It’s amazing these days the number of people who don’t have common sense, or what my grandfather called “walking around sense.” I know, I’ve written about this subject before, but lately, it seems I find more people unable to walk around without running over their brain. We’re raising the academic scores every day for college entrance exams, and I see children who make me very proud of our younger generation, due to their abilities to accomplish so much in our schools, but we are starting to run into problems when it comes to the amount of common sense being absorbed by the citizenry of this country. Just watch how congress has been acting lately, along with the current elections, and you can see my point.
Common sense has to be taught at home, on the athletic field, in school, or by experience. The latter is a dear teacher – probably one of the best on the subject. Coming from a farm, I found experience taught me common sense every time I stepped out the backdoor. It just seems there are more opportunities to teach common sense in a farm setting. Not to downgrade the importance of advanced education, but without “good ol’ horse sense,” a person is doomed to a life of pushing on doors that should be pulled to open.
During the recent election, I saw numerous campaign ads that really tested our common sense. After having run for an elected office myself this past summer, and seeing just how far we all check out the qualifications of our elected officials and issues, it’s no wonder we have the problems we have up on Capitol Hill. So often, we base our votes on who asked me first, who has the most signs, who looks the best on TV, what they served at the rally and – the real kicker – the party they belong to. Sometimes, it helps to look at the candidate’s record, background (not just what the other candidate is saying), and how his thoughts work with yours on issues that really matter to you.
We’ve all been voting on amendments, and some of us have been choosing whether or not to have wine in grocery stores, which should have made us all do some real checking of the truth instead of just listening to the TV. Now let me ask you the common sense question. Did you study these issues or did you just vote pretty much with your eyes closed?
I didn’t have to vote on the wine in grocery stores issue due to not living in a city where the referendum was held, but I did get asked by a policeman how I would vote, and it just so happened I’d done my studying on the issue, so I told him. First, let me say I don’t consume the product, or any other alcohol, and have seen nothing but problems with its consumption over my lifetime. I’ve seen homes ruined, jobs lost, and lives taken because of that first drink, and I don’t advise its consumption. I know there are those of you who would take issue with me over that, but I base my opinion on religious study, experience, and medical fact. I just see putting it in the grocery store as just one more way of making it available to our youth and more problems with regulation. You may have noticed that all the TV ads use primarily young families holding small children asking, “Where’s the wine?” In my opinion, this was not a good way to advertise the issue.
Several years ago, the nation was all involved in a new book that had just hit the market entitled “Everything I Know, I Learned in Kindergarten.” Well, like myself, many of you never had the opportunity to experience kindergarten, but I like to think we know as much, if not maybe more, about life than what some generations who had the advantage of kindergarten do today.
No, I didn’t have kindergarten, but I did have the sixth grade, and a teacher who instilled in all her students a lot of what they needed to know about being a person who matters in today’s society and world. She actually taught common sense, not as a subject, but more so through her methods. A short while back, I was asked to do the eulogy at the funeral of that sixth grade teacher, which I considered to be a huge honor. She saw to it that we did learn, whether we wanted to or not. In her wisdom, she recognized we were all individuals, with different abilities, capabilities, and desires. In the one year she had us as students, she helped us develop those abilities and channeled our desires to maybe one day recognize what we truly want to be in life. At the age of 65, I got into politics, and yes, I remembered things taught by that teacher.
The teacher’s desk was located up front, and a portrait of George Washington hung over her desk. Mrs. Wilma Smotherman was a genius in psychology. I’ll always think she had that picture of Washington hanging over her desk to keep us all honest. Maybe I ran as an Independent because that’s what Washington ran as in his first election.
Other writers have said teachers were the first to teach us leadership, as well as the need to have our own social qualities, when they said, “If everyone else jumped off the roof, would you?”
And that’s my thought today: “If everyone else jumped off the roof, would you?”
Pettus L. Read is a journalist for the Tennessee Farm Bureau Federation. He may be contacted at pread@tfbf.com.