This Noble Land by James A. Michener

are essential to our national survival. They should be encouraged not only to continue operating but also to improve the skills of their workers.
    3. Our nation must stop stumbling backward lest we end up as a third-world power; we must reduce our exports of basic materials to East Asia, where innovative intelligence converts them into consumer goods that are shipped back across the Pacific to be sold in our stores. American brainpower should be applied to American raw materials for manufacture of American goods.
    4. Distasteful as it might be to our current leaders, we would be better off as a nation if strong and capable labor unions were revived and invited to share in the making of decisions vital to our welfare.
    5. I am hesitant about suggesting this final idea, because it relates to work and on that subject I am a fanatic. The spiritual value of work must be extolled. From the age of ten, when I gathered laundry from neighbors for my mother to wash, I have never, during the subsequent eighty-odd years, been unemployed. For most of my life I have worked an excessive seven days a week—with a less strenuous self-imposed regime I might well have accomplished more. Nevertheless, I have found greatjoy in work and advocate it for everyone. The American tradition of the work ethic has remained strong, and most Americans still feel satisfaction in a job well done. Our government should launch drives to reestablish the workers’ pride in and loyalty to their jobs. But perhaps what is most important in this era of the preeminence of the bottom line is the need for employers to be loyal to their workers.

A s I prepared to write this chapter I received an unexpected letter from a former student, which provided a portrait of me as a teacher:
    It happened sixty years ago but I remember it as if it were yesterday, for it was an important day in my life. You were teaching us Shakespeare and taking it seriously when Walter Matthis began acting up with two girls in the back of the room. You paid no attention to him for some minutes, then you got real mad and said in a low voice: ‘Matthis, there is no place for you in this classroom. Get out!’ We were all real scared, but Walter stood up and started down the aisle leading to the classroom door. But this meant he would have to pass your desk, and you said in an even tougher voice: ‘Matthis, if you keep coming this way, I’m going to punch you right in the face and lay you out flat!’ He took one look at you standing there, turned around and in one movement jumped through an open window. Lucky our class was on the ground floor. After that you had no trouble maintaining discipline.
    John Price, the writer of this letter, is remarkably accurate regarding that day in my life as an educator. I loved the profession and throughout my career taught in almost every grade level fromkindergarten through the postdoctorate level at Harvard. Always, I took my work seriously and expected my students to do the same.
    Although George School, where I was teaching, was a Quaker institution preaching nonviolence, and although my unusual behavior must have embarrassed the administration, the principal and the school board supported me without even issuing a reprimand. I had behaved in an unorthodox manner, but it was clear that I was justified in doing so. Second, Walter Matthis’s parents firmly supported me by saying: ‘Walter deserved it.’ And, third, of great importance, the student body let it be known that they sided with me and not with Walter.
    How different the schools are today. Note that in my contretemps with Walter Matthis I was teaching Shakespeare rather than remedial English but, more important, in 1935, when this incident took place, teachers had strong support from their students’ families—families with high moral and social values. With their shared goal—the education of children—teachers and parents could and did work together effectively. The fact that Walter might