Harold Bock was interned during WWII in CPS Camp 30, Walhalla, MI, and CPS Camp 21, Cascade Locks, OR.
"To begin with, you know, you read all this literature, you read these books. I had a downtown route when I was a postman [before WWII] and you get into these arguments and, after a while, you feel like no one wants to argue with you because they lose. I mean, if you're well informed, it's pretty hard to argue with someone if he's well informed.... It's like when I went to CPS and I got into arguments and they backed me into a corner and I didn't have anywhere to go and I ended up finally deciding that music was not for me, and I became a world saver instead. I think that makes a big difference.... Neither my father nor my mother ever graduated from grammar school, but they were solid. Education was number one. You get an education because it's a way out of poverty."
After CPS, Harold became a high-school teacher, and it was in that role that he sought to change the world by teaching teens to read deeply and think critically.
Click here to read Harold's essay "O Jerusalem," which explains the aims of a course of study that he and a fellow high-school teacher developed for high-school students in the 1960s using the Bill of Rights, the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Pope John XXIII’s 1964 encyclical on establishing universal peace, Pacem in Terris, the Sermon on the Mount, and other sources. “We believe man’s highest aspirations are expressed in these ‘documents’ and that if this be true, the purposes and functions of man’s social, political, economic, and religious institutions should be measured, evaluated, and judged by his greatest ethical concepts.”
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