Category: Education

See Nothing and Nobody – BONUS POST

SEE NOTHING AND NOBODY

DOWN BY THE SCHOOLYARD

sung to the tune of “See Me and Julio Down By the Schoolyard” with apologies to Paul Simon.

President Trump said reopen schools.

So did the czar of education.

When the teachers found out they began to shout,

which started the litigation.

Teachers said naw! Teachers said naw!

A lot of sick we saw.

There ought to be a law.

Florida’s gov stood his ground, said we’re not bound

to conform to the convention.

Other govs said you must open schools or we’ll legally quash your dissension.

We’ve lost our way.

Don’t know where we’re going.

We’ve lost our way.

Law takes its time. Don’t know where…

Goodbye democracy, via the scourge of Corona.

See nothing and nobody down by the schoolyard.

See nothing and nobody down by the schoolyard.

Oh oh, people are saying they’re going to take school away and have online and home education.

And when the special interest groups have total control,

we’re gonna have an airheaded nation.

We’ve lost our way.

Don’t know where we’re going.

We’ve lost our way.

Law takes its time. Don’t know where…

Goodbye democracy, via the scourge of Corona.

See nothing and nobody down by the schoolyard.

See nothing and nobody down by the schoolyard.

See nothing and nobody down by the schoolyard.

Embattled Wall

The Book of the Week is “Embattled Wall, Americans United: An Idea and a Man” by C. Stanley Lowell, published in 1966.

Separation of Church and State requires a zero-tolerance policy, lest little things open the floodgates to bigger things, one thing leads to another, and those little things eventually lead to the Spanish Inquisition, or some other theocracy as is seen in many countries in the Middle East and Central Asia.

Besides, there are other reasons for separation of Church and State:

  • Religious entities that pay no taxes have a competitive advantage if they provide goods and services the same way tax-paying capitalist entities do. This includes private education services, and
  • Citizens probably don’t want their taxes to financially assist institutions associated with a religion other than their own.

After WWII in the United States, the power of the Catholic Church was on the increase. Beginning in 1947, the Church began to aggressively request government subsidies for its parochial school system. The author wrote, “…The National Catholic Welfare Conference… [were] like professional lobbyists… actually assisting in the drafting of legislation… cajoling, promising, threatening.”

Protestants felt that money was earned through work, not subsidies, so initially, they were against public funding for their schools. Thus, when over-achieving attorney Glenn Archer founded the group, Americans United— which litigated for separation of Church and State– Protestants assisted him.

The actual full name of the organization was “Protestants and Other Americans United For Separation of Church and State” (hereinafter referred to as “AU”). Other groups that supported them included Seventh Day Adventists and Christian Scientists. Jews mostly avoided the fray, but they were offended that the group had the word “church” in its name.

The Catholics launched a smear campaign against Archer and AU. Catholic publications trotted out the usual righteously indignant accusations, “bigot, religious prejudice, Ku Klux Klan, Communist, racist,” etc. The language in Jesuit propaganda was open to multiple interpretations (among many other examples):

“Freedom of choice in education”

which, in AU’s words, translated to:

“Canon Law 1374 denies freedom of choice in education to Catholic parents, ordering them to send their children to Catholic schools.” In other words, the Catholic Church strongly believes that its worshippers should follow religious law before civil law whenever there is a clash between them.

Jesuits: “Justice for children”

AU: “Subsidies for Catholic schools”

The author also described a Catholic rabble rouser: “His posture of outraged purity impressed the majority who had no understanding of the real issues in the case.”

When American president Harry Truman proposed the appointing of an ambassador to the Vatican, AU protested that this was a violation of separation of Church and State, as the leader of the Vatican (the Pope) was a worldwide religious leader. AU and a sufficient number of individual complainants helped put the kibosh on that appointment.

The State Department was peeved because it could have used the Catholic Church (which had many houses of worship around the world) to assist with espionage– er, uh, fostering friendly relationships with nations that had Catholic citizens.

In 1958, the world got a new Pope, thanks in part to votes cast by Catholic cardinals in America. AU cited 8 U.S. Code 1481 of the Immigration and Nationality Act as a reason to revoke the citizenship of those cardinals. For, any American citizen who votes in a foreign country could be stripped of his citizenship.

The Church weakly counter-argued that the Pope is primarily a religious leader, and secondarily a national leader. However, AU produced support for its own arguments in the form of a few previous legal cases of citizenship revocations, plus American government documentation that showed the Vatican to be a political entity.

During the 1960 presidential election between Richard Nixon and the Catholic John F. Kennedy, AU asked questions to determine JFK’s positions on separation of Church and State. The U.S. Supreme Court, AU and JFK were all in agreement.

A few different laws were passed through the years, that granted subsidies pursuant to state laws, in addition to ongoing student loan programs:

  • 1948, the Taft Bill
  • 1958, Defense Education Act
  • 1963, Higher Education Facilities Act (which allowed a university– even that run by a religious institution– to acquire property at a fire-sale price from the government, and then to get permission to construct campus buildings with public funds), and
  • 1965, Elementary and Secondary Education Act

During those years, in effect, federal taxpayers were financially aiding Catholic education more than that of any other religion, as 95% of religious schools were Catholic.

In the late 1950’s, Franklin County in Missouri won a great legal victory against the Catholic Church. The court ruled that, “…schools were not in fact free public schools and were not entitled to be supported by public school money or public funds.”

In a Burlington, Vermont lawsuit, AU cited the First and Fourteenth Amendments because the vague language of the Vermont Constitution regarding separation of Church and State allowed for loopholes.

Read the book to learn about the practice of “captive schools” and a wealth of additional information on the tenor of the times in connection with legal fights over public funding for religious education.

The Unicorn’s Secret

The Book of the Week is “The Unicorn’s Secret, Murder in the Age of Aquarius” by Steven Levy, published in 1988.

Born in 1940 in the Philadelphia area, Ira Einhorn was, according to his mother, God’s gift to the world. A control freak, he was used to having his own way. He was later described by a friend of his as “… a hippie Jew wearing a dashiki with sandals, with body odor… fat… a weirdo…” He taught at the University of Pennsylvania’s “Free University” in 1966. The educational entity offered classes that encouraged exchange of ideas without the pressures of graduation requirements or grades. The most unconventional aspect of Einhorn’s courses, however, was that he taught students about LSD and pot. Like Timothy Leary, he believed that acid and pot generated good brain chemicals, while speed caused bad drug trips, and paranoia.

In addition to teaching– Einhorn dealt drugs on the side, wrote articles for counterculture publications and did event-planning to support himself. He used “The Unicorn” as his pen name. In January 1967, the predecessor to Woodstock took place in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco. It was called the Human Be-In, and was attended by about 25,000 people. In April 1967, Einhorn co-arranged a similar event in Philadelphia. Only about a thousand people showed up.

Critics charged that Einhorn was a talker, not a doer. He wasted the time of real activists with his “… sloth, bad poetry, quasi-academic babble, and chemical fantasies.” He would help plan a protest and not show up. But he got all the press attention. The reason he was tolerated was that he had a magnetic personality, knowledge and fundraising contacts. In 1970, during the very first “Earth Week” on “Earth Day” on April 22, he hogged the stage when Ed Muskie was scheduled to deliver a speech. When forced to cede the spotlight, Einhorn gave the impression it was his show and Muskie was merely a bit player. He rewrote history to say he was the sole creator of Earth Day.

Einhorn ingratiated himself with top executives of major corporations like General Electric and Pennsylvania Bell, a subsidiary of AT&T. He was a long-haired freak while the latter were clean-cut suits. But he got fancy, free lunches with them. In the early 1970’s, he sent articles on paranormal phenomena to an expanding network of people who would eventually number in the hundreds. His contact at Pennsylvania Bell had the company pay for the copying and postage of the twice-weekly mailings, and did the envelope-stuffing. Einhorn’s goal was to save the world via the Peace Movement and the Earth Movement.

Beginning in the early 1970’s, Holly Maddux– who was born in 1947– had an off-and-on relationship with Einhorn. When he was too physically abusive, she moved out of their Philadelphia apartment into a commune. But he treated her like a doormat all the time. In March 1979, her corpse was found in his apartment. The aforementioned friend of Einhorn’s said that a jury of Einhorn’s peers would convict him for killing “… a little, blond, shiksa cheerleader from Texas!”

Unsurprisingly, Einhorn had hubris syndrome. The current president of the United States shares a few other personality traits with Einhorn. Two stark differences, however, are that Einhorn loved reading, and oozed charisma.

For more insight into the personality of the accused, see the following posts:

  • how to rig an election
  • Indecent Exposure
  • The Rabbi and the Hitman
  • The Strange Case of the Mad Professor
  • Blood Will Out
  • Safe Harbor, A Murder in Nantucket

To be fair, thousands of elected officials in this country have lost their way as public servants. Excuse the cliche, but the fish rots from the head down. Trumpolitics is a new thing: “trickle down politics” (ironically– the opposite of Reagan’s trickle down economics, because most lower-level authorities– governors and mayors, are enjoying additional power; some more than others.). The president, Congress, governors and mayors have shown depraved indifference to millions of innocent people by ruining their livelihoods, saying, “If we can’t get what we want, then no one can.” And to top it off, failing to admit wrongdoing and apologize.

The Democrats are afraid that in 2020, Trump’s propaganda machine will be superior to their own, again. That’s why they’re taking the low road to oust him via the COVID conspiracy instead. The Republicans have thrown in with the Democrats because they never liked Trump either, and they feel obligated to maintain party unity, while taking the opportunity to bankrupt as many Democrat donors as they can. It also kills some of them to admit that they really do want national healthcare.

Anyway, read the book to learn more about Einhorn, including everything you ever wanted to know about his sex life, and of his fate.

Lewis Carroll – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Lewis Carroll, A Biography” by Morton N. Cohen, published in 1995.

Born into a family whose children eventually numbered eleven, in January 1832 in Cheshire (England), Carroll was given the name Charles Lutwidge Dodge. His father was curate of the local parish.

The headmaster of “Rugby”– the boarding school Carroll attended (which gave rise to the eponymous sports game), couldn’t “… rid the school of drunkenness. The boys were served beer with their meals– water was unsafe– and from beer to strong libations is not a long leap.” Rugby was considered England’s best public school (in America this means an elitist private school) at the time.

Carroll endured the usual abusive hierarchy (frat boy behavior) that occurred at such a place for nearly four years. Later, he was accepted to Christ Church, at Oxford University. Students from wealthy families brought their hunting dogs to school, and continued their shooting and riding, as they had at home. Academics were way overrated.

Carroll, however, majored in and got high grades in mathematics. After graduating, he became a math tutor and lecturer. But he got upset when he saw freshmen who were ignorant of material he thought they should have already learned.

In an attempt to cover up this embarrassing truth, in April 1864, the school administration proposed lowering its standards, and finally succeeded in doing so in February 1865. In protest, Carroll resigned as Mathematics Examiner.

On another topic, of course, Carroll became best known for Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. It started in July 1862, as an extemporaneous story he made up about Alice Liddell, one of the middle daughters (about twenty years his junior) in a large family full of them. He became quite close with the girls socially, accompanying them on walks, picnics, boating outings, in playing croquet, etc.

Nearly a year later, he rode a train alone with the girls– who were without their usual adult supervision. Shortly thereafter, their mother forbid Carroll to see them. Wild rumors swirled around the mysterious incident; the page on which Carroll wrote about this in his diary was removed– lost to history– by his niece.

As an amateur photographer, Carroll had been taking photos of his aforementioned unnaturally close friends, as well as daughters of other families in his community. In spring 1867, he began taking photos of girls in the nude.

Read the book to learn of all of the details about the above, other highlights of his life, and how the “Alice” stories evolved into an enduring piece of work.

ENDNOTE: Curiously, the author of Peter Pan, J.M. Barrie, befriended a family of sons. He took an especial liking to a middle son, Peter, about which he made up stories at the dawn of the twentieth century. Both Alice and Peter Pan have been enjoyed in various incarnations internationally for decades and decades. Parallels can be drawn between their authors. The stories must therefore delve into the deepest, truest universal aspects of human nature. That must be why they are still classics.

Blood & Ivy – BONUS POST

The Bonus Book of the Week is “Blood & Ivy, The 1849 Murder That Scandalized Harvard” by Paul Collins, published in 2018. This true-crime story described the nature of homicide among elitists in American culture, as well as the Ivy League university Harvard, in the mid-1850’s.

The students to be accepted to Harvard’s undergraduate school, to start in autumn of 1849, were required to report for oral examinations in July. Initially, the applicants were ordered to declare basic information on themselves, including their fathers’ professions. The lucky incoming class numbered 87 students, the largest to date.

The students received demerits for failing to attend morning prayers at dawn, in the chapel. The curriculum consisted of Latin, Greek, mathematics, and the history of Rome.

A handful of professors taught at Harvard Medical School, in semesters that lasted six or seven weeks. A Harvard geology professor was suspected of murdering a medical school professor. The former was arrested the day after Thanksgiving of 1849.

The feature of this criminal case that has endured for more than a century and half is the definition of “reasonable doubt”– explained for laypeople (the jury) by the judge.

Read this suspenseful book to learn the details of the case.

Twenty Chickens For A Saddle

The Book of the Week is “Twenty Chickens For A Saddle” by Robyn Scott, published in 2008. This autobiography described people who chose an adventurous lifestyle over one of comfort, safety and convention.

Botswana was a peaceful, well-fed nation, thanks to the government’s policy of designating more than three-quarters of the country as tribal trust land. It was a demilitarized zone where anyone could graze their animals.

In late 1987, the author’s parents decided to move with their two daughters and son from New Zealand to a rural area in Botswana. The author was the oldest, at seven. The father had been a homeopathic doctor but became a physician at five different government-run clinics (only one of which had a telephone; none had electricity and running water), flying to them by light plane on different days. The mother was a home-schooling mom.

The family fixed up a long-abandoned cowshed for their residence. They lived close to the father’s father– a colorful character– and his second wife; some miles away from an abandoned nickel/copper mine. He helped with their education– teaching them Latin names of all sorts of flora and fauna. For the most part, life-threatening dangers and primitive conditions abounded. There were heat, mosquitoes, poisonous snakes, HIV, wild horses and machine parts such as detonators that were supposed to be illegal. The kids did, however, take ballet and tennis lessons in town. And they had a home library. They even had a zipline over their swimming pool with a slide.

While the mother recovered from a medical problem, the author and her younger brother attended a free primary school for a term. Its student body was mostly white people; the government-run school that charged a fee was farther away and was mostly black people. Girls began school at six years old, while boys who had cow-herding to do, started at eight or nine.

The author loved the structure of a classroom, and the competition for gold stars.  Her mother inspired a love of learning, but had a free-for-all curriculum and no government supervision whatsoever.

The author joined what would be equivalent to the Brownies in the United States; her brother joined the Cub Scouts. At term’s end, the kids returned to home-schooling. When they reached their early teens, they did self-directed projects for a New Zealand correspondence course in agriculture, architecture and transport. Then they entered boarding school. The author attended a Dominican convent school in Zimbabwe.

The author described the daily trials and tribulations her father encountered in seeing patients, as Botswanans believe in ancestor worship and witchcraft. He had an even tougher time beginning in the early 1990’s, when the AIDS crisis hit the nation.

At that time, the family moved to a nicer property, but it was near the border with South Africa. There was a block association of sorts, which had racist policies– “Newcomers mustn’t offer higher wages to their black servants, or else all the Tuli Block farmers would have to pay the price. Livelihoods might be ruined!” Most of the farmers had large plots of land and hundreds of heads of cattle.

Read the book to learn many more details of the author’s unique experiences and her entrepreneurial endeavors.

The Way Things Ought to Be – Bonus Post

“The Way Things Ought to Be” by Rush Limbaugh, published in 1992, is a summary of the author’s opinions on major political issues he covered on his conservative-Republican radio talk show a few years prior to presidential election day of 1992.

Limbaugh related an anecdote as an example of how he aired a certain political message satirically in a way different from other information outlets. Some time later, change occurred on that issue, such as a proposed law, or a new communication style, or what have you.

Limbaugh contended that he was responsible for initiating that change. Not that there weren’t hundreds of other information outlets competing for viewers’, listeners’ and participants’ attention simultaneously on those issues. Everyone was listening only to Limbaugh, of course.

In 1988, Limbaugh hosted a national radio show from WABC in New York City. He admitted to using offensive language on the show. He wrote that in Santa Barbara, California, an advertiser (a restaurant) complained about his use of the word “feminazi.” That advertiser vowed never to purchase ad time again on his show. Limbaugh gave a free plug to the restaurant. It became mobbed with customers. The reader would have thought that other advertisers would wise up and threaten to pull their ads unless he gave them a free plug. But Limbaugh ended the story there. So the reader will never know.

Limbaugh challenged the reader to “… name one great entertainer who is great in large part because of his or her politics other than me.” Um… Al Franken?  And he’s funny.

Limbaugh believes in the voucher system of education. The idea is to distribute vouchers allowing parents to choose the school (not necessarily in their district) their children would attend so that their children could afford to get a religious education. Regardless of whether income inequality actually prevents people from getting a religious education– vouchers are utterly impractical. If the voucher system were really implemented for all schools in the nation, there would be chaos. There would be lawsuits galore due to overflow demand at some schools and none at others. An overwhelming amount of planning would be required to estimate school space capacities and personnel needs, not to mention a host of other issues.

It is also argued that vouchers give parents more choice of schools. Parents already have choices. If their kids’ education is that important to them, they will move to the school district where they want their children to attend.

It might be recalled that the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations were rocked by several scandals. In one scandal, Congress members were permitted to get away with bouncing checks left and right (getting no-interest loans, basically) from the House Bank. Following the disclosure of this and other disgusting, unethical behavior, Congress had the audacity to vote itself a raise. Limbaugh emphatically stated that Congress thought itself to be above the law. Further, in March 1992, he publicly declared in a TV interview that Congress had been doing nothing for twelve years, “… ever since Reagan was elected… Their only concern was to deny Reagan as many legislative victories as possible.” Sounds familiar. A more current example is Mitch McConnell’s treatment of Barack Obama.

Limbaugh also ranted that top executives at large nonprofit organizations were paid as much as corporate CEOs. “Many of these groups don’t even do charitable work. They are political agitators lobbying the government for money and regulations they can twist to their benefit.” Limbaugh claimed he doesn’t do activism on his show. For activism, in the summer of 1991, he formed the National Conservative Forum. Enough said.

On abortion, Limbaugh boasted that Reagan and Bush won a large number of states due to the fact that they were pro-life, and their opponents were pro-choice. Invalid argument. Incidentally, abortion isn’t the only issue voters consider when they choose a presidential candidate.

Limbaugh took issue with a strongly-worded letter complaining that Reagan appeared in a TV ad with an AIDS activist in 1990, but did nothing to help counter the AIDS epidemic while he was in office. Limbaugh didn’t address that valid point, but suddenly wanted to donate to a pediatric AIDS charity thereafter.

Limbaugh often compared apples and oranges.  He likened Anita Hill’s allegation that she was subjected to sexual harassment by Supreme-Court-justice candidate Clarence Thomas, to Patricia Bowman’s allegation against William Kennedy Smith. However, those were two women in completely different situations.

Hill had a high-powered career in a male-dominated field. She would kill her career if she uttered one word about inappropriate behavior that any of her male colleagues had directed toward her. As it was, any female who spoke out was inviting a tabloid field day. She would do so only if she wanted to change things for the future. She must have known the costs involved going in. In the Hill case, all the people involved had ulterior political motives for why they supported or opposed the accuser. The outcome would affect them personally.

Limbaugh felt that in the 1992 presidential election [prior to election day], “The key to change, though, will be found inside— not outside the system among politically experienced people who are ethical, honest, and moral– characteristics that do matter, despite how loudly they are pooh-poohed by the liberal elite. Outsiders, and those who present themselves as such, will ultimately end up as carcasses strewn across the countryside, false prophets of a false premise.” Hmm.

Read the book to learn of Limbaugh’s views on all the issues aforementioned plus animal rights activism, and the causes he believed in.