My Grandparents had a Grade 4 Education
Life in the Peasant Lane
My paternal grandfather, Ján Volek, was born in Slovakia in 1901. He attended elementary school in his Slovak village; all instruction was in the Hungarian language. He acquired some basic reading and math skills. When he was about 11 years old, he went to work. He gained skills with horses, other livestock, and growing grain. At a young age, he was the family provider when his father went to war.
My great-grandfather, František Volek, was conscripted into the Austrian Army in World War 1 and sent to the Eastern Front. He was captured and spent one year in a Russian POW camp. With the fall of the Habsburg Empire, lands owned by the Hungarian aristocracy were confiscated and given to the Slovak people. František got title to 60 hectares of farmland, which eventually passed to my grandfather.
Ján married Maria Baranik from a nearby village. They had three children. While Ján worked his land, it was too small to make a good living. He had visions of moving to Canada, making some money, then returning to Slovakia. They left in 1936. Their return to the old country was nixed by World War 2 and communism.
Ján and Maria were gifted a quarter section of failed farmland in Tilley, Alberta. Previous settlers could not make a living with flood irrigation — and left. Somehow my grandfather figured out how to make this land work, but the first three years were hard on the family.
My maternal grandfather, Alexander Boyda, was born in 1895, in Bukovina, a region now in western Ukraine. In the past two centuries, this part of Europe was owned by various colonial powers: Poland, Romania, Austria, and Russia. These powers had little interest in elevating rural Ukrainians.
Like my Slovak grandfather, Alexander only had a Grade 4 education before he was put to work on the farms.
After the revolution in 1922, he saw one group of elites replacing another group of elites. When he saw a poster calling for immigrants to come to Canada, he took up the opportunity. He had no intention of ever returning to Ukraine.
In Canada, he tried the farming route and did not like it. He went to work for the Canadian Pacific Railway, repairing rails. This job required a strong back — and English-speaking Canadians did not want to do this work. He stayed with the railroad for 30 years, earning a somewhat comfortable pension.
In Canada, he connected with Alexandria Boyda, a girl from his former village of Oshliev. They married and had five girls. He built a 500-square-foot house on the outskirts of Lethbridge, Alberta.
I am a Peasant
My heritage is East European peasantry. We peasants had little education because the powers believed peasants were not worthy of education. Peasants could never utilize the benefits of an education, so why invest any education into them?
What little education the peasants did get was a result of the 1848 revolutions, when the aristocracies yielded some of their political power to the masses. The aristocrats had little interest in elevating their peasants, but educating peasant children bought some social peace.
My four grandparents brought eight children to this world. Seven finished their Grade 12. Only my father quit school at Grade 10. He spent one year working as a lumberjack, then returned to run his father’s farm, his occupation for the next 35 years. He was a good farmer. My mother was the only one to move beyond high school: she graduated from nursing school in Calgary in 1957. She was a good nurse. All my grandparent’s progeny had a much better education than what they would have had in the “old country” with the old ways.
My four grandparents had 20 grandchildren. One passed away before adulthood. Only one did not finish high school. There are seven with university degrees; there are seven tradespeople. Only five of us (myself included) would be called “working poor.” The rest have a nice middle-class or higher lifestyle. We have benefited from a society that values education for all.
Had the world not changed, my peasant destiny was to follow the occupations of my grandfathers — and their grandfathers. I was to be a farm worker, or hard-rock miner, or a lumberjack, working for overlords who lived far away in opulent houses. There was no expectation that I could have risen above these natural occupations.
Here is the natural outcome of my heritage:
1. I should have been working fulltime at 12 years of age, bringing income into my destitute household.
2. I should not have earned a Grade 12 education.
3. I should not have earned a university degree.
4. I should not have started a business.
5. I should not have participated in party politics.
6. I should not have had the economic, social, and political freedom to develop my new democracy.
Rather I should have been kept destitute, compliant, and hungry for work. That was my destiny.
Conclusion
Although I am an unrecognized theorist in political science, my grandparents “produced” me with their Grade 4 education. That is such an amazing jump in three generations. Had we kept the old thinking that peasants were not worthy of an education, this article would never have been written. My website of about one million words would not exist.
And maybe, someday, that website will change the world.
If so, give thanks to my grandparents and their honest work ethic — and a Canadian society that valued education for all, including the children of poor immigrants who did the work English-speaking Canadians did not want to do.
We never know what the future will hold for educating any child. But for most children, their future will be better with that education than without. And when they become new adults, they will better serve society — which then serves the people.
The recognized thinkers and powers of 1900 thought the education of poor children was a pointless investment. They were wrong.
This is similar to today’s recognized thinkers and powers believing our 19th century democracies are suitable for the 21st century. Like the thinkers of not educating peasant children, these thinkers need to let go of our primitive democracy as well. Hopefully sooner than later. Hopefully before another 1848-like revolution.
