special joy, the joy of learning, of knowing, of understanding, of a challenge, a quest to know more about everything and anything.
I went to high school in Clairton, Pennsylvania, one of America’s ‘steel cities’.
Fellow students were children of folks who worked very hard and were incredibly proud of their heritage, their jobs, their lives and especially their family.
Granddad had always said that pride was something that was real, it was earned by your effort and if you felt pride and hadn’t made the effort it could be something very bad called false pride.
World war II had ended. The sun was starting to shine again as the steel mills went back to fewer shifts. Folks had a few dollars in their pocket. You could buy a new car for less than $3000, and no one locked their doors.
And most folks had great dreams for their children.
My school friends were bred in that world of hard work and respect. You could trust them with your life or anything else. We did things together and inspired each other to do it better, whatever it was, work hard and do it better.
In that frame of reference, two of my buddies and I decided to join together and build a special project for the annual science fair.
Our project to be was a engineering project. A working model of a solar powered power plant, in miniature, that would capture sunlight, focus it on a boiler to make steam that would be used to turn a turbine and generate electricity.
I wrote a letter to Charles Greely Abbot, then Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C.
We also sought the help of a local nuclear physicist and also of our chemistry and other teachers. We received a hand written reply from Dr Abbot explaining in great detail his experiences and ideas. He even took the time to include a hand drawing of one of his solar engine projects.
We also got hours of ideas from a local Westinghouse physicist, Dr Witzigwww with lots of encouragement from him and everyone else.
We even sought the help of Alcoa, the Aluminum Company of America cause their corporate offices were nearby and we needed some special high reflectivity aluminum. Alcoa donated the special aluminum for our parabolic mirror and for the turbine.
There were no conditions to the help or materials we got. Life back then had few contracts. Folks wanted to help and a man’s word really was his bond.
People cared back then. Most cared deeply.
The exhibit was indoors, so we added some heat lamps to simulate the sun. Our brains weren’t muddled by booze, drugs, mindless TV, violent games and goodness knows what else.
I don’t remember ever hearing my friends talk about how much they could make when they grew up, what I heard was what great things can they do.
There was a passion in the air.
Education was a key to the door of the universe.
How the world and our country has changed.
Footnote:
Can you imagine today, the head of the Smithsonian, personally responding with a hand written letter, to an inquiry from a kid?
I hear the tales of schools today with little discipline, poor SAT scores and seemingly lost kids. My heart cries for the kids.
For some years I was a teacher, first high school, then college. What I saw then (in the 1960’s and 70’s) saddened me beyond belief. The students were wonderful, but many were lost, but not as lost as some of my fellow teachers who seemed to be misplaced flower children or Alvin Toffner’s “plastic people”.
Today the U.S. ranks 27th from the top in Science and Math in part because our ‘politically correct’ schools have little student discipline and many of the teachers have a diploma but little education and less motivation.
I had one very challenged high school student who was bright but always in some kind of trouble. One night at a PTA meeting, I told his parents that the trouble was standing right in front of me (them).
Instead of complaining or filing a lawsuit against the school, they listened.
The student had apparently never received discipline, something sorely missing from many of today’s youth. He was given everything.
Consequently he had never succeeded on his own and never knew the feelings of pride or success or accomplishment.
With co operative parents and some special effort on everyone’s part, he became one of my best students and went on to a very successful career and life, and is retired today with a wonderful family of his own.
