College education

I am often asked, “Where did you earn your Ph.D.?” My tongue-in-cheek answer is, “In elementary school.” That is where the foundation of my future educational goals were built. My goal was to make the most of my fundamental educational experience.

Thankfully, I was not saddled with thinking about gender distractions and the other nonsensical baggage afflicting the education realm.

I entered a vocational education program in junior high school (Indiana) and continued in that program through high school graduation. With my diploma I had marketable trade skills: verbal and writing skills at an advanced academic level, drafting and reading blueprints, construction design of homes and small buildings, moulding, operating shapers and lathes, using precision measuring devices, basic welding, the use of hand tools, the basics of mechanical designs, carpentry practices, agriculture and yes, how to use a sewing machine.

We boys were not only taught to be men, we were taught to be gentlemen. How? We had a week in home economics class learning how to cook a meal, set a table, etc.

I was ready for the marketplace on day one of my high school graduation. College was an option, but it was not essential. Degrees received by hands that do not cradle the basics of humanities willing to embrace the greater community of life with decency and mutual concern, will fade in the light of uselessness and eventually crumble into the remains of the wood they were originally made from.

— Ronald L. Liston, Chesapeake