Don Follis 5/5/00 News-Gazette Religion column:  "Jewish doctor followed
his heart"
        Today Janusz Korczak is an all but forgotten name.  A small park on
Chicago's Far North Side bears his name, but most children playing there
would not recognize it.
        ChicagoTribune writer Ron Grossman says Korczak was the Dr. Spock and the
Dr. Seuss of Europe in the period between the two World Wars.  He wrote a
bestseller on how to parent, and many playful children's books.  Korczak's
"King Matt the First" is a story of a boy king who wants to reform a world
messed up by adults.
        Born into a prominent Polish-Jewish family, Korczak was trained as a
pediatrician.  Though a well-known physician and writer, in 1910 Korczak
shocked the prominent Warsaw community by announcing he was giving up his
medical practice to found an orphanage for Jewish children.
        Never married, Korczak lived in a small room in his orphanage, where he
committed his life to rearing orphaned children.  Grossman quotes Korczak
as saying, "Children are much richer in the realm of emotions, for they
think with their feelings.  The reason I became an educator was I always
felt best when I was among children."   
        By 1939, Korczak was 61 and intending to retire to the Zionist colonies of
Palestine.  But then Germany invaded Poland, and the Nazis walled up
Warsaw's Jews in a ghetto.  Because of his fame, he had several chances to
escape the Warsaw ghetto.  But he would not abandon the children of the
orphanage he headed.
        On Aug. 6, 1942, word came for Korczak's children to be brought to a
railroad location where the Nazis were systematically transporting ghetto
residents to the Treblinka extermination camp.  Grossman writes that just
before the cattle cars were loaded, a German officer, perhaps a prewar fan
of his books, told Korczak he didn't have to go.  Korczak ignored him.
        Wladyslaw Szpilman witnessed this scene and survived to describe it in his
memoirs.  "Korczak marched with two of the youngest children in his arms.
Their faces were also smiling, apparently he had been telling them funny
stories."
        We may not be as courageous as Janusz Korczak, but we can find meaningful
lives.  Arthur F. Miller, founder of People Management International, has
spent his career interviewing more than 40,000 people, assessing what
motivates them, and especially asking about job satisfaction.  Last year
Miller published his ideas in a book titled "Why You Can't Be Anything You
Want to Be," (Zondervan, 1999).
        In short, Miller says it's crazy to think you can be anything you want to
be.  Of course you can't.  He believes you must be who God created you to
be.  And how do you know whom you are created to be?  Look to your past,
not your future.  The past always is the best predictor of the future.  
        Miller argues that every time people do something they find satisfying or
that they do well, they are in fact repeating a recurring pattern that has
motivated them since childhood.  So Milton's line from Paradise Regained is
right:  "The childhood shows the man, As morning shows the day."
        "The idea that we can choose to become what the world values is as
misguided as the alchemist's ancient promise to transmute lead into gold,"
Miller says.  There are certain things that motivate us.  Miller calls them
Motivated Abilities Patterns [MAPS].  These are behaviors that get at the
very essence of our being.  It's neither your intelligence nor even your
personality type or trait.  It's your inborn giftedness.  
        After interviewing and assessing tens of thousands of people, and seeing
hundreds of different MAPS, Miller is persuaded that one's agenda will be
driven by his design.  He says he's never seen that change.  There is no
escape from being who we are.  Circumstances may change, but the elements
of giftedness remain stable.
        Some people should climb high, but certainly not everyone, Miller says.
"Climb as high as you can is a philosophy that not only ruins lives and
careers but is equally destructive of corporate health and profitability,"
Miller writes.
        Miller has had clients describe their achievement history at 20, 30 and 40
years of age.  In the second and third assessments Miller finds "people
invariably describe many of the same achievements they detailed in the
first session, often using the exact same words!" 
        Janusz Korczak's career was catapulting him into fame.  His children's
books were loved.  His renowned lectures in child psychology drew doctors
from home and abroad.  But he gave up his fame and embraced the love of his
heart - being with hurting, and finally, dying children.  He always felt
best when he was among children.

Don Follis is a University of Illinois campus minister.  His column appears
on Fridays.  Reprinted with permission from the Champaign-Urbana
News-Gazette, copyright 2000.