He continually reminded us that we were repairing cabins and plumbing, not creating art.
Once the director of the camp discovered a bent screw driver, and he wanted to know who
had broken it. A bunch of us started to laugh, and we told him to look at the screw driver
again. It had been bent at a right angle and fashioned into a new tool, used to work in nar-
row places. The only member of the crew capable of such precision work and resourceful
enough to do it was Jerry.
Lesson #4. Explanations cannot substitute for hands-on experience.Jerry stressed that
we were not learning skills for the sake of mastering a skill, but to help us solve problems
in the real world of work. Camp Hurley stretched for more than 120 very hilly acres. Jerry
could not be everywhere and he could not give us detailed instructions to fit every situa-
tion in advance. Generally, he stayed at our centrally located toolshed where we could
come and discuss a project with him and get needed tools, materials, and advice. But we
had to come to him with a plan, a strategy for solving our problem. We had to know what
our tools could do, we had to understand the materials, and we had to figure out what was
broken and how to fix it. Although he would discuss it with us, he insisted that he had al-
ready taught us how to work through repeated modeling, so we should be able to solve
the problem. Hard work, skill, and understanding, not magic, were required.
Lesson #5. Don’t be afraid to do something you believe is right.In later years, I was con-
tinually reminded of Jerry when I read books about teaching. For example, in one passage
in his bookThe Pedagogy of Hope(1995), Paulo Freire, a Brazilian educator, described the
detailed, but frequently unappreciated, knowledge of skilled Chilean agricultural workers.
Freire reported on a conversation where the workers insisted on deferring to his expertise
because they felt that they had nothing to offer a man of his learning. Freire challenged
them to a contest where he and they would take turns asking each other questions aimed
at stumping their opponent. After a few rounds it became clear to all of the participants
that the knowledge of the agricultural workers was different from, but not inferior to, the
knowledge of the college professor. Jerry had similar knowledge to these workers, knowl-
edge based on careful consideration of years of experience. It was knowledge vital for un-
derstanding the world and solving problems.One reason that Jerry and I tended to get along was that we were both usually impatient
with authority. In fact, I think Jerry independently discovered the concept “creative malad-
justment” that Herbert Kohl describes in his book,I Won’t Learn From You and Other Thoughts
on Creative Maladjustment(1994). Kohl argues that effective teachers, especially teachers
working with inner-city disenfranchised youth, have to learn how to break arbitrary or op-
pressive rules and get away with it. They need to find ways to manipulate “the system” in or-
der to protect their students from injustice, create safe places for learning, and design les-
sons that connect with student lives and motivate them to learn.
My best example of Jerry’s “creative maladjustment” to what he perceived of as irrational
rules happened when we needed a six foot length of 1 in. by 2 in. (1×2) pine board to fix a
window screen. I rummaged around the woodshed but could only find a large enough piece
of 1×2 oak, intended for flooring, which was considerably more expensive per foot than
pine board. Jerry told me to use the oak to repair the window, but I hesitated, concerned
that the camp’s director would not be happy when he discovered what I had done. Jerry
looked at me as if I were from another planet. He said our time was worth more than a piece
of wood and that it would cost more to go to town to buy pine than either the pine or oak
was worth. He proceeded to cover the oak board with a coat of white paint. Then he handed
me the camouflaged board, still dripping with paint, and sent me to go fix the window
screen. Covered with paint, it made no difference whether it was a pine or oak board and no
one could tell.
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