What Works For You?

School days, school days
Dear old Golden Rule days
'Reading and 'riting and 'rithmetic
Taught to the tune of the hick'ry stick
You were my queen in calico
I was your bashful, barefoot beau
You wrote on my slate, "I Love You So"
When we were a couple o' kids

“School Days” (1907) - Will Cobb and Gus Edwards.

The greatest memories in family life and school (primary, elementary, high school, even college and university), as I tell every college student who works for me, as I told my own son and my two grandsons, “Enjoy, it is the best time of your life.” Here are the Morris 10 rules for success in school whether first grade or professional school.

1.No TV on weeknights.

TV is a waste of time. At one time, it was worthwhile. I enjoyed hearing my relatives who had never been exposed to entertainment laugh at “I Love Lucy” or “The Ed Sullivan Show”. I never listen to TV now. (I am totally blind and have not seen a television set in 50 years.) But I understand it is mostly trash. And what thrill does anyone get from looking at a garbage can? Lucille Ball (“I Love Lucy”) the wonderful redhead, said about getting old, “Be honest, eat slow and lie about your age.” One night, looking in a window at Saks Fifth Avenue, I engaged conversation with a woman who turned out to be Lucille Ball. We were looking at men's clothing and I said, I never spend much money on clothing, certainly not from a store like this. She said, “I have learned to be good to myself.”

2.Set # of family meals.

Make a family meal a rule at your house. Our ancestors lived like civilized people. They set the table, nice flatware, drinking cups and glasses. Children learned to participate in family conversations. As poor as we were, my mother had discipline at the table as everywhere else. We went to the table fully clothed. We did not eat like pigs at the trough. Have you seen children so misbehaved in public restaurants? Can you even imagine what it is like in the home?

3.Dress for Success:

Children should go to school dressed appropriately. In medical school, we were required to wear white shirts. (I can still remember, I could get six laundered for $1. Now it costs me $1 per shirt.) And, we always wore a tie. We were dressing for success in the real world. I understand, now, in some churches, the so called, “preacher” wears a golf shirt. A pastor came to me some months ago, asking my advice about how church members were dressing in his church. I told him that if the new people looking at the older members who “dress up” for church did not get the message, he should remind them that never have people “dressed down” for worship, the greatest human endeavor on earth. I still like to see a professional man or woman, dressed for success if not successful. In the military, a large part of the discipline was presentation.

4.Good breakfast.

The most important meal of the day for a student or anyone else, is breakfast. It is incomprehensible that today's parents will send their children to school without breakfast, or even more incomprehensible to expect the school to provide breakfast when they get there. A school official told me, black children bussed from a housing development, looking out the windows, travel through the better sections of town where there are beautiful homes, arrive at the school where they are marched off the bus, to a cafeteria where they are served breakfast, isolated from the other students. We expect dissemination but the same students already with the sensibility of being different, go to the classroom where they can only learn if seated between white students. Of course, they get a free lunch before being herded back on the bus to go back to their part of town. Black parents, patrons, pastors, should wince at this attitude which they have promoted. Sixty years ago, before cafeterias, children from every economic level carried a lunch box to school. Even worse, is the information that many of the cafeteria lunches are just thrown in the garbage. So spoiled are these children about eating only what they want to eat. I would like to have one of these free lunches every day. Food is not thrown away at my house. Across the globe, I have seen too many hungry children.

5.Family Prayer:

Parents who love their children, pray with them. If no other time, blessing the food before they eat, a practice which your children will never forget, and I pity those with no home memories. It is important to have the daily reading of scripture and prayer before eating.

6.Dedicated homework place:

Each student should have a dedicated homework site for his completion of homework assignments, a place for good posture, good illumination, away from distractions. I still remember the day my mother bought a card table for this. One of her students used the card table, one the kitchen table, etc.

7.One extra-curricular activity at a time:

The school is a good place to learn that you cannot do everything, that you cannot become involved in everything. Involvement in too many extracurricular activities leads to stress with everything, including school subjects. One athletic competition, one art activity, one music activity, one humanitarian activity. All school activity is important, too many a total burden. Everything in school involvement should be enjoyed.

8.Keep everyone busy.

I have never had a boring minute in my life. There is no reason why any child should be bored at any time, with so much school work, extracurricular activities and books on the shelves. On the farm, there was so much activity, so many chores to be done. A mother of several students, along with her own activities in life, must have a computerized mind to keep up with everyone's activities. My mother had a basket where she kept all notifications from school and a notebook where she could enter dates of things. She did not want to miss any chapel program, in which one of us participated, ball game, or other extracurricular activities where parents could attend. God's greatest gift to a couple is a child later in life after the others have left home for college, so that they can remain active in school activities until their social security age.

9.One chance in life for education:

The young mind is sharp and attentive. The young mind soaks up knowledge like a sponge. Life is a long time learning experience, if you are blessed. I have learned more in the past 20 years than in the previous 60.

10.All aboard.

This is a one time ride.
The train only goes on this track one time. Get aboard, you will be amazed how quick the trip. To youth, God gives the energy and vitality for rapid accomplishment. In old age, where we move so slow, we have the memories of climbing stairs two or three steps at a time, of running everywhere in our daily activities. Get aboard, life is to be enjoyed.

Hector Berlioz said, "Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils."

During the years I participated in and attended funerals, I often felt in burying an old person, a library was being buried. I participated in the funeral of the first graduate of NC State University who died at age of 100. He had told me, “I never stopped learning, but it came so much easier when I was young.”

Next to the Holy Spirit of God in your life, becoming educated, I attended a country school for twelve years of my life. It was the greatest education opportunity afforded a human being. Each day, I passed the large one-roomed school located next to the school I attended (Nahunta School, Wayne County, NC) which Governor Charles B. Aycock attended along with both my mother and father's fathers. The large, two room, country school was right across from the home in which my mother and her ancestor's lived, my great aunt was the teacher in that school. Family, church, and school were the great interests of the Americans that made this country great...all seeking truth, and the truth is the truth whether any one believes it or not.