2. My Mama

They didn’t talk much in school about abnormal psychology, social relations or statecraft. These matters were of no concern at that time. Nobody was in training to become a member of the State Department.(But, please, let’s not discuss that.)

In Mama’s day a license to teach had to be applied for at the county seat. It was customary for the applicant to attend a Teachers’ Institute which was held for a couple of weeks in summer under the supervision of the County Superintendent of Schools.

Somewhat earlier, before the war, the local Board of Trustees, composed of farmers whose own formal education was nothing to brag about, examined the candidate who wanted to teach their school.

One old story, which deserves telling, concerned the examination of a young man from a distance, unknown to the community. In the course of his examination, conducted rather informally in Lafe Ruggles’ barn during the noon rest period, the nervous stranger was asked whether he taught that the world was round or flat.

He hesitated for a moment before replying. He was uninformed about local opinions on this subject and he wanted desperately to be acceptable—and accepted. It was risky to answer this question with a word of one syllable. After an interval of quick thinking, he said, “Well, sir, I use both systems. In a community where they prefer to believe that the world is round, I teach it round; where they would prefer it flat, I teach that it is flat.” And then he added, “Personally—I have no interest in the matter.”

At first glance, the young fellow’s reply seems a shocking example of intellectual immorality. Here he was, ambitious to direct the thinking of young people who were to be influential in their community. It was conceivable that some bright youth among them might become the President of the United States, a position demanding the unswerving integrity and love of the truth that had given top billing to the moral splendor of George Washington.

Yet here he was, this young idealist, ready to compromise, to appease, to recant if necessary, to the end that he might earn $30 per month and eventually go to college!

But when one takes a longer view of this teacher’s dilemma he did face a more complicated problem than the business of securing or jeopardizing a much needed job.

Let us suppose that the young man firmly believed that the world was round, despite the declaration in his campaign speech that the subject was of no consequence. Having been elected, and having discovered that half the people of his constituency were believers in a flat world (which might have been possible in the Indiana of that period) he decides to set them right. Previous to his arrival, this issue had not been hotly debated. Now it was a cause célèbre! People who had been good neighbors weren’t on speaking terms any more. The preacher was urged to talk up and he did. He sided with the faction that paid his small salary. They were the older ones, we will say, the conservatives, the flat-worlders. The younger ones, who had no money, rooted for a round world and shouted that the parson was an addle-pated old this-‘n-that. Meantime, the problem was unsolved. Perhaps the young teacher had done better not to have tackled it. Maybe he was right the first time in his decision not to care whether the world was round, flat or square. The far bigger issue was to keep the peace and let sleeping dogs lie.

This is not to argue in behalf of ignorance or a spineless indifference to the value of one’s convictions, but plenty of mistakes have been made by zealots who insisted on converting a whole city by Tuesday, at the farthest.

Even St. Paul, fearless apostle that he was, sometimes allowed his zeal to run ahead of his prudence. He would come to town, ablaze with his message and mission, stand up in the Jewish Synagogue and create a furor. An hour afterward, he would be towed at the end of a rope from one court to another, serving as his own attorney, and followed by an ill-tempered mob. He loved argument and was a skilled debater, well informed by the law. Many of the doctrines he elaborated were to become red-hot issues which provided the machinery of dissension in the Christian Church for centuries, such as his belief in foreordination, which gives God the unpleasant task of deciding—quite regardless of their behavior, and their faith or the lack of it—who shall be saved and who shall be lost. Neighbors used to go after each other with clubs and pitchforks over this article in Pauline theology…

(Lest I get into a lot of unnecessary trouble, myself, let me hasten to add that the thirteenth chapter of Paul’s First Letter to the First Christian Church of Corinth is one of the most tender and appealing poems on brotherly love that was ever written by anyone, at any time, in any tongue. And I cheerfully concede that for sheer courage in the face of persecution, the great apostle deserves our unstinted praise. Three times shipwrecked, whipped, tortured and thrown into dungeons! Who am I, indeed, to criticize him?)

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