Hi Harry, Good gracious! We seem to have more in common than I thought. When you wrote in your latest posting:
(HP) <<<< I have taught from 7th grade to post doctoral. However, I have never been a public school teacher. I teach teachers to teach Classical Political Economy. They are the ones who do the drawing out. When I enter a grade school classroom it is to demonstrate how to teach Political Economy. . . . But, I am more interested in ideas than personalities, so that is what I talk about. My early speech training took place on the soap boxes of Marble Arch and other outdoor venues in England. It's a tough place to learn, but got very good. However, one day a member of my Executive (I was Chair of London's Young Liberals) said: "If you agree with it, Harry, then so do I." This horrified me. I wanted people to come to conclusions because they were right - not because they were my conclusions. So, I stopped being a leader, who others would follow. And since then, I've always stepped back from leadership - preferring to educate, if I could. >>>> I was on the National Executive of the Liberal Party in about 1972 (I seem to remember). I'd been on the Midlands Executive Committee and had written a great deal of putative industrial policy with and for our own constituency Liberal parties (manufacturing industry going downhill very fast at that time). When I was voted onto the NE, I thought that I could at least discuss our ideas at national level and get some sort of consensus. But I found that the NE wasn't in the slightest bit interested in ideas! Policy was apparently being made by shadowy figures in the background whom I could never identify. The fact that I had been elected by thousands of ordinary members was of no consequence compared with Jeremy Thorpe's pals. So, like you, I decided that leadership was not for me, and I resigned after less than a year at the (apparent!) top. Did our paths cross? Though, probably, you left before I joined. Keith __________________________________________________________ �Writers used to write because they had something to say; now they write in order to discover if they have something to say.� John D. Barrow _________________________________________________ Keith Hudson, Bath, England; e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] _________________________________________________
