Cascade Observations: Isaac Newton’s lessons

Until last week, I didn’t know much about Newton, other than the story about the apple falling from a tree. I certainly didn’t know that he was a sickly child born of an illiterate father and a mother who did not believe in education. I didn’t know that he hated school, failed his classes, had no friends, and was bullied unmercifully. I didn’t know that a wise teacher helped him respond to bullying by using his brain rather than his fists. Here’s an excerpt from the script spoken by Beard/Newton: “Instead of scolding me for fighting, my schoolmaster challenged me. ‘You’ve beaten your classmate on the field, now let’s see if you can beat him in the classroom as well.’ I began to study and concentrate on my schoolwork. At the end of the year, I not only passed the bully, but was at the head of the whole school.” He continues, “Light, time, space and the natural world were my playthings. I kept to myself. I was quiet and usually alone … people told me they only heard me laugh once. I liked it that way; it gave me more time to think.”

Imbedded in the script were explanations — entertaining, elementary school style — about exponents (students tore paper and learned how to write this action in exponent form) and the laws of motion, depicted by Jerry Mohar when he pulled a tablecloth out from under a set of dishes, dropped a raw egg into a jar by hitting a pie plate, and created “rockets” with old film canisters and some Alka-Seltzer. The crowd went wild.

At the end of the play, the narrator painted a portrait of someone who, if we didn’t know better, might have come up on our modern day FBI list as a deeply troubled teenager and a potential terrorist rather than a scientific genius. “Isaac Newton’s life had little balance. When he was deep in thought, he would stay up all night. He never exercised, had no hobbies, or any use for art, music or poetry. His meals were oatmeal or milk with eggs and perhaps an apple or a bit of roasted chicken. He lived simply and often alone … But he was one of the greatest scientific minds that the world has known.”

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Hours after some Mid Valley third graders had returned from watching the Newton play, their teacher gave them the mathematical task of multiplying three one digit numbers and evaluating the expression. The kids were learning about parenthesis and the order of operations. Suddenly, one young boy’s face lit up as he figured out how to write his equation using an exponent. When his teacher asked him how he knew to do that, he answered that he learned it from watching Isaac Newton. We teachers try to mentor every day, but sometimes something serendipitous occurs that we can’t take credit for, but are gratified that it happened.

I’ve been thinking a lot about mentors lately. I’m not alone in being concerned about political bullies, hyperbolic statements, “nasty” language and downright lies coming from all sides of the U.S. political world. This isn’t democratic discourse; it’s inflammatory rhetoric that’s harmful and embarrassing. Whatever happened to people sitting down together, listening without interruption, and ultimately politely agreeing to disagree about the issues most important to our lives?

Years ago, I served on the city of Hood River’s planning commission. I was appointed to that position after writing in my application about the necessity of coming to compromise. After three years on the commission, I learned that compromise is easy to talk about, and hard to do. Many a night I went home seething after a grueling public hearing where citizens stood up and yelled at us. However, if we truly believe in the democratic system, then we are required to not only listen to the other side of the aisle, but to join hands across that aisle once in a while. As I write this column, Election Day has not yet come, and I have yet to vote. I will get my ballot in on time (I have never missed an election, even when I lived in Europe). Hopefully, as I’m coloring in the ovals on my ballot, I’ll consider all sides, and vote my conscience without needing to provoke others when they vote theirs. We owe it to those kids in Odell to be exemplary mentors of the democratic process in action, not just in theory.