Published December, 2004
Years ago, my students talked with a Maine accent. They don’t anymore. When it was their parents’ voices they heard most often, they retained that distinctive, rural-Maine way of speaking, and that’s the way it was when I started teaching here back in the 1970s. Most kids spoke the way their parents did. The Maine twang was so thick in some I had a hard time understanding them. In one generation, however, it’s virtually gone. Now they all talk like the people they hear on television, on the radio, and on the CDs they listen to. And it’s not just the way they pronounce words that’s changing; the words they use to think with are changing too. Their parents’ words are not the ones children hear most in this generation, and that has huge implications.
Many of my fourteen-year-old students now think with words that come from mass media, and with those words come views on life’s biggest issues. There are still some who get their attitudes and perspectives the old-fashioned way - from home, and from churches, schools and civic organizations which echo what they hear at home. Those students used to be in the majority, but they’re not anymore. There’s been a shift. Students are discouraged from singing Christmas carols in school these days, but they’re allowed to listen to Tupac CDs on their walkmen while they’re riding to and from.
I don’t watch Dr. Phil, but I know who he is. I didn’t expect to see him when I tuned in to “Meet The Press” last Sunday but there he was. Tim Russert asked him about challenges facing our nation and McGraw said the biggest one was the American family. After three decades in education and teaching more than twenty-five hundred students, it’s hard to disagree. McGraw went on to say that there are many voices in the ears of children growing up today, and a parent’s voice is not only one. It’s not often the loudest voice, and it’s not the most-often heard voice either. Other voices are the louder and more frequent and parents must be aware of that.
Generations ago families spent a lot more time together. Kids went to school, but when they came home there was usually a mother present. They usually did chores like lugging wood or feeding animals, or they played outside. They went sledding or they played football or baseball. They rode bicycles. They shoveled snow. They mowed the lawn. They played with siblings. What do they do now? They watch television. They play video games. They go online. If they go outside at all, they ride snowmobiles or four-wheelers. Yeah, some still ride bicycles, but their numbers are diminishing, and many kids don’t even have siblings to play with or talk to.
It’s not just family which has less of a role in the raising or our children. The roles of our churches and our community organizations are also waning. It’s no wonder either - their biggest problem is lack of volunteers. Single parents can’t be expected to donate much of their time because it’s way too stretched already. Even families with two parents have little time because both usually work.
Teaching in the same community for more than a generation gives me a perspective most people don't get. Every year, half a dozen of my students are children of former students. The current generation has considerably less religious training compared to their predecessors, and I get a feeling for this when I'm teaching about the history of the Middle Eastern conflict. There’s no way to cover it well without students having some comparative knowledge of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Few students were ever aware of who Mohammed was, but I used to depend on most of them being familiar with Abraham, Moses and Jesus Christ. I can’t depend on that anymore. With most students now, I have to start from scratch because those who’ve had any religious training at all are a distinct minority.
As for community organizations, few students belong to Boy Scouts or Girl Scouts any more. In the old days, it wasn’t unusual for students to come to school wearing a Scout uniform. I never see that now. If kids do belong to scouts, they keep it to themselves because it’s not fashionable. It’s seen as nerdy by other students so it’s kept in the closet, so to speak. Some Maine schools are threatened with lawsuits for even allowing the Boy Scouts to meet after hours in school facilities. Why? Either because their oath requires a belief in God, or because the organization has publicly declared they don’t want homosexuals to lead boy scouts on camping trips.
After mass media, the voices children hear at school - those of their fellow students and those of their teachers - are the ones reaching their ears most often. If children don’t actively receive training in cultural values from family, church or community organizations, then mass media provide them with the lowest common denominator of what passes for cultural values. These days, that's very low. The media are a kind of cultural default. In the public schools, however, there’s a script and most parents have given up control over who writes that script and the leftists who control the teachers' unions have become the authors. Schools have become a battleground in the culture wars as America itself becomes more polarized over social and cultural issues. Left and right compete to influence what goes into that script, and not difficult to see which side is winning. Hint: It's not the right.
Saturday, April 28, 2007
Teaching the Sixties
Published January, 2005
Once in a while, something interesting comes through my school mailbox. The last time it was the notice of a history conference on how to teach the Sixties at the University of Maine Orono. It was a six-hour drive ‘round trip, but it intrigued me. For people my age, how one views the sixties largely determines one’s view the world at large. If you think they were wonderful, you’re very likely a Democrat. If you think our country went off on the wrong track during the 1960s, you’re probably a Republican.
Not that I expected to find many Republicans at the conference. Frankly, I’d have been surprised to find any at all. Teachers’ unions are the biggest contributors to the Democrat Party. I don’t think they’ve ever endorsed a Republican since I’ve been paying attention. University professors around the country are also ten to one Democrat. Some campuses are even twenty, thirty, or even fifty to one. Williams College has no Republicans on staff at all, according to an article I read this week. I hadn’t seen any statistics about UMO’s faculty, but I expected much the same, and I wasn’t disappointed. The conference was officially titled “Teaching History in Maine: ‘The 1960’s: A Decade of Hope, Rage, and Change.’” Educational conferences and university courses usually have pretentious titles like that, with the essential colon announcing something else. They seldom just name it something simple like “History of the Sixties” or “Teaching the Sixties.”
The keynote presentation had little to do with the sixties that I could see. A history professor from Hamilton College named Maurice Isserman bored us with stories of how some Americans climbed Mount Everest and were given awards by President John F. Kennedy. Professor Isserman was publishing something about it and he read it to us verbatim, droning on for over an hour. “For this I had to drive six hours?” and “Why did they invite this guy?” was all I could think about.
There were choices about what presentations to attend the rest of the day and the first one I chose was interesting. A panel of teachers explained how each approached the teaching of events during that decade - what materials they chose, what themes they emphasized, what research they assigned. They were all excellent teachers and their suggestions were helpful. One woman announced she was “to the left of liberal” and I appreciated her honesty. She was a thoughtful woman and she gave her students the opportunity to filter her personal and political perspective while taking in her historical unit. She encouraged students to consider alternative viewpoints and debate her. Unfortunately, too few history teachers do that. Instead, they present extremely slanted material as if it were objective.
My last chosen session involved three history professors from the UMO History Department. The first was an obviously radical feminist whose presentation reminded me of the proverb: “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Her presentation tried to make the case that American involvement in Vietnam was the result of the Kennedy brothers’ - John’s and Robert’s - “obsession with masculinity and macho images.” She said Robert’s in particular stemmed from his stint as legal advisor to congressional committees during the 1950s, including Senator Joseph McCarthy’s. She claimed they demonized homosexuals, whom they referred to as “Lavender Lads,” and this attitude led them inevitably to involvement in the Vietnam conflict.
The next presentation was from a Vietnamese-American professor with extensive firsthand experience as an advisor to the US military during the war. I strained to understand him through his thick accent, made worse by his rising anger as he described the US effort in Iraq and made parallels with it and Vietnam. When I asked him his opinion of remarks by old North Vietnamese General Giap advising terrorists in Iraq on how to defeat the United States, he started losing it. Another professor from Israel who was acting as MC came to his aid and lectured me heatedly about how Middle Eastern conflicts were solely the result of American imperialism. When I suggested that Bernard Lewis, a Middle Eastern historian at Princeton would disagree with that, he lost it too and started yelling at me. After the conference broke up and people were going to their cars, we nearly bumped into each other. He told me that he didn’t mean to get so excited in there. We discussed the Middle Eastern situation a bit longer until finally he said, “We disagree,” in a civil tone and we said good-bye.
On the long drive up there, I wondered how many other conservatives I would meet at the conference. As it turned out I was the only participant out of more than fifty who openly questioned any of the uniformly leftist views of history delivered. And, it was abundantly clear that none of the three history professors who presented, nor the one who served as MC, were accustomed to it. It was also clear that they considered the legacy of the sixties something to celebrate. If there were any others there but me who thought it wasn’t, they sure kept quiet about it.
Once in a while, something interesting comes through my school mailbox. The last time it was the notice of a history conference on how to teach the Sixties at the University of Maine Orono. It was a six-hour drive ‘round trip, but it intrigued me. For people my age, how one views the sixties largely determines one’s view the world at large. If you think they were wonderful, you’re very likely a Democrat. If you think our country went off on the wrong track during the 1960s, you’re probably a Republican.
Not that I expected to find many Republicans at the conference. Frankly, I’d have been surprised to find any at all. Teachers’ unions are the biggest contributors to the Democrat Party. I don’t think they’ve ever endorsed a Republican since I’ve been paying attention. University professors around the country are also ten to one Democrat. Some campuses are even twenty, thirty, or even fifty to one. Williams College has no Republicans on staff at all, according to an article I read this week. I hadn’t seen any statistics about UMO’s faculty, but I expected much the same, and I wasn’t disappointed. The conference was officially titled “Teaching History in Maine: ‘The 1960’s: A Decade of Hope, Rage, and Change.’” Educational conferences and university courses usually have pretentious titles like that, with the essential colon announcing something else. They seldom just name it something simple like “History of the Sixties” or “Teaching the Sixties.”
The keynote presentation had little to do with the sixties that I could see. A history professor from Hamilton College named Maurice Isserman bored us with stories of how some Americans climbed Mount Everest and were given awards by President John F. Kennedy. Professor Isserman was publishing something about it and he read it to us verbatim, droning on for over an hour. “For this I had to drive six hours?” and “Why did they invite this guy?” was all I could think about.
There were choices about what presentations to attend the rest of the day and the first one I chose was interesting. A panel of teachers explained how each approached the teaching of events during that decade - what materials they chose, what themes they emphasized, what research they assigned. They were all excellent teachers and their suggestions were helpful. One woman announced she was “to the left of liberal” and I appreciated her honesty. She was a thoughtful woman and she gave her students the opportunity to filter her personal and political perspective while taking in her historical unit. She encouraged students to consider alternative viewpoints and debate her. Unfortunately, too few history teachers do that. Instead, they present extremely slanted material as if it were objective.
My last chosen session involved three history professors from the UMO History Department. The first was an obviously radical feminist whose presentation reminded me of the proverb: “When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.” Her presentation tried to make the case that American involvement in Vietnam was the result of the Kennedy brothers’ - John’s and Robert’s - “obsession with masculinity and macho images.” She said Robert’s in particular stemmed from his stint as legal advisor to congressional committees during the 1950s, including Senator Joseph McCarthy’s. She claimed they demonized homosexuals, whom they referred to as “Lavender Lads,” and this attitude led them inevitably to involvement in the Vietnam conflict.
The next presentation was from a Vietnamese-American professor with extensive firsthand experience as an advisor to the US military during the war. I strained to understand him through his thick accent, made worse by his rising anger as he described the US effort in Iraq and made parallels with it and Vietnam. When I asked him his opinion of remarks by old North Vietnamese General Giap advising terrorists in Iraq on how to defeat the United States, he started losing it. Another professor from Israel who was acting as MC came to his aid and lectured me heatedly about how Middle Eastern conflicts were solely the result of American imperialism. When I suggested that Bernard Lewis, a Middle Eastern historian at Princeton would disagree with that, he lost it too and started yelling at me. After the conference broke up and people were going to their cars, we nearly bumped into each other. He told me that he didn’t mean to get so excited in there. We discussed the Middle Eastern situation a bit longer until finally he said, “We disagree,” in a civil tone and we said good-bye.
On the long drive up there, I wondered how many other conservatives I would meet at the conference. As it turned out I was the only participant out of more than fifty who openly questioned any of the uniformly leftist views of history delivered. And, it was abundantly clear that none of the three history professors who presented, nor the one who served as MC, were accustomed to it. It was also clear that they considered the legacy of the sixties something to celebrate. If there were any others there but me who thought it wasn’t, they sure kept quiet about it.
State of the Schools
First published February, 2005
I’m a teacher. In the eight weeks since Christmas break, I will have spent three weeks testing students. None of it will show up on their report cards because it’s just to comply with state and federal mandates. Consequently, I’ll have less time to teach curriculum the school board hired me to deliver. Students will get less US History.
Teachers have been cutting back like this for decades - three at least, since I’ve been involved. It’s a kind of paradox. Schools have been adding more and more subjects as well as more services, the staff to deliver them, the administrators to supervise them, the clerical people to keep track of them, and the custodians to clean up afterward and to keep it all working. What hasn’t been added however, is any extra time to do it all. Hence, there must be cutbacks in the primary mission.
Public schools started with a simple mandate: teach children to read, write, do arithmetic, and teach them enough of history to help them become good citizens. Generally, schools met for six-and-a-half or seven hours a day for thirty-six to forty weeks. It started in September and ended in June. As families got busier with mothers working outside the home and there was an increasing percentage of single-parent families, schools were expected to assume more of the functions which families had hitherto been sole provider of. Most schools feed students breakfast now as well as lunch. More students receive psychological or sexual counseling in school instead of being referred out for it. Families expect schools to pick up the slack as they have less time, and schools pretend they can accomplish it. Expectations of schools increase but time remains static. It’s still six-and-a-half hours a day for thirty-six weeks. No matter how hard we may try, we can’t do it all. Nobody could, but we are reluctant to admit it. So, we pretend.
Along with increased expectations came new policies, many of questionable effectiveness. Students who don’t progress are promoted anyway. Very few repeat grades anymore in elementary or middle schools. Instead, they’re pushed along, and the result is an increasing cohort of students not prepared to work at grade level. That wouldn’t have been as bad if “progressive” educators hadn’t insisted that this cohort be taught alongside students who progressed as they were supposed to. We no longer group students according to achievement or ability in many elementary or middle schools. That’s “tracking” and it’s considered elitist. The very mention of it brings gasps to progressives. Instead, our brightest, hardest-working students are taught together with average kids and an ever-increasing percentage of students who do little, have learned little, and are determined to resist anyone’s efforts to get them to change. What students in this last group have learned, however, is that they can do nothing and still be passed along to the next grade.
Simultaneous with the no-retention policy came the “total inclusionary model.” Special education students with various handicaps were brought into regular classrooms instead of being taught separately. Some were successful with the addition of support staff, but others were not. They appeared to do well, however, because support staff often did more than support. Work, tests and quizzes were watered down and grades were inflated. The upshot for such students was an unofficial disability called “learned helplessness.” More classifications emerged for students with disabilities and more staff was added to service them. Teachers were expected to teach the brightest, the average, the willfully ignorant, and the disabled, all together in one egalitarian, progressive, non-elitist classroom. The extra time allotted for all this? None. It was impossible, of course, but everyone pretended they could do it.
The result? Students were getting high school diplomas who were unable to fill out job applications. Local business people, who pay a lot of property taxes to support schools, wondered how this could be. They pressured governments to make sure students could read, write, and do simple math before getting a diploma. The federal government could have come up with minimum-competency standards for all states and the tests to make sure they were met. There’s little other justification for an education bureaucracy at the federal level, but that would have been too simple. It would have provided a set of expectations essential to students across the nation in an age when families move around more than ever and students are constantly changing schools. States would not be told how to teach these fundamental skills, as long as students learned them. States would be free to teach more than the basic, but could not get away with substituting trendy, flash-in-the-pan programs for fundamentals. That would have made a lot of sense. Therefore, it didn’t happen. Instead, we have multiple batteries of tests of questionable efficacy to administer, and less time to teach.
New England Yankees used to have an expression: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Government looked at schools and figured, “If they ain’t broke, we’ll keep on fixing them until they are broke.”
I’m a teacher. In the eight weeks since Christmas break, I will have spent three weeks testing students. None of it will show up on their report cards because it’s just to comply with state and federal mandates. Consequently, I’ll have less time to teach curriculum the school board hired me to deliver. Students will get less US History.
Teachers have been cutting back like this for decades - three at least, since I’ve been involved. It’s a kind of paradox. Schools have been adding more and more subjects as well as more services, the staff to deliver them, the administrators to supervise them, the clerical people to keep track of them, and the custodians to clean up afterward and to keep it all working. What hasn’t been added however, is any extra time to do it all. Hence, there must be cutbacks in the primary mission.
Public schools started with a simple mandate: teach children to read, write, do arithmetic, and teach them enough of history to help them become good citizens. Generally, schools met for six-and-a-half or seven hours a day for thirty-six to forty weeks. It started in September and ended in June. As families got busier with mothers working outside the home and there was an increasing percentage of single-parent families, schools were expected to assume more of the functions which families had hitherto been sole provider of. Most schools feed students breakfast now as well as lunch. More students receive psychological or sexual counseling in school instead of being referred out for it. Families expect schools to pick up the slack as they have less time, and schools pretend they can accomplish it. Expectations of schools increase but time remains static. It’s still six-and-a-half hours a day for thirty-six weeks. No matter how hard we may try, we can’t do it all. Nobody could, but we are reluctant to admit it. So, we pretend.
Along with increased expectations came new policies, many of questionable effectiveness. Students who don’t progress are promoted anyway. Very few repeat grades anymore in elementary or middle schools. Instead, they’re pushed along, and the result is an increasing cohort of students not prepared to work at grade level. That wouldn’t have been as bad if “progressive” educators hadn’t insisted that this cohort be taught alongside students who progressed as they were supposed to. We no longer group students according to achievement or ability in many elementary or middle schools. That’s “tracking” and it’s considered elitist. The very mention of it brings gasps to progressives. Instead, our brightest, hardest-working students are taught together with average kids and an ever-increasing percentage of students who do little, have learned little, and are determined to resist anyone’s efforts to get them to change. What students in this last group have learned, however, is that they can do nothing and still be passed along to the next grade.
Simultaneous with the no-retention policy came the “total inclusionary model.” Special education students with various handicaps were brought into regular classrooms instead of being taught separately. Some were successful with the addition of support staff, but others were not. They appeared to do well, however, because support staff often did more than support. Work, tests and quizzes were watered down and grades were inflated. The upshot for such students was an unofficial disability called “learned helplessness.” More classifications emerged for students with disabilities and more staff was added to service them. Teachers were expected to teach the brightest, the average, the willfully ignorant, and the disabled, all together in one egalitarian, progressive, non-elitist classroom. The extra time allotted for all this? None. It was impossible, of course, but everyone pretended they could do it.
The result? Students were getting high school diplomas who were unable to fill out job applications. Local business people, who pay a lot of property taxes to support schools, wondered how this could be. They pressured governments to make sure students could read, write, and do simple math before getting a diploma. The federal government could have come up with minimum-competency standards for all states and the tests to make sure they were met. There’s little other justification for an education bureaucracy at the federal level, but that would have been too simple. It would have provided a set of expectations essential to students across the nation in an age when families move around more than ever and students are constantly changing schools. States would not be told how to teach these fundamental skills, as long as students learned them. States would be free to teach more than the basic, but could not get away with substituting trendy, flash-in-the-pan programs for fundamentals. That would have made a lot of sense. Therefore, it didn’t happen. Instead, we have multiple batteries of tests of questionable efficacy to administer, and less time to teach.
New England Yankees used to have an expression: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” Government looked at schools and figured, “If they ain’t broke, we’ll keep on fixing them until they are broke.”
Teaching Creation, Evolution, Abortion
About ten years ago, a new principal came into my room and said, “I hope you’re not going to teach your unit on evolution and creation this year.” I was surprised. He had just been hired and the school year was just about to begin. I was setting up my classroom in preparation for the first day of school.
“I was planning to,” I responded. “I’ve been starting the school year with it for quite a while now. What’s the problem?”
“Some parents came to see me who are concerned about what you teach,” he said. “And I’d just as soon not have to deal with the controversy if I don’t have to.” He wouldn’t tell me who the parents were because they requested anonymity. I argued that it was worthwhile to begin the year by teaching students that Americans have different concepts of how everything began. That those fundamental differences in thinking tend to affect how they think about other issues in history, how they behave, and how they vote. I persuaded him that students were free to decide for themselves what they wanted to believe, and that I only wanted them to understand how people think.
With a long sigh he relented, and I went ahead with the unit. Later, he told me that he was getting heat from parents on both sides of the spectrum. Jehovah’s Witnesses didn’t want their kids exposed to ideas about evolution, and secular-humanist parents objected to what they perceived as my creation bias. I’d been publishing columns in local newspapers and many were written from a conservative or Roman Catholic perspective; sometimes both.
Students would ask me during the unit what my view was. I said I would tell them at the end if they couldn’t figure it out before then. Most couldn’t, and when we were done I told them that I didn’t see evolution and creation as mutually exclusive, that I borrowed from each to construct my personal view.
About eighteen years ago, another former principal invited me to her office to introduce herself. Placed prominently, so that it was the first thing to be seen by anyone sitting there, was a sign proclaiming: “Scientists discovered something to do the work of ten men: One woman.” She sat in her long, loose-fitting dress and large, brightly-colored, shawl-like scarf with the end thrown over one shoulder - a uniform I’ve associated with radical feminists ever since. I leaned forward to read the sign. I said, “Hmm,” and then sat back. She paused, as if waiting for a comment. I didn’t make one.
Later, she visited me in my classroom to question what I was teaching. It was my habit during those years to conduct at least one debate in each US History class. Students would brainstorm topics and then choose one by majority vote. Three classes chose abortion that year. She told me she was concerned about the debates and I asked her why. She said fourteen-year-olds were too young to discuss such a controversial and delicate subject. I told her it was their overwhelming choice in two classes (others chose gun control). Again, she said they weren’t sophisticated enough.
“That’s curious,” I said. “They’re old enough to have abortions, right?”
She didn’t answer.
“Some girls in this school quite possibly have abortions you know.”
“I know that,” she said.
“So you’re suggesting that it’s okay for them to have abortions, but not to debate them?”
Again, she didn’t answer. She was called away at that point to handle another matter and I went ahead with the debates. Parents had been invited and students conducted themselves quite well. Each side presented the classic arguments we hear whenever this issue is debated and students made up their own minds at the end.
These topics have been controversial for a long time. In 1925, for example, Tennessee passed a law outlawing the teaching of evolution. A high school science teacher was charged with violating the law and he was defended by the most famous trial lawyer of the time. The prosecutor was a three-time presidential candidate and Secretary of State. The trial was dramatized the classic movie “Inherit The Wind.” Clearly, some creationists were intolerant of conflicting views at the time.
Last month (in 2005), after a local school board in Georgia put stickers in high school biology texts advising students that evolution is “a theory, not a fact,” a federal judge ordered it removed. The school board is appealing. Clearly, some evolutionists are intolerant of conflicting views today.
Intolerant creationists think evolutionists are damned. Intolerant evolutionists think creationists are dumb. Strict creationists believe God created everything and life has a divine purpose, so it logically follows that they tend to believe abortion is murder of a person created by God. Strict evolutionists believe everything happened by chance and doesn’t necessarily have a purpose; it just is. It’s easy to understand why many tend to believe abortion just removes a lump of cells with no particular significance except that it would be problematic in some way if it continued growing.
Both sides can be intolerant, but does that mean we shouldn’t debate? Quite the contrary. If we’re going to understand and live with our fellow citizens in these United States, it’s essential. How else can we function in the constitutional republic our founding fathers designed?
First published in February, 2005
“I was planning to,” I responded. “I’ve been starting the school year with it for quite a while now. What’s the problem?”
“Some parents came to see me who are concerned about what you teach,” he said. “And I’d just as soon not have to deal with the controversy if I don’t have to.” He wouldn’t tell me who the parents were because they requested anonymity. I argued that it was worthwhile to begin the year by teaching students that Americans have different concepts of how everything began. That those fundamental differences in thinking tend to affect how they think about other issues in history, how they behave, and how they vote. I persuaded him that students were free to decide for themselves what they wanted to believe, and that I only wanted them to understand how people think.
With a long sigh he relented, and I went ahead with the unit. Later, he told me that he was getting heat from parents on both sides of the spectrum. Jehovah’s Witnesses didn’t want their kids exposed to ideas about evolution, and secular-humanist parents objected to what they perceived as my creation bias. I’d been publishing columns in local newspapers and many were written from a conservative or Roman Catholic perspective; sometimes both.
Students would ask me during the unit what my view was. I said I would tell them at the end if they couldn’t figure it out before then. Most couldn’t, and when we were done I told them that I didn’t see evolution and creation as mutually exclusive, that I borrowed from each to construct my personal view.
About eighteen years ago, another former principal invited me to her office to introduce herself. Placed prominently, so that it was the first thing to be seen by anyone sitting there, was a sign proclaiming: “Scientists discovered something to do the work of ten men: One woman.” She sat in her long, loose-fitting dress and large, brightly-colored, shawl-like scarf with the end thrown over one shoulder - a uniform I’ve associated with radical feminists ever since. I leaned forward to read the sign. I said, “Hmm,” and then sat back. She paused, as if waiting for a comment. I didn’t make one.
Later, she visited me in my classroom to question what I was teaching. It was my habit during those years to conduct at least one debate in each US History class. Students would brainstorm topics and then choose one by majority vote. Three classes chose abortion that year. She told me she was concerned about the debates and I asked her why. She said fourteen-year-olds were too young to discuss such a controversial and delicate subject. I told her it was their overwhelming choice in two classes (others chose gun control). Again, she said they weren’t sophisticated enough.
“That’s curious,” I said. “They’re old enough to have abortions, right?”
She didn’t answer.
“Some girls in this school quite possibly have abortions you know.”
“I know that,” she said.
“So you’re suggesting that it’s okay for them to have abortions, but not to debate them?”
Again, she didn’t answer. She was called away at that point to handle another matter and I went ahead with the debates. Parents had been invited and students conducted themselves quite well. Each side presented the classic arguments we hear whenever this issue is debated and students made up their own minds at the end.
These topics have been controversial for a long time. In 1925, for example, Tennessee passed a law outlawing the teaching of evolution. A high school science teacher was charged with violating the law and he was defended by the most famous trial lawyer of the time. The prosecutor was a three-time presidential candidate and Secretary of State. The trial was dramatized the classic movie “Inherit The Wind.” Clearly, some creationists were intolerant of conflicting views at the time.
Last month (in 2005), after a local school board in Georgia put stickers in high school biology texts advising students that evolution is “a theory, not a fact,” a federal judge ordered it removed. The school board is appealing. Clearly, some evolutionists are intolerant of conflicting views today.
Intolerant creationists think evolutionists are damned. Intolerant evolutionists think creationists are dumb. Strict creationists believe God created everything and life has a divine purpose, so it logically follows that they tend to believe abortion is murder of a person created by God. Strict evolutionists believe everything happened by chance and doesn’t necessarily have a purpose; it just is. It’s easy to understand why many tend to believe abortion just removes a lump of cells with no particular significance except that it would be problematic in some way if it continued growing.
Both sides can be intolerant, but does that mean we shouldn’t debate? Quite the contrary. If we’re going to understand and live with our fellow citizens in these United States, it’s essential. How else can we function in the constitutional republic our founding fathers designed?
First published in February, 2005
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Dealing With Evil
When I was about seven, a smart-alecky girl from up the street asked me if I’d lived a million days. I said yes, and she said, “Oh no you haven’t.” With a stick, she wrote “365” in the dirt seven times and added it up to 2555. “If you lived to be a hundred, you would only live 36,500 days - not even close to a million.” Humbled, I walked home. Shortly after, I watched an episode of “World At War” with my father and learned that six million Jews were murdered in the death camps of Nazi-occupied Europe. I was struggling to grasp what a million was, yet here were gruesome images of more than six million mass murder victims.
That such an astonishingly evil thing could occur shocked me. Nothing I’ve learned since exceeded it except discovering there were six million other victims as well. I read all I could about the Holocaust until sometime in the 1980s. My curiosity had become morbid fascination, then profound depression. I had to stop my research.
Two enigmas remained, however. One was the systematic banality of Nazi bureaucrats who perpetrated the worst mass murder in history. The other was the submissiveness of the victims. Millions went into ghettoes, onto transports and into gas chambers with little resistance. It’s true that most didn’t know what would happen when the train stopped. They thought they were going to labor camps, communal farms or relocation centers. They thought gas chambers were showers. Even when told by escapees what awaited them at the camps, however, many wouldn’t believe it. There were only a few valiant acts of defiance like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 in which Jews chose to die fighting rather than submit like sheep. That kind of courage led to the reincarnation of Israel as a country immediately after the war. This tiny nation knew what evil looked like.
What struck me about the mass murder at Virginia Tech last week was not so much the shooter, of whom much has been written. It was the reactions of victims. Most screamed, ran and hid, but a 76-year-old professor used his body to block the door of his classroom and told students to flee. They jumped out second-story windows while the old man impeded the shooter, who eventually pushed the door open and shot him to death. That this professor, Liviu Librescu, was a Holocaust survivor interests me.
Librescu would have been only fourteen in 1945, the last year of WWII and of the Holocaust. As an inmate at Thereseinstadt in Czechoslovakia, he would have had prolonged, intimate contact with evil. After, he spent thirty-three years in Romania under the control of the “Evil Empire” as President Reagan referred to the Soviet Union. Then, through the personal intervention of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978, he was able to leave Soviet-dominated Romania and move to Israel. For eight years he lived among people who had fought off four full-scale invasions by much larger, Arab Muslim countries as well as their countless terrorist attacks. In 1986, he went on a sabbatical to the United States and stayed.
Last week, evil paid another visit to Liviu Librescu in the form of a hate-filled young man invading his classroom. I suspect the professor recognized his old nemesis right away. Such awareness would have made him different from the typical academics who run our universities today. Thinking themselves intelligent and sophisticated, they defined evil out of existence decades ago. They believed they could protect themselves by declaring their campus a gun-free zone and putting up a few signs. Jews who reestablished Israel after the Holocaust would not make such a mistake because they learned the hard way that the most effective method of deterring those bent on murdering you is being prepared to kill them before they kill you. “Gun-free zones” protect murderers, not the innocent.
My trip to Israel is still on for May 14th to the 24th. My wife and I were supposed to go last October, but rocket attacks by the evil, Iranian-financed, terrorist organization known as Hezbollah on northern Israeli cities we were scheduled to visit forced a postponement. Israeli Defense Forces attacked the terrorists in southern Lebanon but stopped short of destroying Hezbollah when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wimped out and accepted a UN-negotiated cease fire. Emboldened, the terrorists are already gearing up for another strike. Hezbollah knows UN “Peacekeeping” Forces are about as effective as “Gun-free zone” signs.
A generation has passed since the last Arab Muslim invasion and it looks like some Israelis are getting soft. If they don’t get rid of Olmert and elect a warrior to deal with terrorist murderers, their tiny country will return to oblivion.
That such an astonishingly evil thing could occur shocked me. Nothing I’ve learned since exceeded it except discovering there were six million other victims as well. I read all I could about the Holocaust until sometime in the 1980s. My curiosity had become morbid fascination, then profound depression. I had to stop my research.
Two enigmas remained, however. One was the systematic banality of Nazi bureaucrats who perpetrated the worst mass murder in history. The other was the submissiveness of the victims. Millions went into ghettoes, onto transports and into gas chambers with little resistance. It’s true that most didn’t know what would happen when the train stopped. They thought they were going to labor camps, communal farms or relocation centers. They thought gas chambers were showers. Even when told by escapees what awaited them at the camps, however, many wouldn’t believe it. There were only a few valiant acts of defiance like the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 in which Jews chose to die fighting rather than submit like sheep. That kind of courage led to the reincarnation of Israel as a country immediately after the war. This tiny nation knew what evil looked like.
What struck me about the mass murder at Virginia Tech last week was not so much the shooter, of whom much has been written. It was the reactions of victims. Most screamed, ran and hid, but a 76-year-old professor used his body to block the door of his classroom and told students to flee. They jumped out second-story windows while the old man impeded the shooter, who eventually pushed the door open and shot him to death. That this professor, Liviu Librescu, was a Holocaust survivor interests me.
Librescu would have been only fourteen in 1945, the last year of WWII and of the Holocaust. As an inmate at Thereseinstadt in Czechoslovakia, he would have had prolonged, intimate contact with evil. After, he spent thirty-three years in Romania under the control of the “Evil Empire” as President Reagan referred to the Soviet Union. Then, through the personal intervention of Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1978, he was able to leave Soviet-dominated Romania and move to Israel. For eight years he lived among people who had fought off four full-scale invasions by much larger, Arab Muslim countries as well as their countless terrorist attacks. In 1986, he went on a sabbatical to the United States and stayed.
Last week, evil paid another visit to Liviu Librescu in the form of a hate-filled young man invading his classroom. I suspect the professor recognized his old nemesis right away. Such awareness would have made him different from the typical academics who run our universities today. Thinking themselves intelligent and sophisticated, they defined evil out of existence decades ago. They believed they could protect themselves by declaring their campus a gun-free zone and putting up a few signs. Jews who reestablished Israel after the Holocaust would not make such a mistake because they learned the hard way that the most effective method of deterring those bent on murdering you is being prepared to kill them before they kill you. “Gun-free zones” protect murderers, not the innocent.
My trip to Israel is still on for May 14th to the 24th. My wife and I were supposed to go last October, but rocket attacks by the evil, Iranian-financed, terrorist organization known as Hezbollah on northern Israeli cities we were scheduled to visit forced a postponement. Israeli Defense Forces attacked the terrorists in southern Lebanon but stopped short of destroying Hezbollah when Prime Minister Ehud Olmert wimped out and accepted a UN-negotiated cease fire. Emboldened, the terrorists are already gearing up for another strike. Hezbollah knows UN “Peacekeeping” Forces are about as effective as “Gun-free zone” signs.
A generation has passed since the last Arab Muslim invasion and it looks like some Israelis are getting soft. If they don’t get rid of Olmert and elect a warrior to deal with terrorist murderers, their tiny country will return to oblivion.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Utopian Moonbats
Ancient Irish chieftains had to be physically perfect. Should one lose part of a finger in battle he had to step down and let an intact warrior take over leadership. Why? I suspect it was to preserve the illusion that human perfection was possible. Some needed to believe their leader was flawless and they could not tolerate defects. A foolish notion of course, but one which persisted in immature societies like Irish clans.
Young children think their parents are flawless. As adolescents however, they perceive parental imperfections. Soon flaws are all teenagers can see and they walk twenty paces behind mothers or fathers in public. Many rebel in some way, rejecting parental authority and value systems. At about twenty-five or so, they should mature as they realize that nobody out there is perfect, including themselves. They learn to live with imperfections in people and in the structures under which we govern ourselves.
Most of us fall in love with someone of the opposite sex and we perceive our new loved one as an impeccable human being. That perception too wears off over time when we inevitably perceive defects. They become magnified if we persist in our childish notion that anyone could be faultless. Those who cannot accept imperfection divorce over and over as they search for the perfect mate that doesn’t exist.
All of us seem to have an inherent need to believe in something perfect and the concept of God fulfills that for most. Atheists and agnostics keep looking, however. Some worship other people they perceive to be more intelligent than they are. Others worship nature. Still others, like Marx and Engels, design what they think is a perfect system. They and their followers would impose it on humanity whether people want it or not.
When baby boomers became adolescents in the 1960s, they rebelled against their parents. That much was normal enough even with the unprecedented size of the boomer generation. Trouble is, a significant portion refused to grow up after rebelling against their parents’ value systems. Boomers raised with security and privilege on a level previously unknown considered their good fortune the natural order of things. Instead of appreciating the system that provided it to them, they brazenly trashed those practices and institutions built by their forebears. In their hubris, they rejected do’s and don’ts for human conduct learned since the beginning of civilization.
For example:
Sexual mores? Unnecessary. If it feels good, do it. Marriage? Too constricting. “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” Drugs and alcohol? “Whatever turns you on.” Patriotism? “Imagine there’s no country. It’s easy if you try. Nothing to kill or die for.” God? “And no religion too.” Economics? “Imagine no possessions . . . No need for greed or hunger . . . Imagine all the people sharing all the world.”
Naiveté? Of course - the height of it. Baby boomers refused to grow up and many continue to resist maturation. Now they run most of our universities, media and many charitable foundations controlling billions of dollars. They largely control what millions see and understand about the world around them. The result is what you hear out of the mouths of people like Rosie O’Donnell, Cindy Sheehan and Dennis Kucinich just to name a few. Conservatives call them “moonbats” and they think in lockstep. Muslim crazies kill thousands of innocent Americans? “They only hate us because Bush, Cheney and Halliburton provoked them. If we just impeach those guys and pull out of Iraq everything will be all right. It’s American government policies that cause terrorism, not Islamic terrorists.” That’s how they think.
Even when Islamofascists themselves proclaim over and over that they intend to make the world Muslim and impose Sharia Law, it isn’t enough to crack the moonbats’ childish world view. President Bush is dangerous, not Radical Muslim terrorists. If we can just elect perfect, progressive leaders, those oppressed Muslims will see how nice we are and we’ll all get along the way John Lennon imagined: “The world will live as one.”
“You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not not the only one,” goes Lennon’s refrain. I agree. You were a dreamer and, unfortunately, you weren’t the only one. There are plenty of moonbats out there in groups like Moveon.org. They elected a new majority in our Congress. Now if they can just elect a perfect president, the world will finally live as one. We’ll all be smiling happy people holding hands in utopia.
Young children think their parents are flawless. As adolescents however, they perceive parental imperfections. Soon flaws are all teenagers can see and they walk twenty paces behind mothers or fathers in public. Many rebel in some way, rejecting parental authority and value systems. At about twenty-five or so, they should mature as they realize that nobody out there is perfect, including themselves. They learn to live with imperfections in people and in the structures under which we govern ourselves.
Most of us fall in love with someone of the opposite sex and we perceive our new loved one as an impeccable human being. That perception too wears off over time when we inevitably perceive defects. They become magnified if we persist in our childish notion that anyone could be faultless. Those who cannot accept imperfection divorce over and over as they search for the perfect mate that doesn’t exist.
All of us seem to have an inherent need to believe in something perfect and the concept of God fulfills that for most. Atheists and agnostics keep looking, however. Some worship other people they perceive to be more intelligent than they are. Others worship nature. Still others, like Marx and Engels, design what they think is a perfect system. They and their followers would impose it on humanity whether people want it or not.
When baby boomers became adolescents in the 1960s, they rebelled against their parents. That much was normal enough even with the unprecedented size of the boomer generation. Trouble is, a significant portion refused to grow up after rebelling against their parents’ value systems. Boomers raised with security and privilege on a level previously unknown considered their good fortune the natural order of things. Instead of appreciating the system that provided it to them, they brazenly trashed those practices and institutions built by their forebears. In their hubris, they rejected do’s and don’ts for human conduct learned since the beginning of civilization.
For example:
Sexual mores? Unnecessary. If it feels good, do it. Marriage? Too constricting. “If you can’t be with the one you love, love the one you’re with.” Drugs and alcohol? “Whatever turns you on.” Patriotism? “Imagine there’s no country. It’s easy if you try. Nothing to kill or die for.” God? “And no religion too.” Economics? “Imagine no possessions . . . No need for greed or hunger . . . Imagine all the people sharing all the world.”
Naiveté? Of course - the height of it. Baby boomers refused to grow up and many continue to resist maturation. Now they run most of our universities, media and many charitable foundations controlling billions of dollars. They largely control what millions see and understand about the world around them. The result is what you hear out of the mouths of people like Rosie O’Donnell, Cindy Sheehan and Dennis Kucinich just to name a few. Conservatives call them “moonbats” and they think in lockstep. Muslim crazies kill thousands of innocent Americans? “They only hate us because Bush, Cheney and Halliburton provoked them. If we just impeach those guys and pull out of Iraq everything will be all right. It’s American government policies that cause terrorism, not Islamic terrorists.” That’s how they think.
Even when Islamofascists themselves proclaim over and over that they intend to make the world Muslim and impose Sharia Law, it isn’t enough to crack the moonbats’ childish world view. President Bush is dangerous, not Radical Muslim terrorists. If we can just elect perfect, progressive leaders, those oppressed Muslims will see how nice we are and we’ll all get along the way John Lennon imagined: “The world will live as one.”
“You may say that I’m a dreamer, but I’m not not the only one,” goes Lennon’s refrain. I agree. You were a dreamer and, unfortunately, you weren’t the only one. There are plenty of moonbats out there in groups like Moveon.org. They elected a new majority in our Congress. Now if they can just elect a perfect president, the world will finally live as one. We’ll all be smiling happy people holding hands in utopia.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Getting Seasoned
Last Saturday I turned 56 and it’s beginning to look as though I may never become president. I have, however, outlived my father who died of a heart attack at 55. That’s something, I guess. If I make it to the average life expectancy for an American heterosexual white guy - 76, I think I’ll be satisfied. Twenty more years.
Several people have asked me lately when I’m going to retire. It’s a good question but I don’t have an answer. I’ve been teaching for nearly 32 years. It keeps me busy and with two other jobs as well I’m seldom idle. I’ve taken care of a few vacation properties for more than twenty years. My clients are great people and the schedule is flexible unless a windstorm blows over some trees or there’s some other act of God I have to deal with right away. I could pick up a few more clients and retire from teaching. That would give me more time to write - my third occupation for the last sixteen years. It’s nice to have choices, but I see myself working at something or other until I’m either drooling in a rocking chair or dead. I like what I’m doing though and I don’t want to give up any of it right now. Poet Robert Frost put it well:
It’s the last stanza of Two Tramps in Mud Time, one of my favorites. I don’t read much poetry but Frost has always spoken to me. This year’s mud time is longer than most and his words are particularly appropriate to put Spring, 2007 into perspective. The third stanza of the piece reads:
My vocation has been teaching and my avocation is writing. I want more time to write, but I don’t want to give up teaching entirely. My curriculum is twentieth century US History - weaving in civics, economics as well as current events. It all fascinates me, and even if I weren’t teaching it I’d still be studying it. So why not teach a bit longer? I’ll be back next year, at least. After that, who knows what will come along? I sure don’t.
Meanwhile, I’d like spring to come along a little faster than it is - just as everybody else in New England would. As Frost says in the fourth stanza:
It’s been snowing a bit more than a flake during this year’s mud time. As I look out the window to the snow-covered Kearsarge and Baldface on the western horizon and listen to the cold wind howl this Easter Sunday, I wouldn’t advise anything to blossom either. Not today anyway. I know the crocuses and daffodils are coming up under all that white though. My wife and I saw them sprouting in her garden just before last week’s snowstorm covered them up. This week’s storm will bury them even deeper, but I won’t lose hope.
There’s always something getting ready to blossom, even when all we can see is dark and all we can feel is cold. Frost knew that. New Englanders know that. During the Easter season, Christians know it too.
Several people have asked me lately when I’m going to retire. It’s a good question but I don’t have an answer. I’ve been teaching for nearly 32 years. It keeps me busy and with two other jobs as well I’m seldom idle. I’ve taken care of a few vacation properties for more than twenty years. My clients are great people and the schedule is flexible unless a windstorm blows over some trees or there’s some other act of God I have to deal with right away. I could pick up a few more clients and retire from teaching. That would give me more time to write - my third occupation for the last sixteen years. It’s nice to have choices, but I see myself working at something or other until I’m either drooling in a rocking chair or dead. I like what I’m doing though and I don’t want to give up any of it right now. Poet Robert Frost put it well:
But yield who will to their separation,
My object in living is to unite
My avocation and my vocation
As two eyes make one in sight.
Only where love and the need are one,
And the work is play for mortal stakes,
Is the deed ever really done
For Heaven and the future’s sakes.
It’s the last stanza of Two Tramps in Mud Time, one of my favorites. I don’t read much poetry but Frost has always spoken to me. This year’s mud time is longer than most and his words are particularly appropriate to put Spring, 2007 into perspective. The third stanza of the piece reads:
The sun was warm but the wind was chill.
You know how it is with an April day
When the sun is out and the wind is still,
You’re one month on in the middle of May.
But if you so much as dare to speak,
A cloud comes over the sunlit arch,
A wind comes off a frozen peak,
And you’re two months back in the middle of March.
My vocation has been teaching and my avocation is writing. I want more time to write, but I don’t want to give up teaching entirely. My curriculum is twentieth century US History - weaving in civics, economics as well as current events. It all fascinates me, and even if I weren’t teaching it I’d still be studying it. So why not teach a bit longer? I’ll be back next year, at least. After that, who knows what will come along? I sure don’t.
Meanwhile, I’d like spring to come along a little faster than it is - just as everybody else in New England would. As Frost says in the fourth stanza:
A bluebird comes tenderly up to alight
And turns to the wind to unruffle a plume,
His song so pitched as not to excite
A single flower as yet to bloom.
It is snowing a flake: and he half knew
Winter was only playing possum.
Except in color he isn’t blue,
But he wouldn’t advise a thing to blossom.
It’s been snowing a bit more than a flake during this year’s mud time. As I look out the window to the snow-covered Kearsarge and Baldface on the western horizon and listen to the cold wind howl this Easter Sunday, I wouldn’t advise anything to blossom either. Not today anyway. I know the crocuses and daffodils are coming up under all that white though. My wife and I saw them sprouting in her garden just before last week’s snowstorm covered them up. This week’s storm will bury them even deeper, but I won’t lose hope.
There’s always something getting ready to blossom, even when all we can see is dark and all we can feel is cold. Frost knew that. New Englanders know that. During the Easter season, Christians know it too.
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