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THERE'S ANOTHER ONE OF THESE LENGTHY BUT NECESSARY FOOTNOTES TO BE ADDED HERE AS SOON AS I CAN--PRESUMABLY IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM."It's a dreaded thing. And it's really useless. People are shot and killed and tortured for nothing. I don't see why presidents just don't sit down and talk stuff out. That would be a lot better. And little children like us wouldn't get hurt."
And it quoted a nine-year old saying (admittedly prior to
"Physicians For The Prevention of Nuclear War"'s Nobel
Peace Prize-winning "nuclear winter" theory and the resulting
modifications in our education programs (?) and the thinking
processes of "presidents"(?)):
"I like the idea. It would be fun. Then you could march in parades and throw bombs at people and stuff. But I guess it would get kind of scary after a while. I wouldn't want to die or kill anybody. And I'd probably get homesick a lot."
I started thinking about these things together after awhile,
remembering that deKlerk's National Party first came to
power (and has held it continuously since) the year before
J.M. Roberts, Jr.'s article, recalling how many wars
we've seen since (and how many "people (were) shot and killed
and tortured for nothing"), bearing in mind the justifications
we've been given by "presidents" and arms merchants for them
(and how many "people..."), and i eventually came back to the
closing remarks made in the 1950 article:
"From your own standpoint, these will be years in which you will not want to lag behind your fellows in knowledge, even though, like so many of your elders, you are confused about what you can use it for.*
There is an inner satisfaction, Edward, in being able to think, and in having the knowledge on which true thoughts can be based.
But those are personal things, Edward. There is another reason why you must study: a debt you owe to the students who have gone before you, and to the right for preservation of the good things that man has learned."
America's lunar landing program, once a science fiction
vision in the mind of H.G. Wells, gave the world
concentrated orange juice and Teflon for commercial use.
It certainly remains to be seen how space lasers and particle
beams can be applied to housewares or for use by real people.
And as for the politics of the nuclear age, as we begin the
1990s with "the Education President" at the helm of leadership
for the expanding Free World, perhaps we should wonder what
little Edward, now possibly nearing fifty years of age
(the same age as Canada's Prime Minister Brian
Mulroney...and almost a decade older than America's Vice
President Dan Quayle) if he's still with us, would ask
his grandchildren's parents' association.
H-Bombs, "Star Wars"...and world hunger, deprivation,
abuse of human rights, economic underdevelopment, exploitation
of our natural environment and dwindling natural resources, and
poor and insufficient education training.
I wrote "Education (You're Expanding My Vocabulary)" on Labor Day, 1989 while listening to the Jerry Lewis Telethon and thinking about ""Jerry's kids".
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THERE'S ANOTHER ONE OF THESE LENGTHY BUT NECESSARY FOOTNOTES TO BE ADDED HERE AS SOON AS I CAN--PRESUMABLY IN THE NEW MILLENNIUM.