"I ought to lick you proper for leaving the schoolhouse."
"Yes, Papa. You ought."
"Someday you want to walk into the bank in Learning and write down your name, don't you?"
"Yes, sir."
"I don't cotton to raise a fool." (2.42-46)
Clearly Papa is serious about Rob's getting an education. Do you think it's because he didn't get an education himself and he's trying to live vicariously through his son? Or is there something more to it?
"It all goes way back."
"Way back to what?"
"Back to reason. Something that modern townfolk don't care a lick for. They don't understand it, so they think it to be tomfool." (3.77-79)
Hmmm. Even with all their learning, those townfolk apparently still don't have all the answers. Papa suggests that there's an older kind of knowledge, a wisdom that comes from a close connection to the land and something that the educated folk in town have lost sight of. Do you buy it?
"…why can't you vote? Is it because you're a Shaker?"
"No. It's account of I can't read or write. When a man cannot do those things, people think his head is weak. Even when he's proved his back is strong."
"Who decides?"
"Men who look at me and do not take me for what I be. Men who only see me make my mark, my X, when I can't sign my name. They can't see how I true a beam to build our barn, or see that the rows of corn in my field are straight as fences. They just see me walk the street in Learning in clothes made me by my own woman. They do not care that my coat is sturdy and keeps me warm. They'll not care that I owe no debt, and that I am beholding to no man." (4.96-99)
Again, Papa sees two different—and equally valid—kinds of knowledge: the book learning that is valued by the larger community (and that Papa values as well), and the older, more practical wisdom that shows itself in the way a man handles his affairs and manages his land. Papa suffers the disrespect of the powers that be, though, because the only kind of learning they recognize is the kind that Papa doesn't have.