A Little Spanish Goes a Long Way

An E.F. Hutton moment at the Golden Corral

A couple of years ago, my family converged upon a Golden Corral restaurant in southeastern Orlando along south Semoran Boulevard for dinner. My father was a depression era child and is always concerned about getting enough to eat (and always for a minimal price, mind you). There is inevitably plenty for vegetarians to eat there so it’s in many ways a perfect place for family dinners.

The strip on Semoran south of Colonial Drive (SR 50) where the Golden Corral is located is largely Latino these days. While I was aware of that, it’s not something that I think much about as I drive down the highway alternatively reading storefronts and billboards in English and Spanish. One day my Dad was in the car and I was commenting on a billboard for lawyers when he said, “Where did you see that?” And I suddenly realized that after all the years I’d spent in Latin America, Spanish billboards just seemed pretty routine to me. But not to those who live in small towns outside the urban centers here in Florida, like my Dad, for whom Spanish is not so much a constant as the evidence of foreign cultures.

In the restaurant that evening, my brother’s middle kid, who is known for making wise acre remarks, was telling us about his troubles in his International Baccalaureate program at his high school. Seems his Spanish class was his major downfall. Given my love of Latin America, I was confused: “What is it about the language that you find so difficult?” And to my astonishment, he replied, “It’s the language of the maids and the janitors. Why would I want to learn that?”

Like the old E.F. Hutton commercials where everyone suddenly becomes quiet, listening in hopes of hearing the wisdom of a stock broker, it was as if time suddenly stood still. Everyone at the table with us suddenly grew silent. And I began to look around at the nearby tables, overflowing with loud, joyous Latino families, wondering who had heard that comment.

The Sheer Pragmatism of Becoming Multilingual

In all honesty, it was hard for me to contain my anger at that moment. I love all of my nephews and my one beloved niece dearly. But this comment hit at another major love in my life – Latin America and its culture. It also was made in a context which rendered the comment not only philistine in its stupidity but potentially dangerous.

“Sport, I suggest you look around yourself. Do you notice that we English speakers are the minority in this place tonight? Might you consider that comment is more than a little ill-advised under the circumstances?”

And then I poured it on: “Who are you that you think you are too good to learn this language, anyway? Does it occur to you that your father speaks Spanish, your uncle and your aunt speak Spanish? Even your brother speaks Spanish. What makes you so good that you can’t learn it as well?”

By then I was cooled down enough to add the practical reason that might speak to my periodically bone-headed nephew: “Look, honey, if you’re going to live in Florida, you simply need to learn Spanish, period. You don’t have to necessarily embrace all things Latin. But Spanish is a survival skill in this state, whatever you might think about that. And, to be honest, you probably should learn some French as well since that’s the third most spoken language in this state these days.”

In all honesty, I doubt much of that penetrated the cranium of a 19 year old who knows everything there is to know about everything, having been there myself. But the truth of my own words came back to me this day in a way totally unexpected.

Indispensable Information – en Español

I took my car to Sears Auto this morning to have the tires balanced. As it turns out they all needed replacement. Big surprise, about $630 worth! But given my plans to not buy another car, it’s an investment in a survival strategy I’m willing to make.

As I reeled out of Sears at 8:42 AM, book bag in hand, I hurried up the street running along its western edge, hoping to catch the 8:45 bus to the university. I knew I was running right on the cusp of making that run and that another would not be around for another hour, a result of recent cutbacks in public transportation in a city with the highest pedestrian fatality rate in America.

When I got to the bus stop, a young woman with her two school children were sitting there. They appeared to be Latino but I did not want to assume anything. My experience is that most Latinos want to speak English to you if for no other reason than to reaffirm their commitment to being in America.

I asked the woman in English if Bus 13 had come. She shook her head. İ Claro! I thought. So I repeated the question in Spanish. At first she wasn’t sure what I had asked (whether she was awaiting Bus 13), perhaps taken back by a Gringo speaking Spanish, but eventually she told me she was waiting for either of two other buses which also ran this route, neither numbered 13.  So, I specifically asked “And Bus 13? Has it already come?” “Si, 13 ha passo.” Yes. The 13 bus just came through here. “Gracias, Señora,” I said and picked up my bag to run over to Colonial Drive to catch the 104 which was due at 9 AM.

Had I not been able to speak Spanish, I would not have been able to ask if the bus had already come. And I would have waited, perhaps past the time I could have caught the only remaining route out to the university in time for my first morning class. Knowing enough Spanish to ask a simple question about the bus routes saved my butt this morning.

In No Way Demeans English

Now I can already hear the Know-Nothings screaming “This is America, they should learn English!” And, frankly, there is some truth in that assertion. English is not only America’s primary – though not exclusive – language, it is the primary language of global business today. So, yes, the woman on the bench from Central America probably should learn English. And her two boys will no doubt grow up bilingual.

But, the reality is that Florida – like much of America today – is not monolingual and hasn’t been since its colonization. Spanish is spoken in the homes of about 1 out of every 4 Floridians. And Hatian Creole French is spoken in every 50^th home in this state. As I told my nephew, it is to all Floridians’ advantage to learn these languages if nothing else than for survival skills, as my own experience this morning exemplifies.

Perhaps more importantly, it is a gift to any human being who wishes to be fully human to learn other languages. Spanish provides one with entry into a major chunk of this state and this country’s history. French provides another point of entry to yet another major chunk. Learning these languages in no way demeans the English language that virtually all Americans speak. It simply enriches it.

Thank You a Todos mis Maestros

This morning, I was grateful to all my Spanish teachers over all my lifetime who have worked so hard to muster a semi-fluent Spanish that I can speak, at its peak after a couple of days in a Spanish speaking country. I thank my next door neighbor Cuban exiles in the frightening days of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 who introduced me to Spanish vowels and my first Spanish words. I thank my patient and tireless Spanish teacher at Citrus High’s evening program who helped me learn enough words to communicate with my Spanish speaking students at the middle school in the mid 1970s. I thank the teaching assistants who did their best with this law student taking Intro Spanish classes over on the main campus of the University of Florida in the 1980s. And I thank the hundreds of teachers onsite in Latin America in my many sojourns there over the past decade who have done their best to turn a Spanish sow’s ear into a semi-fluent silk purse with a modicum of success.

To all my teachers, I say thank you. Thank you for helping me catch my bus this morning. More importantly, thank you for enriching my life in ways I never knew possible so many years ago when I was learning Spanish vowel sounds at a birthday party where my brother and I were the only children who did not speak the verbal language but were able to communicate in the very human language of celebration of life which crosses all cultural boundaries.

A todos - Muchas gracias, maestros estimados. Es una cosa Buena de vera hablar un poquito de  Español (To all of you - Thank you very much, respected teachers. It is a good thing, indeed, to speak a little bit of Spanish)

No doubt, that’s at best a close approximation.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.

Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)

Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)

Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law

University of Central Florida, Orlando

http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Exceptions to an Unenviable Rule

An Unflattering Portrait

The recent release of Levine and Dean’s Generation on a Tightrope: A Portrait

of Today’s Student (Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, 2012) well illustrates my own

concerns for higher education and places them in sharp focus. It describes the

Gen Y cohort in alarming terms:

            Immature, needy, protected and tethered to their parents; hard working

            but prone to confuse quantity of work completed with the quality of the

            product; consumer oriented and entitled.

To their credit, they are also recognized as having accomplished the

embrace of the highly diverse society that is America today with which their Boomer

parents continue to struggle. And they are roundly recognized as the first digital

natives with enormous technological potential while largely using that know-how

thus far to create highly tribalized social circles which shut out the vast majority of the world

around them and often using their beloved technologies in ways that demonstrate

a lack of decorum and a decided weakness in social skills.

This is certainly consistent with the students I encounter today. It is a rather unflattering

portrait and one which provides no small amount of alarm for those of us who will

be elderly and dependent in a society run by Gen Y adults a mere two decades away.

But in order to avoid the same kind of mindless awfulizing I see from undergrads at

consumerist online sites (VentYourSpleen.com), it is important to note there that there

are always exceptions to the pattern I often lay out here.

Almost always, these exceptions have names and faces that their teachers remember

long after the anomalous true student leaves their classroom the final time. As I slogged

through last spring’s brutal end of semester blitz with its last minute search committees

and news of my latest rejection in the highly arbitrary games we are forced to play

for even a prayer of badly needed earned raises, my tired spirit and broken

heart was salved by good news from four different students. I hold up their examples

because they provide a badly needed counterpoint to the largely critical portrait I often

paint here.

Three Who Made It

The first came from a young woman I had worked with a couple of years. She was dealing with

enormous personal life constraints which made her academic performance erratic even as it

was punctuated with bursts of brilliance. She had moved away to Texas at one point to

take care of an aging relative and had only recently moved back to Orlando. As spring term

ended, I got a Facebook note from her announcing her graduation. And later in the summer,

I got word that she had landed a job in New York working in a social justice organization.

You cannot imagine how much joy these announcements brought me. Despite all the

“snares of the enemy,” to quote the Book of Common Prayer, this woman had persevered

and succeeded when everything in her life indicated otherwise. And while I was only a small

part of that journey, it does my heart good to know that it had finally come to fruition, at

least for this round.

Brava!

The second was a young man who had managed to work through a young adult life

of coming to grips with a wide array of health issues, both mental and physical. As a

freshman, he had commented on one of his papers that he simply didn’t want to do

all the work I had assigned his class to which I responded, as I do from time to time

in similar situations, “Are you sure you are ready to be in college at this point in your

life?” That afternoon he came to my office to tell me that he had thought about my

question and decided that the answer was no. And so he was leaving college to work

as a pipe-fitter. And he said, “You know, no one else had the courage to tell me that.”

A year and a half later, I looked up to see him standing in my doorway. “I’m back,” he

said, noting that he had figured out that he was not called to be a pipe fitter and that

he was now married, working part-time and ready to be back in school. I’d see this

young man about every two weeks or so. He’d bound into my office with a new idea

he was working on, wanting to “run it by” me, full of unbounded enthusiasm and the

sheer joy of learning.

In May, he graduated. He invited me to his graduation party with his extended

family. His parents both thanked me for my work with their son. And I have to say,

I was pretty proud to see this young man make it through.  Watching him laugh and

embrace relatives at his well-deserved festivities brought tears to my eyes.

For just a moment, I felt a bit of what a parent must feel in such situations.

Bravo!

The third student was a young man I helped steer through the writing and

defense of an honors thesis. Apparently, he had gotten excited about doing this

as a student of my Philosophy of Law course the previous year. This young man

came to the university with serious writing deficits. But he was bright, highly capable

of thinking on his feet, and had gotten into his head that he wanted to go to

law school. “Sorry, you didn’t talk me out of it,” he smiled.

The defense of his thesis was brutal. After having revised it about four times

prior to the defense, there were so many problems raised at defense that it was

not at all certain he’d pass. Two complete rewrites later, he finally got the last

signature the last day to file his completed document. In all honesty, my

conscience began to bother me toward the end as I felt that perhaps the

final product was as much my own writing as his. But, the ideas were certainly

his (what are the chances I’d ever write a Libertarian thesis?) and eventually

so was the thesis. As a bonus, he announced he’d been admitted to a

law school in San Diego and given full funding his first year.

What I’ve not told you is that he is the first member of his family to graduate high

school, much less attend college. Moreover, his family did not encourage him in the

least, cutting him off financially when he refused to stay home to work in the

family catering business. He worked his way through school and now is headed

to law school. This is a true success story.

Bravo!

Yes, There is Life After Undergraduate!

The final ray of sunshine came from a former student who graduated several years

ago but has kept in touch with me over the years. My lectures in his Humanities course

on the rise of Christianity had shaken him as a freshman and he had come to my office

disturbed at the implications of what I’d just said in class. This began a pattern of visits

over his remaining time at the university where he eventually worked through two

changes of major and finally graduated with a major in religious studies.

This spring he graduated from Duke’s MA in Religious Studies program. His faculty

chose him to represent the class in presenting a closing statement at the commencement

not unlike a valedictorian’s. He is headed toward a certificate program in Latin and

classics at nearby UNC this fall and ultimately has his sights set on a Ph.D. in

early Christian history. He is a fine young man. And I am proud to call him friend and

now my colleague.

Bravo!

The Inestimable Value of Moral Rewards

Doris Santaro, an associate professor of education at Bowdoin College, recently published an article in the American Journal of Education. Its subtitle is telling: Demoralization in the Pursuit of Good Work. Santaro begins with the recognition that most teachers know going into their career that monetary rewards are not the reason most people choose to be educators. But in a healthy society, there are important moral rewards in education, chief of which is the privilege of shaping the future.  Without moral rewards, teaching becomes a soul-draining sentence to a life of hard labor in a prison of bureaucratic strangleholds, woefully inadequate pay and a nearly complete lack of public respect with no hope of parole.

The accomplishments of these students, outstanding human beings in whose lives I have invested some of my own time and life energies, are a beautiful return on that investment. They are a credit to themselves, their families and to society in general. And it is important to quickly add that these four students are only the latest in a limited but respectable list of students I recall stretching back over the past 30 years of my teaching career. Their life stories embody the inestimably valuable moral rewards that Santoro speaks of. They are exceptions to the rule that Levine and Dean lay out above, singular individuals who make educators like me believe that our time and effort has been worthwhile, and that maybe, just maybe, our efforts have made a difference in the world, if ever so slight. Most importantly, they provide a ray of hope that perhaps there are yet more exceptions to the rule to whom we can devote our professional lives before we retire.

And so I salute these four who got away, success stories from a system of higher education seemingly intent upon devolving into mediocrity.  Thank you for the gifts you have been in my life and for those you are about to offer a world which badly needs what you bring to it, whether it

recognizes it or not.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.

Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)

Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)

Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law

University of Central Florida, Orlando

http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Foucault and the Front Desk

 A Whole Layer of Depth

Over the past 11 years that I have been a member of the Philosophy Department faculty, the department has repeatedly sought to add a graduate program to its undergraduate offerings. It has offered numerous white papers detailing the need for such programs, the benefits the programs would offer the Florida public, the university as well as the department itself. Each time the requests have been thoroughly researched and written up in highly polished final form. And each time they have been rejected.

For those outside academia, this may not seem like a big deal. So what if you can’t offer graduate courses in philosophy, humanities, religious studies or cognitive science? Students can go elsewhere if they want those degrees, right? It is costly to produce the small numbers of graduate degrees that result from these programs. And, besides, it’s philosophy, forchrissake!  Who really needs a graduate degree in that? Just ask the current occupant of the governor’s mansion in Teapot Tallahassee!

Of course, anyone who’s ever spent any time in academia knows that graduate programs add a whole layer of depth in conversation within any academic department. Research becomes a prominent aspect of department life and students, faculty and the university itself benefits from the academics the programs draw to the department to those who come from outside the university to speak on campus. Graduate students bring to the table their various areas of research interest for consideration and discussion. Academic life is almost always enriched by graduate level studies.

More pragmatically, most departments on campus heavily utilize graduate students to teach and assist in teaching undergraduate classes. Without them, the General Education Program could probably not be offered in most departments. Such an arrangement provides teaching experience for future college instructors, a human face for undergraduates to consult and takes some of the grading and teaching load off of faculty with publish or perish deadlines looming who also must teach large sections of undergraduate courses. 

More Than Our Share of the Load

In the philosophy department many instructors teach up to four sections of General Education Program courses at a time with up to 65 students apiece. (One should note here that the local state colleges cap these same courses at 25). Adjuncts paid a paltry $2000 per cours, and without whom the department could not offer its GEP curriculum likewise teach these huge sections. Given that many of these courses include the Gordon Rule intensive writing requirement, that translates to four pieces of writing to grade times 65 students times 4 sections alone. Providing meaningful feedback on content and writing under such circumstances is simply an impossibility.

Even so, it is also an ongoing reality. The department has long borne the brunt of GEP credit hour production at the Factory even as the other departments, against whom Philosophy is regularly compared in terms of “productivity” (translation: mere numbers of enrolled students who enroll in the course), have readily used graduate students to lighten their burdens. This becomes an even more urgent concern as the department is being told to make its classes more “sexy” to draw higher enrollments or face cutbacks. We must roll those production units through in four years regardless of the cost to departments and their instructional staff.

Various reasons have been offered the department for the rejection of its bids to add graduate programs. Initially the reasons focused on a supposed rule prohibiting the addition of graduate programs at a given state university when such programs existed elsewhere. Of course, that has not stopped the addition of incredibly expensive medical and law schools of questionable need at places like UCF and FIU but when institutional egos with political power drive policy decision making, the rules clearly go out the window. More candid reasons have alluded to the cost of graduate programs though clearly that does not matter if one’s program has political support and sex appeal, whatever that might mean. It also doesn’t hurt to have corporate sponsorship.

Two weeks ago, the banner headline of the UCF Future read “Ph.D. program added to college.” With a photo of a white columned portico bearing a sign reading “PROFESSIONALISM” the reporter documented the addition of a new doctoral program – in hospitality management! The article notes that UCF is among the “less than 10” colleges and universities around the nation who now offer such doctoral programs.

No doubt.

Malthus Comes to Dinner

My main challenge in even reading such an article is to try to avoid the almost immediate condescension that springs to mind unbidden when reading anything about hospitality management programs. Truth be told, I’m not sure such undergraduate programs even belong in institutions of higher learning, much less those offering doctoral programs.

Of course, I have similar feelings about undergraduate programs in a number of other areas as well. Frankly, all trade programs – including the seminary-style indoctrination into free market fundamentalism that passes for undergraduate business programs - belong in trade schools, not universities,  in my opinion. The cachet of middle class respectability – not to mention a modicum of understanding of the liberal arts and sciences - that college degree programs provide simply isn’t a requirement for running a hotel no matter how many stars it touts.

On the other hand, in a state which foolishly, I believe, ties its entire economy to tourism, ensuring that tourist-related businesses from theme parks to hotels to restaurants can run smoothly makes some sense. However, whether one actually needs a bachelor’s degree to do so is questionable. And, frankly, the idea that one would earn a doctorate in this field seems pretty absurd to someone who has actually earned one in a real academic discipline.

The director of graduate studies at the Rosen School of Hospitality crowed in the article that if one is looking for a “top notch faculty to do research and publication…” the new program would be a “very strong magnet for that.” Seriously. One can only imagine the coming journal articles: “The Foucauldian Aspects of Surveillance at Guest Check-In” and “Gazpacho, Portion Size, Carbon Footprint and Climate Change; Malthus Comes to Dinner.”

I can hardly wait.

Them that have the gold make the rules.

Frankly, in a world where there are infinite resources and an unlimited supply of interested students willing to engage in actual academic pursuit, such programs would be simply one more contribution to the production of knowledge in the generative process called academia. Who would really care if hospitality management offered doctoral programs in an academy where lecturers and instructors were paid salaries commensurate with their educational and experiential attainment and students were not herded into auditoriums for factory processing of credit hours or forced into the anonymity of online “classes” just to have a prayer of graduating in six years? In an academic world of plenty, no one’s ox must be gored.

But this is hardly that world. This is a world of artificially scarce resources occasioned by policy decision making driven by corporate interests. It is a world in which the powerless in that process - and thus the losers in its budget wars - are pitted against each other for the scraps. And that is why this program is such a slap in the face to programs like Philosophy which have done so much with so little for so long in the name of being team players only to see that the coach plays favorites with impunity.

There are two aspects that make this decision particularly unpalatable. The first is that this program actually already existed. As the Future story revealed, “Having a Ph.D. program of its own isn’t exactly new to Rosen College; previously it had teamed up with the College of Education to offer a doctorate of education with a specialized track in hospitality.” Not only was there already a program in place, this one actually replicated an existing program in an ostensibly academic department across campus.

In theory, that should never happen in a university system which prohibits the replication of existing programs. In fact, the rules only bind those who are actually subject to them. In a free market fundamentalist culture, the Golden Rule devolves to this: Them that have the gold make the rules.

That quickly brings us to the second aspect. There is a reason that the college in question is named Rosen. Indeed, there is a reason many of the colleges and buildings on campus bear corporate names. Cash starved universities have sold their very souls to egocentric corporations. As I saw on the University of Florida site yesterday, the new trend in the NCAA football, is to provide opportunities to trademark individual athletic contests: The First Annual [your-corporate-logo-here] Game. Never underestimate the powerful combination of corporate egos and disposable cash.

This is a world where public taxpayers have been allowed – if not encouraged - to avoid the responsibility of actually educating the people of their state they expect to serve them. In the wake of such irresponsibility, corporate moneys are increasingly being called upon to make up that gap. But they always come with strings attached, like being able to break the supposed rules for new graduate vocational programs and screwing everyone else in the process.

So, take that, you would-be philosopher kings!

Bottom line: In today's world of higher education, money talks, egos reign, and education is at best an afterthought if a serious consideration at all. Of course, that’s only a problem in a culture where people actually care about education in the first place. Increasingly it is apparent that is simply no longer the case here in Florida -  if it ever really was.  

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.

Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)

Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)

Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law

University of Central Florida, Orlando

http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The Face of the American Worker: In praise of my building’s custodian

The Face of the American Worker:

In praise of my building’s custodian

Come, labor on.

Who dares stand idle, on the harvest plain

While all around him waves the golden grain?

And to each servant does the Master say,

Go work today.

A troubling context

Yesterday was Labor Day. For most Americans it was a holiday. For some, it was an opportunity to make time and a half working on a national holiday. For others, it signals the end of summer with its beach vacations and the beginning of Fall and back to school.  It is also historically the height of hurricane season in the northern hemisphere.

I find it sad that among the things that Labor Day represents to the average American, what is missing from that list is the labor it was designed to celebrate. Labor Day was created to be a day where the hard work of the average Joe and Mary was recognized and appreciated. This year’s Labor Day occurs amidst a downward spiral of anti-labor sentiment not seen in America for a very long time. It has become fashionable to pillory unions today, to demonize workers and to loot the pensions of retired workers even as corporate executives, wealthy stock holders and the irresponsible citizens whom workers serve become ever wealthier off their often poorly compensated labor.

There is a word to describe this relationship: exploitative.

I long ago recognized that my life was made possible by the hard work of a lot of people I would never know. I learned from my short stint in the fields of Central Florida’s truck farms that my daily bread only came to me via the hard work of farm workers, many of them denied the living wage their tireless efforts deserved and subjected to work conditions which would ultimately shorten their lives. I learned from my short stint selling shoes in a now-defunct big box store (J.M. Fields) that consumerism fostered a contempt for the very workers whose labor made it possible to buy the cheap goods that consumerism has hoodwinked us into believing we need to make us happy.

Lessons from unheralded teachers

One of the wisest lessons I learned in my internship prior to beginning teaching public schools some 40 years ago was that there were three groups of workers you wanted to keep on your side. They included the clerical staff in the office, the cooks and servers in the cafeteria and the custodial staff in your hallway. It was good advice that proved invaluable when I began teaching. But it was also an invitation for me to see workers as individuals, real human beings with real lives, families and dreams, not simply caricatures expressed in reductionist, functionalist terms.

There are no essential waitresses, secretaries, garbage men or plumbers in this world. There are simply human beings who work in hourly jobs to make their humble livings. Without them our society would collapse within hours.

A major reason I ride the city bus system to work is because I am inevitably surrounded by people whose life circumstances are different from my own. Call it a rolling Margaret Mead experience if you like. I sit among workers, some of them a bit whiffy after long days working outside in construction, day laborers carrying rented tools back to the hiring office to insure they get all of the meager paycheck coming to them, human advertisements who have traded the giant signs they twirl on highway shoulders in the sun all day for 8 ounce beers in brown paper bags from which they not so surreptitiously sip on the ride home.  

On the bus I  quietly work my crossword puzzles or simply gaze out the windows. Most of all, I listen. And I learn a lot about people whose lives are very different from my own. On the bus, it is the working class headed home after a long day of work who are the teachers and the professional middle class academic who is the student.

A surprise revelation

Come, labor on.

Claim the high calling angels cannot share;

To young and old the Gospel gladness bear.

Redeem the time; its hours too swiftly fly.

The night draws nigh.

This past week I was stopped dead in my tracks by the revelations of one of my students. This woman had been in my class two years ago and suddenly disappeared. This is not terribly unusual among undergraduates who are living on their own for the first time and often find themselves blindsided by events they never saw coming. I sent her an email after a couple of weeks had passed to remind her that the engagement portion of the grade could not be met by missing class.

A couple of days later I received a response. The student had been advised by her doctor to remain in bed during what proved to be a high risk pregnancy. She ultimately was required to drop all her courses, sending me a note thanking me for my concern and promising to return to school once the pregnancy was completed.

Of course I hear promises like this all the time, many of which are never kept. The fact this student actually lived into her promise to return to school is somewhat unusual. She picked back up where she had left off in the humanities program sequence two years later bearing pictures of her now two year old healthy child. But it was her revelation in a break between classes last week that stopped me in my tracks.

I teach two classes back to back in a rather foul old barely functional classroom on the top floor of the original Engineering building, a site a colleague lovingly dubbed “the armpit.” There is a ten minute break between the classes. My student is taking both classes from me and often brings her supper with her to class and gobbles it down in the ten minutes between classes.

Last week one of her classmates remarked on how good her grilled chicken salad smelled and how she was making everyone hungry. “I’m sorry,” she said “but I have to eat my supper now.” I asked her if she was headed for work after the class. “I work until midnight,” she replied. Where? She smiled, “I clean the building your office is in,” adding, “then I go home to be Mom to a two year old.”

My two classes are the only two classes this student is taking because the university only pays for two classes a semester for its employees. She and her husband switch off child raising duties and work schedules to keep the lights on and the food on the table. In the middle of all that, this student manages to study and produce high quality work in her two classes.

“I admire you”

Come, labor on.

Away with gloomy doubts and faithless fear!

No arm so weak but may do service here;

Though feeble agents, may we all fulfill

God's righteous will.

This is the face of American labor that we who benefit from their labor so often and so quickly forget. This is the human being whose labor makes our lives of privilege possible. I can barely keep my own house respectably clean. I can only imagine trying to keep the building where I work clean in addition to teaching and attending to the ever growing list of non-teaching duties imposed upon me by the university.

I hope I did not embarrass this woman when I stammered, “Wow. I admire you.” It was an honest response to the revelations of an unusual student. She evidences no sign of the entitlement that too often afflicts so many of her classmates. She cheerfully leaves my class to go work an eight hour late night shift in custodial work that many of us would quickly pronounce as beneath our dignity. And she comes to class prepared, somehow managing to juggle her duties as mom to a toddler and responsible student in the humanities program with aplomb.

She is one of the many faces of American workers today. And while I did not take a lot of time yesterday amidst my own recreational activities to reflect on my gratitude to them, their day should not pass without some kind of recognition. And so to this hard working young woman and the millions like her across America on this day after Labor Day, I say “Thank you for all you do. And I pray that I and my fellow Americans will never take you or your labor for granted or fail to respect you as our fellow citizens.”

Thank you, all of you. And Happy Labor Day.

Come, labor on.

No time for rest, till glows the western sky,

Till the long shadows oer our pathway lie,

And a glad sound comes with the setting sun,

Well done, well done!

(Hymn 541, The Episcopal Hymnal 1982. Lyrics, Jane Bothwick,

Thoughts for Thoughtful Hours. Edinburgh, Scotland. 1859)

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The Rev. Harry Scott Coverston, J.D., Ph.D.

Member, Florida Bar (inactive status)

Priest, Episcopal Church (Dio. of El Camino Real, CA)

Instructor: Humanities, Religion, Philosophy of Law

University of Central Florida, Orlando

http://pegasus.cc.ucf.edu/~ncoverst/

 frharry@cfl.rr.com

 If the unexamined life is not worth living, surely an unexamined belief system, be it religious or political, is not worth holding.

Most things of value do not lend themselves to production in sound bytes. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++