Tag: education

Graceful, sophisticated script we all learned

Here is a golden Rule …. Write legibly. The average temper of the human race would be perceptibly sweetened, if everybody obeyed this Rule!
— Lewis Carroll, writer most noted for “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

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September 1954. First day of first grade. Crockett, Texas.

Scanning new surroundings from my desk in the old brick school building’s basement, my six-year-old brain registers everything it can comprehend.

Small horizontal windows near the ceiling, open for ventilation, allowing sunlight, sounds, and the smell of burning leaves. Inside, like classrooms all across America, the ubiquitous unfinished portrait of George Washington hangs above the blackboard, flanked by the American flag on one side and a framed copy of the Pledge of Allegiance on the other.

Stretched across the top of the blackboard was one of the basic foundations of education. The universal green chart illustrating the ABCs in block letters in elegant, flowing examples of cursive penmanship.

Cursive: that graceful, sophisticated script we all learned to create words for handwritten homework, secret notes exchanged in class, and cherished letters to friends and family.

Who could have guessed that September day, way back when, that cursive handwriting would someday become an overlooked and dismissed skill? Like an empty beverage can, thoughtlessly pitched from a speeding car window toward a “Don’t Mess With Texas” anti-littering sign.

“Holy John Hancock,” I sometimes want to cry in disbelief. How in the name of common sense could we be abandoning the highest esteem for penmanship? Skillfully crafted communication representing education, character, and refinement. It was, after all, one of the three Rs of learning: Reading, ‘Riting, and “Rithmetic.

Some blame the educational system’s Common Core requirements, forcing cursive writing out years ago. Others blame the emphasis on typing skills (excuuuuussse me — “keyboarding skills”), paving the way for educators to quietly take cursive instruction and toss it to the curb.

Trying to heal the painful void of loss over that lapse in judgment, I decided to immerse myself in research. Surprisingly, what I discovered were recent findings suggesting that cursive, once seen as purely decorative, in its absence is now being scientifically linked to intelligence.

Reports released that state, “cursive handwriting can reveal a lot about an individual’s personality. People who write in cursive tend to be creative, artistic, and have a strong sense of imagination. They are also often seen as being more emotional, sensitive, and in touch with their feelings.”

Also found were warnings of current generations losing a link to their past in historical documents. Literally. The Declaration of Independence, the Bill of Rights, and millions of letters like those my father wrote home to my mother from Europe in World War II, a plethora of historical documents, all handwritten in cursive.

“Reaching a point where those who cannot read or write cursive would lose direct access to these documents,” one researcher wrote. “Locking generations out of their own history.”

If there were any doubts before, research also revealed employment websites already advertising for qualified individuals to “read and interpret cursive written documents” … including the Library of Congress.

My first fountain pen was a link to cursive writing. I’m talking about “stick your pen in the ink bottle and pull the lever to fill the instrument” fountain pens. “Stain your shirt pocket when it leaked” fountain pens.

Real ink pen writing was not only fun, but it was also fulfilling. More than communication; it was art. Look alike digital documents vanish into cyberspace. But ink handwritten on paper in stylish script remains with the uniqueness of each individual writer.

Signing my name with my favorite ballpoint on any day is a feeling of creative expression. I have signatures for varied occasions and moods. And my ballpoint is always blue ink — never, ever black. I want my signature to rise above a printed page.

So, I’m happy to report that cursive writing’s future holds hope after all. Some 25 of the 40 states that initially adopted Common Core now require some form of cursive instruction. The reasoning? That neuroscience research indicates “writing in cursive activates brain pathways supporting learning and language development.”

October 2025. Center, Texas.

Sitting in front of my computer ready to craft another column, I grab a yellow tablet. Then a cheap ballpoint pen — a blue one. My blood pressure goes down and stress levels diminish with a sigh as I commit thoughts to paper.

In cursive.

—Leon Aldridge

About the photo: The beginning of a letter my father wrote to my mother during the time he was serving in the U.S. Army 276th Combat Engineers stationed in Belgium.

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Practical application of a good education

“Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.”
— Albert Einstein

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Mom talked fondly about her father. I remember some things about Arthur G. Johnson, my maternal grandfather. He died February 15, 1951. That I can remember him at all seems incredible when I think about it. Considering that I celebrated my third birthday a month before his death.

The most vivid memory is waiting at the bottom of the stairs leading to his second-floor bedroom at 382 South Main in Winchester, Kentucky. Waiting to hear him call my name when he awoke from his nap. That was my signal to sneak up the stairs and hide under a bedroom dresser while he continued calling my name, pretending he couldn’t see me.

Called Pop or sometimes Poppa by Mom and her four siblings, Arthur Johnson was an educated man. Photos picture him as stoic in stature, exhibiting a state of calm and composure—someone that most might expect to face life with education, practicality, and wisdom.

He came from a long line of Kentucky stock documented back into the 1700s. A schoolteacher and a principal in both Kentucky and Tennessee, he also served as an educational director for the Civilian Conservation Corps, commonly referred to as the CCC. Before the U.S. entered World War II in 1941, the CCC constructed public buildings, fences, and state park facilities still in use today; often recognized by their stone construction.

In addition to his educational and professional presence, however, I learned last week that Arthur Johnson also had a penchant for practical applications of learning.

“Let me tell you one story,” my Uncle Bill said last week at the annual reunion of the descendants of Arthur G. and Bernice Conlee Johnson held near Winchester, Kentucky. Uncle Bill is my mother’s last surviving sibling. He celebrated his 90th birthday in May and has always been a great storyteller.

“Pop had a degree in psychology,” Mom’s little brother began. “He was educated and intelligent, but he applied his education with practicality.

“There was a little boy in the neighborhood, also named Billy. And he was … well, he was bad. I mean, he was a really bad seed. His mother couldn’t control him. He got into more kinds of trouble, but she always defended him. He never did anything wrong; you know. It was always the other person.

“At one point, I had a little dog,” Bill continued. “It got caught up in a wire fence around the back yard and couldn’t get out. But this kid killed my dog rather than help it get loose. That’s the kind of evil bad he was.

“One day, his mother comes down the road,” Bill’s story continued. “I’d had a bunch of run-ins with her son. So, when she came flying down the road and turned in at our house, I thought, ‘Oh, my gosh, what have I done now?’ That woman was as bad as her son was.”

“’Is Mr. Johnson here,’ she asked me? People in the community often sought Pop’s advice since he was a respected teacher. I told her I’d check; that I didn’t know. So, I went up to his room that was his own world in that house. I told him, ‘Billy’s mom is down there and wants to talk to you.’ He sighed and said, ‘OK, let her in.'”

“She went in, but the door stayed open just a little,” Uncle Bill continued. ” I just stood there, you know, and listened. She started telling Pop about Billy. ‘I just can’t control him anymore,’ she said. ‘He’s mean, he’s out of control, and I don’t know what to do with him.’”

“Pop was quiet for a minute,” Uncle Bill related. “Then he gave Billy’s Mom some advice. ‘I’ll tell you what to do. You go down here to the local library, and you check out a book called Elements of Psychology. Remember that title. It’s a big book. It’s a good book. Check it out and take it home. Then when you get home, you take that book, and you beat his butt with it. Two or three doses of some applied psychology will help straighten him out.”

I laughed. I had always heard that the grandfather I barely got to know was a wise man. One who valued education and the value of a good book.

But I never knew just how well he understood the practical application of them.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

Why careful career planning is crucial

“What you get by achieving your goals is not as important as what you become by achieving your goals.”

— Zig Ziglar (1926 – 2012) world-renowned motivational author and speaker

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“So,” friends ask, “How is retirement going?”

“Great,” is my go-to answer. “I get just enough of it … between calls from people who need my expertise for a while.”

I’ve always advocated that careful planning of one’s career, even through retirement, is a crucial step in life. Having survived my attempts to chart a course from a very early age, I offer my thoughts on successes and failures while adding the best advice all. Advice is worth what you pay for it..

Before entering junior high, scrutinizing Popular Mechanics magazine classified pages at the barber shop was my source for career possibilities. Rare opportunities for unique businesses. Things like making authentic Bowie knives to marketing assembly plans for constructing scale models of the U.S.S. Constitution. In a bottle.

One I liked a lot seemed like a lucrative field. Army surplus dealers. “Return the postage free card for details,” the ad beckoned. “High demand, big profits.”

Exploring these and other rare opportunities kept both me and the Mount Pleasant, Texas, postmaster busy. My requests for information in outgoing mail and loads of informational literature coming in.

My concern was about which one of these money makers would be the best choice. The postmaster’s concern was which one of them I might be harboring plans to enter.

“You’re not thinking about anything like mail-order pot­bellied stove kits are you,” he quizzed me one day as I handed him another stack of postcards.

My search was going well when one Saturday afternoon while pondering empty pockets in front of the old Martin Theater in downtown Mount Pleasant, Texas, I heard voices. Mystic musings offering new concepts on career choice. “You see, son,” Dad said as he put his arm around me. “Think about this. No work … no money.”

I think he sensed I was broke and had missed the sci-fi flick matinee “I Married a Man From Outer Space.”

From that day forward, my life became a testbed for various after-school careers. I.E. Paying jobs. Sweeping floors at Perry Brothers five-and-dime store after school. Working Saturdays in the men’s department at Beall’s. Pumping gas and washing driveways at the Fina Station at night.

Efforts that dropped postage-free postcards going out in exchange for spending money coming in. Plus, providing valuable experience. Experience that led to seeking college advice on careers that didn’t involve manual labor. ” Well, Leon, looking at your grades,” I remember MPHS counselor Mrs. Sanders telling me, “It’s tough to tell … um, exactly what your field of expertise might be.”

“I’ve been thinking,” I replied. “I was trying to decide between truck driving and funeral director. But I really enjoyed Mr. Murray’s mechanical drawing class, so i’m leaning now toward being an architect.”

So, with a high school diploma plus extracurricular credits in fast cars, loud music, and late-nights, I was off to college to study building design. It was the beginning of five years spent trying to circumvent the evil conspiracy among college professors to prevent me from passing math courses and working when not in classes. To stay in school. Auto body shops, wrecker driving, and oil roustabout to name a few.

Then one day to everyone’s surprise, when the registrar’s office wasn’t looking, I slipped out the back door of East Texas State University with a degree in psychology and art.

“Tell me,” my understanding father asked after graduation, “what is it you plan to do with this varied preparation for your future.”

“It’s really very simple, Dad,” I assured him with my best college graduate look. “Unless I change my mind before Monday, I think I’ll teach school.”

Not long after that, by pure luck, I was afforded the opportunity to get the best career advice ever from motivational speaker and author Zig Ziglar. All right, so we just happen to get on the same hotel elevator together. I was still the only one in the room with him. For 12 whole floors.

“If you can’t control the events that happen to you, you can control the way you choose to respond to them,” he offered with a smile and a handshake.

All that said, I’m hoping to finish my long-awaited book by the end of the year. And I will include in the forward how all of this careful planning was crucial in leading me to a successful career … in communication and journalism.

I still get Army surplus brochures, though. And I’ve got a couple of canteens and a folding field shovel.

If anyone’s searching for a career path.

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Center Light and Champion, The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2025. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.

You haven’t seen my math grades

“The true purpose of the arts education is not necessarily to create more professional dancers or artists. It’s to create more complete human beings who are critical thinkers, who have curious minds, who can lead productive lives.”
— Kelly Pollock, Executive Director Center of Creative Arts

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“Why is algebra required in school? Nobody uses it in everyday life.”

That wasn’t the first time I’d heard that question. But hearing it again a few days ago, I jokingly quipped, “You haven’t seen my math grades, or you wouldn’t be asking me.”

Truthfully, educating the mind to become a well-rounded or “complete human being” requires more than “book learning,” as my grandfather called it. His testimony can be entered into the record with credibility. He went to work at the age of 13 to help support his family and enjoyed a rewarding career.

Achieving a productive life requires curiosity about life beyond one’s chosen field.

For example, consider the story of a good friend and former colleague. He was an outstanding high school athlete and honor roll student when one of his classroom teachers confronted him.

“Why are you wasting your time on football instead of concentrating on something that will help you in the real world?”

If he shared his response that day, I’ve since forgotten it. But I will not soon forget his statement to that teacher a few years later. After graduating from a major university on a full-ride football scholarship where he was an honor student and an outstanding athlete who helped his team reach a post-season bowl game.

Visiting his hometown high school after college, he found the teacher who downplayed his sports participation a few years earlier by insinuating that athletics had no value in the “real-world.” He shared with that teacher what he considered one of the more valuable lessons he had learned at the university. That, “the value of sports is not a question of its direct application to ‘real life’ knowledge, but what it adds to becoming a productive member of society. Sports teaches goals, objectives, teamwork, strategy, planning, and success—all skills needed to effectively use an education in the real world.”

“Oh, and it paid for my education,” he added.

For what it’s worth, he is today the CEO of an international corporation and a staunch supporter of athletics in public schools.

My educational highway was a little bumpier stretch of road. I graduated not “cum laude,” but more like, “Lawdy, how come.” My job titles have more closely resembled something I once saw scripted on an executive coffee mug. “I’m in charge. My specialty is creating problems you didn’t know you had.”

And, where my friend was a football player, I was a band nerd. I didn’t wear a number, and you wouldn’t find my name in the program, but I made appearances in two Cotton Bowl games plus a couple of Dallas Cowboy and Houston Oiler exhibition games. Performing with the band at halftime, broadening my horizons, satisfying my curiosity, and developing an appreciation for arts and skills outside of my chosen field of study.

Did any of that enhance my career opportunities as much as the academic qualifications on my transcript?

Probably not. But like many forms of the arts and extracurricular activities, it helped even a bashful band nerd become a somewhat more complete human. One capable of thinking and communicating effectively to lead a more productive life while applying my “book learning.”

Band did give me an appreciation for music beyond the rock and roll I listened to on the radio back then. It also left me with a lifelong desire to become more involved in music and the arts, and an inspiration to learn how to play musical instruments. It afforded me a broader appreciation for all kinds of music, not the least of which has been leading congregational singing at church—something I’ve done all my adult life.

Best of all, perhaps, band gave me lasting memories of life experiences and friends. Hands down, the fondest memories of my school years.

As for algebra? While I admit we use it daily in ways we don’t even realize, in case you missed this earlier … you haven’t seen my grades in math.

—Leon Aldridge

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Aldridge columns are featured in these publications: The Mount Pleasant Tribune, the Rosenberg Fort Bend Herald, the Taylor Press, the Alpine Avalanche,  the Fort Stockton Pioneer, the Elgin Courier, The Monitor in Naples, and Motor Sports Magazine.

© Leon Aldridge and A Story Worth Telling 2024. Excerpts and links may be used, provided full and clear credit is given to Leon Aldridge and ‘A Story Worth Telling’ with appropriate and specific directions to the original content.