LET US ALL CONTINUE OUR CONTINUING EDUCATION

School's a'comin'. One for the money, two for the show, three to get ready and four to go. Go for what? Well, in this venue (I'm still being influenced by the Olympics), Education. Education, haven't we heard a lot about it recently. Since test scores have fallen below what we have set as standards, since Far Eastern students seem to rise to the top of the scholastic scale like cream on milk, since politicians need a hefty peg upon which to hand their hats, er, platforms, we have, indeed, heard a lot about Education. I'm for it.

Some may say, "Yes, school's a'comin'. I'm glad I'm through with that." But are you ever through with education, formal or unplanned? Solon, who lived in the 500's B.C. and was one of the Seven Wise Men of Greece, said, "I grow old ever learning new things." Being a wise man, he more than likely made an effort to learn new things rather than just let new things come to him haphazardly.

Today, Continuing Education would come near the top of the Education Chart if there were such a chart. At the top of the chart would, I presume, be Required Education, which means that which is a'comin', school. Many organizations, foundations and corporate enterprises nowadays fund opportunities for those whose formal education was interrupted by some circumstance.

Formal Adult Learning sessions are sometimes offered free for those who know they dropped out of school too soon. And then there is the "Home-made" Continuing Education.

This "Home-made" Continuing Education is a term I've made up. It's for persons who can read but who still take the time and make the effort to look up the meaning of things they come across in their reading that they don't know about. This slows reading, but it certainly continues education and the more education you have the less your reading will be interrupted by such stops.

This might also be termed "Allusive Continuing Education." When writing my college thesis, I was presented a choice of topics, one of which was, "The Allusions made by Thoreau in his book, Walden." I did not choose that topic but since then, a long time ago now, I became enamored with Walden and can see how much a student's education would have been "stretched" by inquiring into such allusions, many of which I may not have known about at that time. In the third paragraphs of the first chapter of Walden, one comes across allusions to Bramins and the Twelve Labours of Hercules. Stop! Who were the Bramins? What were the Twelve Labors of Hercules? Look them up.

Although I chose "The Social Influences of Addison and Steele," for my thesis, I have since, on my own, filled a thick, mental notebook of Thoreau's allusions in Walden, simply because I wanted to know about everything he was using to make his message clear.

You see, this type of continuing education is combined with pleasure--the pleasure of reading. For light summer reading, I'm a fan of Louis L'Amour. I've recently read one of the last books he wrote, Haunted Mesa. L'Amour was such a popular author his name on the book jacket is bigger than the title of the book, as are those of most best-selling authors.

In reading this book, in which he proposes that there may be two parallel worlds going on at the same time, I came across this paragraph that refers to an ancient civilization at a strange land located at the Four Corners region of the West: "Suppose their (members of this ancient civilization) methodology was entirely different? The Newtonian conception of physics, for example, has been completely upset by Einstein first, and then by the quantum theory. Nor will this be the end. Of one thing only can we be sure. What is today accepted as truth will tomorrow prove to be only amusing."

Stop! The Newtonian theory, the Einstein Theory, the quantum theory! Wouldn't it be nice to understand how these were different, at least in some elementary way without having, at my age, to enroll in a physics class--physics, a venue (there I go again) of formal education I didn't touch.

Out of my bookshelves came my World Books. Over to the Library I went, down an aisle I probably never walked, and over to the copy machine I went to make photostats of certain pages of some "alien" books.

And wouldn't it be amusing if, at my age, I did enroll in a physics class and the learned professor asked, "Can anyone here explain the difference between Classical physics and Modern physics?" up would go my hand and I'd say, gleefully, "Yes, I read Louis L'Amour's Haunted Mesa" and...."

If any of this sounds self serving and Oh-how-smart-I-am, I don't mean for it to. I'm still hung up on E=hv and 6.62 x 10 -27 ergs per second. I'm hanging loosely though, perusing yet another of L'Amour's light Westerns where things aren't so heavy.

REJOICE!