We have two more days of sub-freezing temperature here, before the temperature rises into the 30s, still well below the normal high temperature for January in Washington, but warmer than it is now. That means that the many inches of snow will begin to melt, and that means that, while now every place that has been shoveled is dry, it will soon be wet and, at night, potentially icy and dangerous until it is gone. And it won’t be gone if there is any more snow, and although we are scheduled to miss more snow tomorrow (the big storm should all be south and east of us), there is more snow on the calendar for later this coming week. Just not an easy winter.

The news regarding ICE and Iran and Israel and Ukraine and everywhere else is so awful that I don’t really want to talk about it. But if we don’t talk about the news, what is left to discuss?

I know. We can discuss David McCullough’s wonderful book, The Wright Brothers, which I have just finished reading. It wasn’t a book that was on my must-read list, or even my should-read list, but it was at the top of a pile when I was looking for my next book, and it isn’t too long, so…..

First, of course, McCullough was a masterful writer. Second, and equally important, the Wright Brothers proved to be fascinating subjects. All I really knew is that they were from Dayton, they flew their newfangled airplanes in Kitty Hawk and they have been given a lot of credit for what they did. And, if that is all you know, I would suggest you read The Wright Brothers.

The reason is that it is sort of a miraculous story. Wilbur and Orville Wright were the sons of a successful minister. They had two older brothers and one older sister. Neither Wilbur nor Orville graduated from high school, much less attended college. Neither ever married (and it looks like neither ever had any relationship with a woman), and they lived with their father (their mother died young) and their sister, who also never married. They were both obviously bright and very dedicated to whatever they were interested in at various times. They were not alike, Wilbur being the more outgoing and charming, Orville being the more mechanically oriented, and they together set up a shop that at first repaired bicycles and then manufactured them with the help of an assistant or two.

But they got interested in the question of whether man could ever really fly, and that’s where the story really takes off. They decided to build a flying machine, and they worked for hard at it, giving up almost everything else in their lives. It wasn’t enough, for example, to build wings; they needed to build wings that an operator could control – up, down, left, right – and it had to be consistent and reliable; that had never been done before. The plane had to be light enough to get off the ground and they started with gliders (there were a lot of gliders being built), and when it was time to try it motorized, the engine had to be powerful enough to help it get off the ground, but not too heavy. It had to be reusable and safe.

The Outer Banks of North Carolina was chosen as the best site for experimentation because it was relatively flat, there were no large trees, and there was usually a breeze. But this was 1900, and the Outer Banks were not what it is today. It was remote, and virtually no one lived there – just a few fisherman, a general store, and a weather station. Access was by boat only.

When the Wright Bros first went to Kitty Hawk, they really had never been far from Dayton, which, by the way, was quite a prosperous and growing place at the turn of the century. Getting to Kitty Hawk, which meant taking a train to Washington or Norfolk, and the south to Elizabethtown and to the port where a launch to Hatteras could be boarded. It took days. And they did it not only with a suitcase, but with an airplane in pieces, and what was needed to fit out a campsite with a tent. Working at Kitty Hawk was primitive to say the least.

The story of their testing their contraptions – one step forward, one step backwards, some times two steps backward. Weather problems, a minor crash here and there. With each series of tests, their planes went a little farther, a little higher.

Recognizing the potential of air travel for military use, they were disappointed when the United States government did not seem very interested, when the Smithsonian wouldn’t help fund them because they were funding Thomas Langley a man who was trying to do the same thing, but never succeeded.

So the Wright Brothers, who had now been in contact with others across America and Europe who were interested in, and who were trying to develop, flying machines, decided to go to France. Wilbur was the envoy, being helped by an American, Hart Berg, who was living in Paris, and stayed in Paris for about a year, giving demonstrations near Paris and in the south of France, while Orville stayed at home, continuing to work on developing improvements to their design and giving successful demonstrations in Dayton and demonstrations that had mixed success in Washington at Ft. Myers, Virginia.

They flew thousands of times, and became – especially in Europe – the toast of the town, with thousands of curious individuals showing up to watch the flights. Wilbur was always successful. Orville had two crashes, the second of which banged him up pretty good – broken bones took time to heal and he never walked without a limp again, and was unable to continue flying.

Eventually, everything became very successful, the Wright company got orders for planes, and Wilbur began to train a new corps of U.S. military pilots. He, too, though gave up flying because the demands of the business became too time consuming. The Wright Brothers, while never poor, became very wealthy and built a large house in a Dayton suburb.

Then tragedy struck, when Wilbur came down with typhoid fever and died at age 45. Orville lived another 30 or so years.

This is just an outline of what they accomplished. McCullough tells much more, with much more interesting detail. Remembering that these were self educated people makes you wonder about the value of formal education, or at least the value of schooling for someone who is determined to learn on their own.

Even today, so many of the entrepreneurs in today’s cutting edge sciences have not gone to college, or have dropped out of college. Is education all it is cracked up to be?

A few thoughts on the subject. First, I remember looking at the book put together for my 25th high school reunion (over 40 years ago), and being surprised that so many dumb kids seemed to be doing so well, and so many smart kids seemed to be languishing. Then, it was Mark Twain, right, who said that he never let his schooling interfere with his education. And finally, there was Israeli author Edgar Keret, whose mother wouldn’t let him go to school if it was raining, saying that whatever his not so bright teachers were going to try to teach him that day, the results would not be worth getting wet for.

I have often thought that if you pulled a child out of middle or high school one year and spent that year with him/her traveling the world, the student would benefit much more than going to Social Studies class every day. And, with increasing knowledge of how differently children learn, you have to wonder if the rigid curricula being used across the country is really appropriate. And, further, when you see that some of countries in Asia and Europe seem to be much more adept at educating their children, you wonder if rigid American schooling is worth it at all. And that questioning is only increased by the partisan attention being placed on elementary school curricula today, where you can teach the Ten Commandments but not, say, The Grapes of Wrath.

Do I really mean what I am saying here? Do I really doubt the benefits of going to school? To be truthful (as they say), I have no idea. Nor, apparently, does anyone else.