Many of our nation’s talented educators are also distinguished veterans. Such is certainly the case for John Ardis Cawthon, a high school history teacher from Louisiana who served in the US Army during WWII.

John was born on March 16, 1907, in south Bossier Parish, Louisiana. As a child, he was home-schooled by his mother. When he entered the fifth grade, he was enrolled in a local one-room schoolhouse in the Koran community of south Bossier Parish. After John completed the eighth grade, his family moved to Doyline in south Webster Parish, where the young man completed high school.

After his high school graduation in 1934, John enrolled at Louisiana Tech where he majored in History and English. There he earned a bachelor’s degree in secondary education. He earned his master’s degree from Louisiana State University at Baton Rouge in 1938.

John accepted his first position as a teacher at a high school in Cotton Valley, where he taught from 1934 to1935. He transferred to Sarepta and was employed there from 1935 to 1939, and then he taught at A.E. Phillips Laboratory School on the Louisiana Tech campus from 1939 to 1940. From 1940 to 1942, John was a professor at Northwestern State University, then known as Louisiana Normal.

When World War II erupted, John was drafted into the US Army. He was 35 years old at the time. The former high school teacher served in Europe in the Education Orientation Division. This position took him to the Biarritz American University in France. In 1974, he published an account of his experiences in the armed forces in an article entitled “A School Teacher Gets Drafted,” published in North Louisiana History.

When the war was over, John decided to pursue his doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin. After earning this advanced degree, he returned to Louisiana Tech University in 1954, where he remained until his retirement in 1972. During this time, he published many scholarly articles in North Louisiana History and wrote several books dedicated to regional history.

This talented educator and distinguished serviceman passed away on October 5, 1984. John Ardis Cawthorn, a true chalkboard champion.

Many years ago in a language arts anthology assigned as a textbook for a class I was teaching, I came across a short story by Isaac Asimov entitled “The Fun They Had.” This futuristic story described two children who had an afternoon free because their “teacher,” a computer, had crashed, temporarily rendering it impossible for them to complete their school assignments. To occupy their time, the children went up to the attic to explore, where they came across a dusty trunk of ancient printed books. As residents of a highly technological society where every function was completed by computer, they had never seen books before. The find generated a conversation between the children about how students in the past attended schools with other children, interacted on a daily basis with a human teacher, and conducted their studies with print materials. At the end of their discussion, the children concluded that children of the past must have had much more fun in school than they.

The grass is always greener, isn’t it?

I have been thinking about this somewhat prophetic story a great deal lately. I have recently enrolled in an online course at the local university. For this course, the professor lists readings and assignments, which the student is expected to complete, usually through downloading a program and creating a product which demonstrates an understanding of the content and a mastery of the technology. The products are then posted online, where they are then critiqued by peers and graded by the professor.

I know I am not a child, but I find myself craving more. More direct instruction. More guided practice. Face-to-face time with the professor. Human interaction with my classmates that is more, well, human.

While out and about the other day, I became engaged in conversation with a student at a local prestigious private university. I related to her that on the first day of one of my other courses, one that meets for four hours every other week, I was surprised when the instructor commented that she had expected everyone to show up with their laptops. I had dutifully shown up with my notebook, paper, pen, and textbook, and considered myself prepared. Not having taken a university course in about five years, it had never occurred to me that bringing a laptop was now an instructional expectation. That was a wake-up call for me.

The other student told me that she recently took a course in chemistry at her university, and on the first day of class, 24 students showed up. Twelve did not have laptops. The instructor excused those twelve, because, he said, there was no way they could complete that day’s assignments without the necessary technology. She said two people dropped the class that day, and four more dropped it the next week, because they had no way of acquiring the technology. The young lady then told me that the entire course was taught by computer. How is it that a chemistry class does not involve a lab, or experiments, or any other kind of experiential learning?

I’m left to wonder if, in a society where technology is becoming more and more pervasive, there will be space in the future for chalkboard champions?