Longhouse School

(Junior is Cardi’s brother and one of our best friends. This post is not specifically about Longhouse but it provides a lot of support to the program we are building here. Sopie Yao is Junior’s GF and her family comes from Ivory Coast in West Africa. Hedia is our friend. She and her family, the Mandel ‘s are from the Haredi Community in Brooklyn. Their friendship with the Lopez and Yao families. The story between the Lopez, Mandel, and Yao families is wonderful but it’s for another time!)

8:00am, Junior at the Mandel apartment.

Carlito and I slept over at the Mandel’s. We all camped out in the sukkah in the alleyway. Other families were there too. It was like a giant block party. Carlito sang Bad Bunny songs for everyone! One of the neighbors said it sounds just like “davening” which is how they pray. In the middle of the night it started to rain and we ran soaking wet upstairs to the apartment.

Sopie and I agree on just about everything—except Soka Family Day (today). She wants to be with her friends at the BK SGI Center. I want to be with mine at the NYCC. Our parents don’t really care, they like both. We are deadlocked.

Today the matter was decided by Hedia and her family. Rabbi Mandel had closed his dentistry office for the entire Sukkot holiday. The Mandels want to be guests at Soka Family Day but they don’t drive during this holiday. The BK Center is in walking distance. Decided! Mama and Papa will meet us here.

So, in the meanwhile, what’s happening with Shin’ichi at Moscow State University? In NHR-20, Shin’ichi and his party were having a meeting with Rector Khokhlov and some twenty faculty representatives. They discussed many topics appropriate to a university a couple of centuries old and the brand new Soka University.

What Sopie and I felt interesting was their discussion about correspondence programs.

Moscow State University had some four thousand students in its correspondence program. Though the course of study was quite extended, when it was completed, graduates of the program received a regular university degree, and the correspondence program had a graduation rate of 90 percent (p. 109).

Shin’ichi told his hosts that he found this program very intriguing.

“This program embodies your university’s commitment to providing the best possible education to all citizens. In the twenty-first century, correspondence courses and other programs open to the public are certain to grow in popularity. I regard the twenty-first century as the century of education. I also believe we need to change the thinking that education exists for the sake of society and move toward a society that values and promotes education for all” (p. 109).

Sopie and I were thunderstruck. “The best possible education to all citizens”? Doesn’t that include all of us? Here she is, a very black young woman from West Africa, a Buddhist, loving her Haredi Jewish Bais Yaakov High School so much and chirping away in Yiddish. Cardi graduated from this school, accumulated many high school credits through community service and an online school—and is soon starting her online college program through an online program. Robert hot his GED before enlisting in the army. Heidi is a senior in a public high school but most of her time is spent training for the marathon, practicing piano, and performing in her band—that’s really independent learning!!! Me? I’m on scholarship at a very elite high school but my favorite activity is our community service club, fixing things and planting chrysanthemums and such.

Now, Lolita deserves her own paragraph!!! She is plugging away on her independent college work (did you see what she is doing on www.longhouseschool.blog?) She’s founding a school, teaching full-time, raising young people, and she’s on track to graduate college when she’s only 18.

Gen Z wants to learn. We literally carry the biggest library in the world right in the palm of our hands. But you will lose us if you try to squeeze us into your little boxes.

Sopie, Hedia, and I whispered and whispered to each other about this line:

I also believe we need to change the thinking that education exists for the sake of society and move toward a society that values and promotes education for all.

That’s a very big idea!