KILLING GOPHERS

[arlie]

Killing gophers consumed him. Killing gophers mattered more than beets, broccoli, or beans. More than carrots, cauliflower, cucumbers, or corn. It almost drove me crazy.

He had spent the late summer walking around the new place, testing the soil. A new neighbor had helped, donating a ton or so of topsoil and manure from his cattle and sheep corrals. The warm winter days of southern Arizona gave him time to mix the new soil with the old, and after work, week-ends, and school holidays I helped him put up some fence panels to keep the chickens and rabbits out of the new garden.

Early spring was planting time. He was pleased with his efforts, and excited when the seeds sprouted and the bedding plants grew. Then a cucumber vine wilted. A broccoli plant disappeared.

The gophers had found the garden.

He tried drowning the gophers and poisoning them. I tried gassing them and trapping them. Once in a while heÕd catch one staggering around near a hole, looking more like a half-drowned sewer rat than a pocket gopher, and promptly dispatch it with a swing or two of his shovel.

But the gophers prevailed.

I volunteered that it need not happen again. I would rent a small tractor, move the top two feet of dirt off to the side, line the garden area with a carpet of wire mesh, then replace the dirt. It would take money, time, and energy, but the gophers would not be able to repeat their gluttony at our expense.

ÒNo, donÕt do that,Ó he ordered, as he planted that seasonÕs even-larger garden. ÒIÕm going to get those gophers.Ó

Now he spends his days with a hose in one hand and a shovel in the other. HeÕs tried pouring lye down the gopher holes, almost killing the dog but hardly slowing the gophersÕ advance. Even in the rain, heÕll be out there, hose in hand. Pumping water down the holes. He loves it. HeÕs doing his job.

Our vegetables come from the grocery store, now.

It almost drove me crazy, but I learned a lesson: itÕs easy to stay busy killing gophers, especially when you forget your original purpose. ItÕs as easy for an elderly ex-farmer/rancher as it is for a younger teacher or administrator. Or legislator, or school board member, or parent, or student.

Too much of our educational energy is expended Òkilling gophers.Ó We have forgotten our original purpose. We have succumbed to the temptation of the distraction. We believe we are succeeding whenever we manage to lay a shovel on a gopher, but the vegetables are shriveling, dying, and disappearing.

Proponents of a school or school district Òplan for improvementÓ might insist that we need more money for hoses and shovels. Critics of the same plan loudly denounce this wasteful spending, pointing out that hoses and shovels have not proven very effective. Instead, they propose more money for traps, or poison, or (if they really want to break the boundaries) for cats, dogs, and gopher snakes as more efficient gopher killers. Yet others will insist that the problem cannot be solved by throwing money at it, that Òtightening upÓ is necessary.

But we have forgotten our purpose. We are not here to kill gophers. Rather, we are here to grow vegetables. We are not here to stamp out drugs or to keep guns out of schools or to tinker with class schedules or to build our rŽsumŽs or to insist loudly and repeatedly that Òwhole languageÓ is better (or worse) than Òphonics;Ó we are here to grow our students.

Our forgetting takes many forms. It sneaks up on us. It takes advantage of our societyÕs pressures and our individual concerns and weaknesses. It even takes advantage of our strengths. Along the way, our forgetting lays waste to our individual and collective best: our sense of commonality and community and common sense. Then, just for good measure, it destroys our passion for teaching, for treating each student as an individual, for doing the best we can with what we have.

©2002, Robert L. Lee

[satan]

Those dang Midwest gophers! What've they done to your article? . . .

. . . but they ain't nuttin' compared to their Middle Eastern cousins. When them Middle Eastern gophers get busy, one side says "get off the land," another yells "take more land for security," and those outside try to convene peace talks just to give the appearance of trying something, when any gopher hunter with a pico-ounce of common sense realizes a massive concentrated nuclear strike would solve all gopher-related problems there . . .

. . . of course, there's the fallout to worry about. Too bad those gopher scientists haven't figured out yet how to limit the effects of a nuclear strike to a particular geographic location . . .

(i'd meant to say before i got sidetracked that all your apostrophes are showing up as capital Os with a random distribution of acute & grave accents and tildes over them, on the computer/browser setup i'm using to read this anyway . . .)

. . . nice job Robert!

[arlie]

I suspect the problem is caused by differing ASCII keyboard assignments between Mac and Win computers. I copied and pasted the article from one of my Mac applications into the forum submission text box, and it still looks fine to me. On the other hand, I have noticed the same effect on punctuation marks such as parentheses, apostrophes, hyphens, and others on forum postings here and elsewhere, and even in some e-mails. Bothersome for a proof-reading stickler like me, but I can't figure out how to avoid it entirely.

And thanks for the kind words.

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

VERY cool. I can think of a lot of situations in organizations to which I belong (work-related and social) where gopher-killing is the primary activity while the primary objective is something very different.

keep writing!

[satan]

Originally posted by arlie
I suspect the problem is caused by differing ASCII keyboard assignments between Mac and Win computers. I copied and pasted the article from one of my Mac applications into the forum submission text box, and it still looks fine to me . . . Bothersome for a proof-reading stickler like me, but I can't figure out how to avoid it entirely.

Hi Robert,

i'd written that some of your punctuation marks were showing up as capital Os with a random distribution of acute & grave accents and tildes over them, but looking closer, i realized it's not random. The apostrophes are showing up with the tildes, opening double quotes with grave accents, closing double quotes with acute accents, and the acute es in "résumé" are showing up as capital Zs with breves . . .

i don't know how it works on a Mac, but on a PC, you can get the apostrophe directly by holding down the ALT key and pressing 0180 on the number pad. Opening and closing quotes are ALT-0147 & 0148 respectively, while é comes with ALT-0233 . . . these have always worked for me when symbols inserted using MS Word were mangled upon copying and pasting elsewhere . . . perhaps there're equivalents in Mac . . .

. . . good luck.

[KatM]

Hey Robert -

Nice thought provoking essay! I liked it so well, I went to your epinions profile in hopes of reading more of your work.

Alas - no reviews or essays posted. Is there a reason? This essay would be wonderful in Writer's Corner.

Just curious - I will not be offended if you tell me to mind my own bees wax.

Kat

(Oh and hey - I grew up in AZ!)

[kurt_messick]

As a friend of mine once said, 'that'll preach!'

[mjfrombuffalo[$]]

I printed your essay and read it at our agency's Best Practices meeting Friday. (Best Practices is a committee of social work supervisors and lately we've been stuck on compliance issues, like "how can we get case plans turned in on time," "how can we get social workers to make the required number of monthly contacts," etc.)

Thanks to your essay, we were able to focus most of our agenda items on things like "creating a partnership with the child's parents" and "developing better relationships with foster parents."



mj

[magenta321]

So call me slow...

I just got around to reading this. Actually, the title kept me away all this time. I didn't want to read about killing gophers. The thought upset me.

But, now I am so glad I read this. Thanks for putting things into perspective. This applies not only to teaching, but to a lot of things in life.

Thanks.

[Helen_B[$]]

"When you're up to your ass in alligators, it's hard to remember that your original intention was to drain the swamp." Great essay, big statement there.