I recently wrote about how the book bans sweeping the nation aren't about the books themselves. I received a lot of feedback about how this perspective made more sense than just pockets of people bothered by specific titles. And how taking this in a broader perspective also raises the level of concern about what is actually happening.
"Book bans are not so much about the content of specific books as they are about instilling fundamental Christian nationalism, packaged in a glossy white box with a pink OR blue bow, and sold to Americans as “grassroots efforts to protect our children.” The movements hawking that box are proclaiming loudly that American will be safe when it is white, straight, wealthy, patriarchal, and bound by biblically self-justified moralistic rules, handpicked from a 2000-year old text.
This may seem like an extreme interpretation about the actions of a few, “innocent” soccer moms who have proclaimed themselves to be “moms for ‘liberty’” and “joyful warriors” but their end game is far from innocent and far more insidious than they let on. The short-game is to destabilize and create chaos. The long-game is to dismantle public libraries and privatize public schools using voucher systems. Private schools where the white nationalistic narrative can be indoctrinated and strictly controlled."
Unfortunately, parochial schools have been able to use such programs to subsidize religious education. I don't think there is any magic to local control, because local school boards are often dominated or intimidated by groups who want to acquire public funds for their own devices.
Besides the religious "right", libertarians object to any public governmental activity except for defense spending. They object to educating other peoples' kids. They do support tax credits for tuition and other expenditures related to an individual’s education.
My perspective is that we the (reasonable people) and the Democratic Party, since Goldwater, have not paid attention to, nor funded local political races, While at the same time, the Republicans have been plowing resources and energy into taking control of government at all levels.
Who runs for school boards, not liberals but conservatives. And who motivates these conservatives, preachers and priests, who accurately perceive secularism as a threat to their way of life, their parasitic lifestyle, there social status, prestige and income.
The real push for control of education started with Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority when Reagan ran the first time in 1980, my mail box was swamped with his propaganda, and from them I learned the effective way of writing for effect.
Short paragraphs with one thought or subject.
Meanwhile Democrats (liberals) have been content with sitting back and putting their energy into more "important" things, like the General Election, especially the Presidential race.
Thus leaving the patriarchal, white Christian nationalism to command the low ground, in warfare the objective is almost always to command the high ground, however a persistent assault from the low ground almost always takes the high ground. Caesar at Alesia , battle of Missionary ridge during the siege of Chatanooga. Salah al din's siege of Jerusalem, Rome's siege of Masada
Yes Democrats take the high ground, because they are too weak and feckless to invest money in the low ground. Also they don't have the money, because those with enough money for discretionary spending, splurges most of it, on those most likely to give them tax and regulation breaks, and that is the party that is supported by a highly motivated , fearful and angry base.
He who controls the amygdala, the lizard brain, controls their society. Then it is amygdala vs amygdala, and if the pre frontal cortex steps in, it invariably loses to the amygdala.
If we are to save a secular democracy, then the Democratic party had best start investing in local races, school board, sheriff, animal control officers.
And here comes the skeptic, the cynic, if the Democrats haven't learned a lesson in over half a century it is already too late
Does anyone here feel like Sisyphus, rolling that stone up a hill, only to have it roll back down.
I am genuinely fearful that the MAGAts and Trump will attain power next year and that will be the death knell of a great experiment, unless somehow the Democratic party shakes off it's fleas, and becomes aggressive, because it is our only hope, as we are in struggle for not only the soul of a nation, but the very freedoms, that took 27 Amendments to secure.
A cynic would say that public education is merely babysitting. About half of the students have no interest in learning anything. Socialization is probably more important anyway.
Where I live, the Bush family had an economic interest in privatizing everything. Jeb's kids went to school with my niece. They had an investment interest in the standardized tests required by the federal Department of Education, had a financial interest in charter schools, etc . The concept is to take funds that would normally go to public schools. Never mind that the charter schools were an abject failure.
In Pennsyltucky, we sold part of our local schools to the Amish, after Wisconsin v. Yoder. 13 year old "teachers." The object is to avoid promoting the kids to the junior high level, where they would have to go to an integrated school.
Because of Lemon v Kurtzman, had to pay for transportation, special services for parochial schools, especially when board members were Catholics.
Nepotism, fraud are the currencies in many, if not most districts. At one time, here in Baghdad By the Sea could have a quorum of board members in the big house. Same with union officials.
Daniel this is an off topic rant, I just read an email from Democracy Now. "“No Ceasefire, No Votes”: Arab American Support for Biden Plummets over Gaza Ahead of 2024 Election" Idiots just like black males who are blackmailing Biden because they haven't got all they want, now.
What do these shallow idiots think will happen when Trump wins, business as usual? Until the next election when the Democrats will be crawling on their knees for their votes.
Trump is the racist avatar and butt buddies with Bibi, both are criminals and anti human, so tell me how that is going to work out for the Palestinians and their sympathizers.
I live a boat ride away from Canada and have a lot of money in savings, I just hope that Canada will accept me as a political refugee.
Pure unadulterated myopic stupidity thinking that holding their breath till they turn blue, will achieve their goals.Not even considering the unintended consequences of a second Trump presidency, and a completely MAGA congress.
I am upset with Biden as well, because he and the Democratic party did not do what they promise, and he selected a Conservative Republican as AG, and never cleaned the Trump humpers out of cabinet positions, which Trump created in his final days. He even revoked the Trump Executive order, which he could have used to purge DOJ, DHS, NSA, FBI, IRS, DOD, etc of the Trump humpers that Trump embedded in his final weeks." His Deep State is thriving well, and subverting justice, especially in the DOJ, a good example is the special counsel that is prosecuting Hunter.
But I will crawl over broken glass to vote for Biden, because the alternative is unthinkable, These self righteous assholes, think that they can punish the Democrats for not acceding to their demands, and all they are doing is laying the foundations for their own persecution by the MAGAts. Trump has warned them, and the fools are not paying attention. They deserve their just reward for fecklessness, but I and you don't.
Their motto is, whether they know it or not, Bibbi and Trump, not Biden.
Thanks, I get his newsletter. You are three hours ahead of me.
I remember the 1973 war vividly. My boss, Col Baranowski, got his nose into the airlift of weapons and munitions, and proudly displayed a picture taken with Golda Meir. Personally I don't recall suffering from the long lines and prices at the gas pump, then again I drove a 1970 Maverick, six cyl flathead, which got great gas mileage.
It doesn't quite look like an oil embargo at this point, maybe because we produce enough oil, that Exxon and their ilk are exporting, the excess but the oil cartel will take advantage of any event, to raise prices and maximize profits.
Daniels says" Never mind that the charter schools were an abject failure." and who immediately springs to mind but Rahm Emanuel and Chicago, he and Betsy Devos.
Rahm is a poison that naive Obama, probably at the behest of Larry Summers, another abomination, brought into the government.
I had the misfortune or rather the good fortune, of having been exposed to the dregs who posed as teachers, after WWII. All of the good teachers were either drafted or enlisted in the war, or served on production lines "Rosie the Riveter",who no longer than VJ day was proclaimed than women in the factories forced to attend classes on how to wear sun dresses, make up and become submissive dollies again.
The 4F's, the elderly, the mentally unbalanced were left to fill teaching slots, and in Philadelphia, PA that was the cadre of public schools, a teaching staff of non compus mentis, my 1st algebra teacher was certifiable, my English teacher was beyond her ken, and boring. In all of their classes, I sat staring out the window, until I stopped going to school, and instead headed for the public library, under the mentorship of the librarian, who promised not to report me for truancy, if I finished her reading assignments and passed her quizzes.
And today, in Texas, voting is happening on constitutional amendments...one is promoting property tax lowering...one of the ways that money will be replaced is “compressing public school maintenance and operation funds” quote from Gary Van Deaver newsletter.
Growing up in an evangelical family, attending Sunday School in an evangelical church, I heard the parable of the two houses hundreds of times. The house built upon the sand is washed away in the storm or the flood. The house built upon the rock remains firmly in place and withstands the storm or the flood and the tests of time.
To weather the storms and survive attacks, our schools and our educational infrastructure should be built on a foundation that is rock solid and invulnerable to forces or to people whose aim is to undermine or destroy them for their malign purposes, which are not compatible with our purposes (which in this case allow for a democratic and progressive orientation to education).
I have quoted here before what the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran wrote about education in his famous poem from his book, “The Prophet”, which bears repeating once again. He said:
“If he is indeed wise, he does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.”
No truer words were ever spoken. Our conceptions of schools and education are based on a false notion of teaching and learning, fatally undermining their very foundation. The learner or the student can never be at the center and the child is never led to the “threshold” of her own mind as long as we have a paradigm in which learning consistently follows teaching and the answers constantly precede the learner’s questions.
When we suffer from inherited illusions about our capability as arrogant adults, teachers, and administrators to always ascertain precisely what the child needs to know, and at what time, and our imagined right to arbitrarily compel the child to “learn” what we choose to teach from our perspective and determined by our measurements, we are on a foundation of sand. Who died and made us the omniscient teachers and guardians of true knowledge?
As parents and as adults we have not only the right, but the duty to take responsibility for education. Knowledge is built on the experience, discoveries, and insights of the past.
However, none of that came prepackaged from god or from ANY authority. Respect for the process and dignity for the learner are paramount. Any hint of coercion and any pretense of power or superiority over the student is inimical to the process. A curriculum which is not organic, not originating from the curiosity and spontaneous questions of the learners and derived from a real life and literature rather than an artifice of teaching or instruction for the sole purpose of instruction is an abstraction and a distraction.
How much time do we have left for this lesson to sink in? How much longer will we cling to the use of law, threats, intimidation, force, and punishment to attempt to impose education upon our highly capable and brilliant children? Repeat after me: “If he is indeed wise, he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom.”
Gibran was writing a full century ago. Dewey tried to tell us soon after. Where does our arrogance come from and when will we learn humility from the intelligence of our children?
As a follower here (Moninna) stated in a message sent to me last week,
“Mass state education has often been referred to as simply a religious doctrinal teaching of secular beliefs.”
In other words, it cannot be called education at all, in my estimation. In a frame or context of transmitting pre-existing knowledge from a position of superior knowledge and doctrinal belief (including even the facts of “hard science”), one inhibits critical thinking and knowledge creation. Teaching in a milieu where the student is passive, submissive, and a recipient of an officially approved curriculum establishes a condition lacking adequate context, which makes information, data, language, or concepts less meaningful, real, and intelligible. The heavy hand of the state obliterates initiative and decimates the spirit.
When the innumerable and chronic failures of our schools are mentioned and the reality of 25% of our citizens remain illiterate (and probably another 30-35% are semi-literate, inept, and incapable of critical thinking) educators and other people who are supposedly trustworthy reflexively hit the “minimize” button. Why is that? Why are they not honest with themselves or with us? Why do they deny reality? Why do they need so badly to believe that traditional schools are not built on the sand of mythology and coercion, and that their crumbling is not the consequence of their defective authoritarian structure?
You tell me.
I repeat myself, again and again. It is not about funding, teacher salaries, or unions. It is not about good or bad programs, policies, curricula, techniques, or strategies, and it is most definitely not about test scores or IQ scores. The reactionaries and privatizers have it all wrong. But, so also do the traditionalists and the purveyors of retrenchment to some version of the good old days. Our schools are creating authoritarians and followers and they are anti-intellectual factories for conservativism. You need to get this right Thom. Nostalgia and anecdotes are not reliable guides. Look at the science - and weep.
Outstanding discourse Robert. It has been over half a century since I read Khalil Gilbran's the Prophet, although I dispute that he was Lebanese, as Lebanon was not then a country. More of a Persian, and by that I don't mean Iranian, that is also a later invention.
I consider myself an autodidcact, because even though I have a Masters degree, my knowledge base is not that taught in brainwashing factories, but from my own reading, and interests which are still eclectic.
I'm a HS drop out, who within 8 months passed both a HS GED and an AA GED (they had such a thing back in 1958). Graduated from university with a 3.74 GPA and a Masters with 3.47 GPA, and essentially discarded most of the swill that they tried to indoctrinate me with. But first you need to read and write, and that can be done with starting kids off with an Alphabet Book.
I have bought and am buying my bisnieto a library of bilingual books, including bi linqual books and he is not yet 2 (big birthday present coming for him).
Education is important but not the homogenious social reinforcement skill that are shoved down kids throats, at the same time kids need the social exposure that school provides, from that they learn h ow to survive, but these days of internet education (and I include Tik Tok, Instagram, Telegram, what not is not education it is mind rot. One must learn how to interact wiith other people from an early age, otherwise they grow up as tools and fools.
My sis was very religious, and wanted to protect her youngest from the vagaries and realities of life, so she home schooled her daughter and her social life was confined to church. She did a great job of imparting essential and socialy accepted knowledge, as she won a full scholarship, but coming into contact with the real world, and no longer protected,she was naive, and vulnerable to being exploited. She wound up with teaching credentials, took a position in W VA, teaching her own peers, and her life went downhill after that., into drug abuse, being in a relationship with a low life drug abusing red neck, ran over by a drug abusing redneck in a pick up truck, in a supermarket parking lot, and it only gets worse.
Question is how do you develop inquisitive, critical thinking skills, and teach kids not to believe everything you see and hear, to arrive at one's own opinions and not acquire them because some "authority" exposes you, or tells you that "they are the truth".
I started on my own path at age 8, when I read The Odyessey by Homer, intrigued I knew it was ancient Greek fiction, then at age 12 I read the Bible, and once again realized that I was reading fiction. Most of the swill be it history or economics, even sometimes science,has proven to be fiction.
Children need an education, but a real one, where they are taught and praised for critical thinking, not punished because they don't digest the swill.
Thom has done a great service in providing information that enables people to learn "Hidden History" You won't find his info, ideas or writings in curiculum or even libraries.
"The learner or the student can never be at the center...." Check out the IEP. The kid is at the center.
Whereas the method in public education is usually pedagogy, it probably could as well be andragogy. Pedagogy is the teaching dependent personalities. Andragogy is the facilitation learning for "self-directed" learners. E.G. Montessori Theory is an educational approach that emphasizes individualized instruction and self-paced learning. It is based on the belief that children are naturally curious and capable of learning independently.
There you go with the methodology, techniques, and theory! Re-inventing the educational wheel, yet again. Montessori, Dewey, Tolstoy, and Rousseau were writing a century or more ago. Tell us something we don’t know.
There is a reason we are stuck in reverse. There is a reason we cannot escape the pedagogical obsessions. We have allowed ourselves to be dependent upon our teachers and our schools for something we are mistakenly calling education.
My dad used to say often that children should be seen and not heard. I think teachers should be seen and heard from only when students ask for their input! I am the last person to diminish the importance of “good” teachers. However, when children are given a mindset from the time they can speak or before that they will only learn when they attend a school, “pay attention” to a teacher, and follow instructions for 12 years, we have completely defeated our purposes.
Institutionalizing learning or “education” and creating a category for teaching that takes the initiative away from the individual child is our first mistake. But then, we compounded and perpetuated the error by passing laws to require school attendance. There is one way and one way only to escape that trap.
IEP’s are splendid. But they cannot ever be implemented on any scale for any length of time. All such innovations run counter to the authoritarian bureaucracy which is endemic to compulsory attendance. Control, order, discipline, obsessive measurement, focusing on the group and the school’s mission and mandates, etc., etc., must always take priority, except for small scale and temporary “models” and “experiments”, Bill Gates, notwithstanding. How many times do I have to say it? Either you put your confidence in the individual or the state. Those are your choices. I choose the individual. The state should be providing the resources and oversight, not taking over the lives of children and engineering society.
" Individual or the state" is a bullshit false dichotomy that plays well in Trumpworld.
Public education supports socialization, which is more important than ego centered "individualism." The IEP helps the kid to perform.
I had something to do with the SSA Listings of Impairments for kids. I also heard disability cases, worked with juvenile crime, etc. Most behavioral impairments can be diagnosed, treated, so that kids don't turn out to be menaces to society.
My statement about the individual and the state was not a commentary on individualism versus the state or collectivism. It was added as an afterthought when I was fatigued and I was thinking only in terms of whether the state should be deciding the direction of the individual’s life on the basis of some imagined expertise relative to curricular content and values. I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear.
I agree with you and have stated here many times, I believe, that socialization is a primary function of schooling. It is, however, a function which has been performed extremely poorly for the reasons I have often outlined. When students have no autonomy, when they feel put upon, bullied, oppressed, or ignored, or when their peer interactions are superficial and distorted by competition and myriad restriction, socialization is perverted.
“Behavioral impairments”??? Are they “learning disabilities”, impairments, lack of social skills, and problems which students bring which require amelioration??? Or, are they problems created and exacerbated by the school? Are they disabilities because they inhibit authentic learning, or are they instead reactions to extreme frustrations, abuse, the physical restraint of bodies needing movement, exercise, and deep breathing and the denial of learning opportunities which are organic and logical? Control and behavioral training are for pigeons and lab rats. Some of us were taught all to well what the schools wanted us to learn.
There are quite a few important items that are not currently taught in schools, especially religious schools. Like, what is the purpose of government? What is an autocracy, what is a theocracy, what is an agnostic?, what is wisdom?, and how to teach it, what is a dictatorship?, What are The facts of Life?, What is the purpose of a man? What is the purpose of a woman? What is the cycle of life? What is the purpose of a child? What is the true root of all evil? What is an atheist? What is capitalism? What is socialism? What is the purpose of life? How to serve good or God? Without the children knowing all the answers to these questions just teaching them knowledge only helps them to become idiots.
I’m sorry. You are asking for miracles. You want the impossible. Schools cannot and will not ever be able to teach those things. If they are to be learned, it must be through meaningful living and experience, only a small part of which can be had in an institutional setting or from instruction, training, exercises, and lectures. Knowledge is not taught. BIG MISTAKE. Where do I begin? You probably meant to say academics. Academics do very little to advance knowledge. Did you read the entire comment. “If he is indeed wise, he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind”. Please take another look.
Thank you for making my point for me. Public schools should be public service agencies and must stick to real world activities which are not about pretending to create academic wizards, geniuses, and intellectual masters. Their parents are dysfunctional in too many cases, at least in part, because of profound damage done to them in their schools during their own childhood where they were humiliated, badgered, hounded, guilt-tripped, shamed, and punished or demoralized. Not only did they not learn what they might have with respect to innumerable other things, but they failed to receive any meaningful education about navigating life, raising a family, maintaining healthy relationships, or managing money and other important things.
Your admonition not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” repeats a common error made by many people when they read into my statements something that is not there. I have not suggested relinquishing anything except coercion, threats, and intimidation and the arbitrary authority which must always accompany compulsory attendance laws. My response to that mistaken notion is that the baby was stillborn and that isn’t bathwater. Attendance laws never produced ANY positive benefits, contrary to popular opinion and what I insist must be thrown out is solely the ludicrous and paternalistic (and unconstitutional) pretention that forcing children to attend will somehow magically compensate for not understanding what children nee or how they develop and learn.
Compulsory attendance laws are the Straitjacket which proscribes positive change. Nothing good would be lost by eradicating them while literally overnight, children would have autonomy, teachers would have respect, and parents would no longer be blamed for the failures of the institution.
To whom or to what are you responding? You’ve got me mystified.
I have never to the best of my recollection ever once suggested that schools should not be available, funded by public money and monitored and regulated to protect students and to prohibit discrimination, or that teachers should not be provided and paid well and respected. Have you checked you eyesight lately?
For the record, once again, I fully support free public schooling. They are an essential public service and should be providing much more in the way of service than they ever have in the past.
For the record: Compulsory attendance in those schools for either boys or girls is an abomination. There is no such thing as “mass education” or “compulsory education” and those terms are oxymorons. I have stated repeatedly that the paternalistic, unconstitutional, and counterproductive laws must be eliminated so that schools will finally become hospitable, civil, and safe places for children. The first thing they should be doing is training children to be discerning and to not read into remarks things which are not there.
You've probably heard what they say about making assumptions. Old age and bad experiences may have something to do with my irritability about having my words misrepresented and about my intelligence being insulted, and I regret that I am not more tolerant in such instances. I am as much a feminist and a respecter of women as you are, believe it or not. However, you jumped to conclusions which have no basis in the statements I made and those conclusions are offensive to me. Ask William if I do not hold males to the same standard.
If you would be so kind as to go back and read what I actually wrote and take the time and trouble to process the logic and the message, you will see how far off base your comments were. You may not have seen my frequent posts here in the past where I have consistently reiterated my support for public schooling, teachers, teachers’ unions, and equality for all. But I did go to some trouble yesterday to spell out my thinking and to focus on the core issue.
Teachers have been given an outsize role and image which is impossible to live up to within an authoritarian paradigm. Every student should be seen as a “prodigy” of one sort or another and no student should be harmed. Maybe you believe that there are benefits which outweigh the harms. But I refuse to see victims as mere collateral damage and I am outraged at the indifference and blasé attitudes I see about what we allow these systems to do to children.
If you have doubts or questions about anything I have said, I will be more than happy to answer respectful questions.
With unhealthy food, the right wing media, the deep State billionaire globalists, the greedy churches, the right wingers are turning America into another third world failed? NATION is too good a word. You can't help someone who won't help themselves and the writer hell bent on Armageddon, so you better prepare yourself for a bunch of insane chimpanzees knocking on your door. I don't think they can be elected honestly but they are not honest or virtuous. The right are thugs!
Public schools are as good as their community provides and advocates for them. Granted school districts with weak funding will suffer until the state adds more to their budget, wealthy communities have stellar public schools because they recognize the value of a solid secular education, where students are prepared to solve problems, behave in a socially appropriate manner and grow/learn always. They are not perfect, but the alternatives which rely on scripture, alternate history and pseudo science will serve the GOP agenda of having voters who believe what they're told unquestionably and vote as directed whether from the pulpit, the podium, internet, TV or talk radio. The goal is ignorance and obedience, full stop.
This essay is dead on target as usual. I would like to clarify Thom's remarks about private schools sponsored by religious groups might leave readers thinking that they are all like Evangelical Christian grooming factories which often seem to reject a liberal education. Thanks to Trump's Education Secretary DeVos, vouchers became a federally promoted movement. As such, many private money-making scams, like Trump U are flourishing. In these schools ideological grooming overshadows liberal education. Many lack state accreditation and hire teachers lacking education credentials.
Back in the day (1952 until 1980), I graduated from a Catholic grammar and prep school, Got a BA and PhD from non-profit universities sponsored by the United Church of Christ, and my MA was from a state university. I cannot recall any courses that were not accredited, nor were textbooks or library books selectively included or excluded on religious grounds. Participation in religious rites or services at school were always optional. I took one comparative religion course for my BA, and not a single religion course for my PhD. I never felt prostheletized. Such schools still dominate and offer exceptional educations.
Despite my considerable educational experience in religion-sponsored schools, I strongly support policies that prohibit state funding of private schools. If you want to go Ivy League, then pay for it.
One side note. I have observed one edge to attending Christian private schools, and many of my academic colleagues agree. Public high school students today appear to lack critical reasoning skills. I doubt that this is unintended as politics have influence on public school curricula.
Such an important issue. Not easy. "Public Education" can't really altogether compensate for family background. I had the complete Shakespeare in my barely big-enough lap playing the "can you find what they're saying on TV? Isn't this fun?" game when primitive PBS was showing "The Age of Kings." (Isn't it astounding, I remember the title of the series, that was the positive intensity!) We got National Geographic, etc., and stacks of the Time-Life educational picture books were under the coffee tables. My parents called it :"The Hidden Curriculum of the Middle-class Home." Both teachers. Learning needs to be valued in the broader culture; i.e. recognition of upward mobility aspirations. There is almost a glorification of the opposite in the Zeitgeist, and I humbly submit it may be a negative self-reinforcing spiral fueled by frustration of hope, dare I reference Aesop, the fox who justifies failure..... I happen to be reading a novel, the most charming aspect of which, (to me) is a venerable VW camper named "Rocinante." Like the worldwide masses referenced in "Ship of Fools," who do not know what a "curve ball on the inside corner" is, how many, educated enough to commence this book, ("A Darker Place," Laurie R. King) yet never heard of "Rocinante?" Easy to Google, I assume, but curiosity is needed. We are inundated with information at our fingertips, yet seek narrow indoctrination. Is that a reaction to overwhelm?
I recently wrote about how the book bans sweeping the nation aren't about the books themselves. I received a lot of feedback about how this perspective made more sense than just pockets of people bothered by specific titles. And how taking this in a broader perspective also raises the level of concern about what is actually happening.
"Book bans are not so much about the content of specific books as they are about instilling fundamental Christian nationalism, packaged in a glossy white box with a pink OR blue bow, and sold to Americans as “grassroots efforts to protect our children.” The movements hawking that box are proclaiming loudly that American will be safe when it is white, straight, wealthy, patriarchal, and bound by biblically self-justified moralistic rules, handpicked from a 2000-year old text.
This may seem like an extreme interpretation about the actions of a few, “innocent” soccer moms who have proclaimed themselves to be “moms for ‘liberty’” and “joyful warriors” but their end game is far from innocent and far more insidious than they let on. The short-game is to destabilize and create chaos. The long-game is to dismantle public libraries and privatize public schools using voucher systems. Private schools where the white nationalistic narrative can be indoctrinated and strictly controlled."
https://open.substack.com/pub/danismart/p/book-bans-are-not-about-books?r=1c5095&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Wow Dani. You hit the nail on the head. Nothing to add.
In a past life, I've represented school districts, teachers' unions (AFT), individuals involved. IMHO the greatest thing that happened to public education was the Education Act. I go back to the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 that prohibits discrimination based on disability in any program or activity operated by recipients of federal funds. now IDEA. Some states now provide that every kid should have an Individualized Educational Prescription, IEP, https://www.verywellfamily.com/essential-parts-of-an-individual-education-program-2162702#:~:text=The%20IEP%20must%20contain%20information,Each%20objective%20should%20be%20measurable.
Unfortunately, parochial schools have been able to use such programs to subsidize religious education. I don't think there is any magic to local control, because local school boards are often dominated or intimidated by groups who want to acquire public funds for their own devices.
Besides the religious "right", libertarians object to any public governmental activity except for defense spending. They object to educating other peoples' kids. They do support tax credits for tuition and other expenditures related to an individual’s education.
https://www.ontheissues.org/Celeb/Libertarian_Party_education.htm
https://www.lp.org/issues/education/
Outstanding comment Daniel.
My perspective is that we the (reasonable people) and the Democratic Party, since Goldwater, have not paid attention to, nor funded local political races, While at the same time, the Republicans have been plowing resources and energy into taking control of government at all levels.
Who runs for school boards, not liberals but conservatives. And who motivates these conservatives, preachers and priests, who accurately perceive secularism as a threat to their way of life, their parasitic lifestyle, there social status, prestige and income.
The real push for control of education started with Jerry Falwell and his Moral Majority when Reagan ran the first time in 1980, my mail box was swamped with his propaganda, and from them I learned the effective way of writing for effect.
Short paragraphs with one thought or subject.
Meanwhile Democrats (liberals) have been content with sitting back and putting their energy into more "important" things, like the General Election, especially the Presidential race.
Thus leaving the patriarchal, white Christian nationalism to command the low ground, in warfare the objective is almost always to command the high ground, however a persistent assault from the low ground almost always takes the high ground. Caesar at Alesia , battle of Missionary ridge during the siege of Chatanooga. Salah al din's siege of Jerusalem, Rome's siege of Masada
Yes Democrats take the high ground, because they are too weak and feckless to invest money in the low ground. Also they don't have the money, because those with enough money for discretionary spending, splurges most of it, on those most likely to give them tax and regulation breaks, and that is the party that is supported by a highly motivated , fearful and angry base.
He who controls the amygdala, the lizard brain, controls their society. Then it is amygdala vs amygdala, and if the pre frontal cortex steps in, it invariably loses to the amygdala.
If we are to save a secular democracy, then the Democratic party had best start investing in local races, school board, sheriff, animal control officers.
And here comes the skeptic, the cynic, if the Democrats haven't learned a lesson in over half a century it is already too late
Does anyone here feel like Sisyphus, rolling that stone up a hill, only to have it roll back down.
I am genuinely fearful that the MAGAts and Trump will attain power next year and that will be the death knell of a great experiment, unless somehow the Democratic party shakes off it's fleas, and becomes aggressive, because it is our only hope, as we are in struggle for not only the soul of a nation, but the very freedoms, that took 27 Amendments to secure.
A cynic would say that public education is merely babysitting. About half of the students have no interest in learning anything. Socialization is probably more important anyway.
Where I live, the Bush family had an economic interest in privatizing everything. Jeb's kids went to school with my niece. They had an investment interest in the standardized tests required by the federal Department of Education, had a financial interest in charter schools, etc . The concept is to take funds that would normally go to public schools. Never mind that the charter schools were an abject failure.
In Pennsyltucky, we sold part of our local schools to the Amish, after Wisconsin v. Yoder. 13 year old "teachers." The object is to avoid promoting the kids to the junior high level, where they would have to go to an integrated school.
Because of Lemon v Kurtzman, had to pay for transportation, special services for parochial schools, especially when board members were Catholics.
Nepotism, fraud are the currencies in many, if not most districts. At one time, here in Baghdad By the Sea could have a quorum of board members in the big house. Same with union officials.
Daniel this is an off topic rant, I just read an email from Democracy Now. "“No Ceasefire, No Votes”: Arab American Support for Biden Plummets over Gaza Ahead of 2024 Election" Idiots just like black males who are blackmailing Biden because they haven't got all they want, now.
What do these shallow idiots think will happen when Trump wins, business as usual? Until the next election when the Democrats will be crawling on their knees for their votes.
Trump is the racist avatar and butt buddies with Bibi, both are criminals and anti human, so tell me how that is going to work out for the Palestinians and their sympathizers.
I live a boat ride away from Canada and have a lot of money in savings, I just hope that Canada will accept me as a political refugee.
Pure unadulterated myopic stupidity thinking that holding their breath till they turn blue, will achieve their goals.Not even considering the unintended consequences of a second Trump presidency, and a completely MAGA congress.
I am upset with Biden as well, because he and the Democratic party did not do what they promise, and he selected a Conservative Republican as AG, and never cleaned the Trump humpers out of cabinet positions, which Trump created in his final days. He even revoked the Trump Executive order, which he could have used to purge DOJ, DHS, NSA, FBI, IRS, DOD, etc of the Trump humpers that Trump embedded in his final weeks." His Deep State is thriving well, and subverting justice, especially in the DOJ, a good example is the special counsel that is prosecuting Hunter.
But I will crawl over broken glass to vote for Biden, because the alternative is unthinkable, These self righteous assholes, think that they can punish the Democrats for not acceding to their demands, and all they are doing is laying the foundations for their own persecution by the MAGAts. Trump has warned them, and the fools are not paying attention. They deserve their just reward for fecklessness, but I and you don't.
Their motto is, whether they know it or not, Bibbi and Trump, not Biden.
I agree. Check out Robert Reich today.
Thanks, I get his newsletter. You are three hours ahead of me.
I remember the 1973 war vividly. My boss, Col Baranowski, got his nose into the airlift of weapons and munitions, and proudly displayed a picture taken with Golda Meir. Personally I don't recall suffering from the long lines and prices at the gas pump, then again I drove a 1970 Maverick, six cyl flathead, which got great gas mileage.
It doesn't quite look like an oil embargo at this point, maybe because we produce enough oil, that Exxon and their ilk are exporting, the excess but the oil cartel will take advantage of any event, to raise prices and maximize profits.
Daniels says" Never mind that the charter schools were an abject failure." and who immediately springs to mind but Rahm Emanuel and Chicago, he and Betsy Devos.
Rahm is a poison that naive Obama, probably at the behest of Larry Summers, another abomination, brought into the government.
I had the misfortune or rather the good fortune, of having been exposed to the dregs who posed as teachers, after WWII. All of the good teachers were either drafted or enlisted in the war, or served on production lines "Rosie the Riveter",who no longer than VJ day was proclaimed than women in the factories forced to attend classes on how to wear sun dresses, make up and become submissive dollies again.
The 4F's, the elderly, the mentally unbalanced were left to fill teaching slots, and in Philadelphia, PA that was the cadre of public schools, a teaching staff of non compus mentis, my 1st algebra teacher was certifiable, my English teacher was beyond her ken, and boring. In all of their classes, I sat staring out the window, until I stopped going to school, and instead headed for the public library, under the mentorship of the librarian, who promised not to report me for truancy, if I finished her reading assignments and passed her quizzes.
GOP agenda:
Teach Rockwell.
Deliver Orwell.
If by Rockwell,you mean George Lincoln Rockwell. I quite agree. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Lincoln_Rockwell
And today, in Texas, voting is happening on constitutional amendments...one is promoting property tax lowering...one of the ways that money will be replaced is “compressing public school maintenance and operation funds” quote from Gary Van Deaver newsletter.
Growing up in an evangelical family, attending Sunday School in an evangelical church, I heard the parable of the two houses hundreds of times. The house built upon the sand is washed away in the storm or the flood. The house built upon the rock remains firmly in place and withstands the storm or the flood and the tests of time.
To weather the storms and survive attacks, our schools and our educational infrastructure should be built on a foundation that is rock solid and invulnerable to forces or to people whose aim is to undermine or destroy them for their malign purposes, which are not compatible with our purposes (which in this case allow for a democratic and progressive orientation to education).
I have quoted here before what the Lebanese poet Kahlil Gibran wrote about education in his famous poem from his book, “The Prophet”, which bears repeating once again. He said:
“If he is indeed wise, he does not bid you to enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind.”
No truer words were ever spoken. Our conceptions of schools and education are based on a false notion of teaching and learning, fatally undermining their very foundation. The learner or the student can never be at the center and the child is never led to the “threshold” of her own mind as long as we have a paradigm in which learning consistently follows teaching and the answers constantly precede the learner’s questions.
When we suffer from inherited illusions about our capability as arrogant adults, teachers, and administrators to always ascertain precisely what the child needs to know, and at what time, and our imagined right to arbitrarily compel the child to “learn” what we choose to teach from our perspective and determined by our measurements, we are on a foundation of sand. Who died and made us the omniscient teachers and guardians of true knowledge?
As parents and as adults we have not only the right, but the duty to take responsibility for education. Knowledge is built on the experience, discoveries, and insights of the past.
However, none of that came prepackaged from god or from ANY authority. Respect for the process and dignity for the learner are paramount. Any hint of coercion and any pretense of power or superiority over the student is inimical to the process. A curriculum which is not organic, not originating from the curiosity and spontaneous questions of the learners and derived from a real life and literature rather than an artifice of teaching or instruction for the sole purpose of instruction is an abstraction and a distraction.
How much time do we have left for this lesson to sink in? How much longer will we cling to the use of law, threats, intimidation, force, and punishment to attempt to impose education upon our highly capable and brilliant children? Repeat after me: “If he is indeed wise, he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom.”
Gibran was writing a full century ago. Dewey tried to tell us soon after. Where does our arrogance come from and when will we learn humility from the intelligence of our children?
As a follower here (Moninna) stated in a message sent to me last week,
“Mass state education has often been referred to as simply a religious doctrinal teaching of secular beliefs.”
In other words, it cannot be called education at all, in my estimation. In a frame or context of transmitting pre-existing knowledge from a position of superior knowledge and doctrinal belief (including even the facts of “hard science”), one inhibits critical thinking and knowledge creation. Teaching in a milieu where the student is passive, submissive, and a recipient of an officially approved curriculum establishes a condition lacking adequate context, which makes information, data, language, or concepts less meaningful, real, and intelligible. The heavy hand of the state obliterates initiative and decimates the spirit.
When the innumerable and chronic failures of our schools are mentioned and the reality of 25% of our citizens remain illiterate (and probably another 30-35% are semi-literate, inept, and incapable of critical thinking) educators and other people who are supposedly trustworthy reflexively hit the “minimize” button. Why is that? Why are they not honest with themselves or with us? Why do they deny reality? Why do they need so badly to believe that traditional schools are not built on the sand of mythology and coercion, and that their crumbling is not the consequence of their defective authoritarian structure?
You tell me.
I repeat myself, again and again. It is not about funding, teacher salaries, or unions. It is not about good or bad programs, policies, curricula, techniques, or strategies, and it is most definitely not about test scores or IQ scores. The reactionaries and privatizers have it all wrong. But, so also do the traditionalists and the purveyors of retrenchment to some version of the good old days. Our schools are creating authoritarians and followers and they are anti-intellectual factories for conservativism. You need to get this right Thom. Nostalgia and anecdotes are not reliable guides. Look at the science - and weep.
Outstanding discourse Robert. It has been over half a century since I read Khalil Gilbran's the Prophet, although I dispute that he was Lebanese, as Lebanon was not then a country. More of a Persian, and by that I don't mean Iranian, that is also a later invention.
I consider myself an autodidcact, because even though I have a Masters degree, my knowledge base is not that taught in brainwashing factories, but from my own reading, and interests which are still eclectic.
I'm a HS drop out, who within 8 months passed both a HS GED and an AA GED (they had such a thing back in 1958). Graduated from university with a 3.74 GPA and a Masters with 3.47 GPA, and essentially discarded most of the swill that they tried to indoctrinate me with. But first you need to read and write, and that can be done with starting kids off with an Alphabet Book.
I have bought and am buying my bisnieto a library of bilingual books, including bi linqual books and he is not yet 2 (big birthday present coming for him).
Education is important but not the homogenious social reinforcement skill that are shoved down kids throats, at the same time kids need the social exposure that school provides, from that they learn h ow to survive, but these days of internet education (and I include Tik Tok, Instagram, Telegram, what not is not education it is mind rot. One must learn how to interact wiith other people from an early age, otherwise they grow up as tools and fools.
My sis was very religious, and wanted to protect her youngest from the vagaries and realities of life, so she home schooled her daughter and her social life was confined to church. She did a great job of imparting essential and socialy accepted knowledge, as she won a full scholarship, but coming into contact with the real world, and no longer protected,she was naive, and vulnerable to being exploited. She wound up with teaching credentials, took a position in W VA, teaching her own peers, and her life went downhill after that., into drug abuse, being in a relationship with a low life drug abusing red neck, ran over by a drug abusing redneck in a pick up truck, in a supermarket parking lot, and it only gets worse.
Question is how do you develop inquisitive, critical thinking skills, and teach kids not to believe everything you see and hear, to arrive at one's own opinions and not acquire them because some "authority" exposes you, or tells you that "they are the truth".
I started on my own path at age 8, when I read The Odyessey by Homer, intrigued I knew it was ancient Greek fiction, then at age 12 I read the Bible, and once again realized that I was reading fiction. Most of the swill be it history or economics, even sometimes science,has proven to be fiction.
Children need an education, but a real one, where they are taught and praised for critical thinking, not punished because they don't digest the swill.
Thom has done a great service in providing information that enables people to learn "Hidden History" You won't find his info, ideas or writings in curiculum or even libraries.
"The learner or the student can never be at the center...." Check out the IEP. The kid is at the center.
Whereas the method in public education is usually pedagogy, it probably could as well be andragogy. Pedagogy is the teaching dependent personalities. Andragogy is the facilitation learning for "self-directed" learners. E.G. Montessori Theory is an educational approach that emphasizes individualized instruction and self-paced learning. It is based on the belief that children are naturally curious and capable of learning independently.
Mr. Solomon,
There you go with the methodology, techniques, and theory! Re-inventing the educational wheel, yet again. Montessori, Dewey, Tolstoy, and Rousseau were writing a century or more ago. Tell us something we don’t know.
There is a reason we are stuck in reverse. There is a reason we cannot escape the pedagogical obsessions. We have allowed ourselves to be dependent upon our teachers and our schools for something we are mistakenly calling education.
My dad used to say often that children should be seen and not heard. I think teachers should be seen and heard from only when students ask for their input! I am the last person to diminish the importance of “good” teachers. However, when children are given a mindset from the time they can speak or before that they will only learn when they attend a school, “pay attention” to a teacher, and follow instructions for 12 years, we have completely defeated our purposes.
Institutionalizing learning or “education” and creating a category for teaching that takes the initiative away from the individual child is our first mistake. But then, we compounded and perpetuated the error by passing laws to require school attendance. There is one way and one way only to escape that trap.
IEP’s are splendid. But they cannot ever be implemented on any scale for any length of time. All such innovations run counter to the authoritarian bureaucracy which is endemic to compulsory attendance. Control, order, discipline, obsessive measurement, focusing on the group and the school’s mission and mandates, etc., etc., must always take priority, except for small scale and temporary “models” and “experiments”, Bill Gates, notwithstanding. How many times do I have to say it? Either you put your confidence in the individual or the state. Those are your choices. I choose the individual. The state should be providing the resources and oversight, not taking over the lives of children and engineering society.
" Individual or the state" is a bullshit false dichotomy that plays well in Trumpworld.
Public education supports socialization, which is more important than ego centered "individualism." The IEP helps the kid to perform.
I had something to do with the SSA Listings of Impairments for kids. I also heard disability cases, worked with juvenile crime, etc. Most behavioral impairments can be diagnosed, treated, so that kids don't turn out to be menaces to society.
Mr. Solomon,
My statement about the individual and the state was not a commentary on individualism versus the state or collectivism. It was added as an afterthought when I was fatigued and I was thinking only in terms of whether the state should be deciding the direction of the individual’s life on the basis of some imagined expertise relative to curricular content and values. I’m sorry if I wasn’t clear.
I agree with you and have stated here many times, I believe, that socialization is a primary function of schooling. It is, however, a function which has been performed extremely poorly for the reasons I have often outlined. When students have no autonomy, when they feel put upon, bullied, oppressed, or ignored, or when their peer interactions are superficial and distorted by competition and myriad restriction, socialization is perverted.
“Behavioral impairments”??? Are they “learning disabilities”, impairments, lack of social skills, and problems which students bring which require amelioration??? Or, are they problems created and exacerbated by the school? Are they disabilities because they inhibit authentic learning, or are they instead reactions to extreme frustrations, abuse, the physical restraint of bodies needing movement, exercise, and deep breathing and the denial of learning opportunities which are organic and logical? Control and behavioral training are for pigeons and lab rats. Some of us were taught all to well what the schools wanted us to learn.
There are quite a few important items that are not currently taught in schools, especially religious schools. Like, what is the purpose of government? What is an autocracy, what is a theocracy, what is an agnostic?, what is wisdom?, and how to teach it, what is a dictatorship?, What are The facts of Life?, What is the purpose of a man? What is the purpose of a woman? What is the cycle of life? What is the purpose of a child? What is the true root of all evil? What is an atheist? What is capitalism? What is socialism? What is the purpose of life? How to serve good or God? Without the children knowing all the answers to these questions just teaching them knowledge only helps them to become idiots.
Mr. Johnson,
I’m sorry. You are asking for miracles. You want the impossible. Schools cannot and will not ever be able to teach those things. If they are to be learned, it must be through meaningful living and experience, only a small part of which can be had in an institutional setting or from instruction, training, exercises, and lectures. Knowledge is not taught. BIG MISTAKE. Where do I begin? You probably meant to say academics. Academics do very little to advance knowledge. Did you read the entire comment. “If he is indeed wise, he does not bid you enter the house of his wisdom, but rather leads you to the threshold of your own mind”. Please take another look.
Carolyn,
Thank you for making my point for me. Public schools should be public service agencies and must stick to real world activities which are not about pretending to create academic wizards, geniuses, and intellectual masters. Their parents are dysfunctional in too many cases, at least in part, because of profound damage done to them in their schools during their own childhood where they were humiliated, badgered, hounded, guilt-tripped, shamed, and punished or demoralized. Not only did they not learn what they might have with respect to innumerable other things, but they failed to receive any meaningful education about navigating life, raising a family, maintaining healthy relationships, or managing money and other important things.
Your admonition not to “throw the baby out with the bathwater” repeats a common error made by many people when they read into my statements something that is not there. I have not suggested relinquishing anything except coercion, threats, and intimidation and the arbitrary authority which must always accompany compulsory attendance laws. My response to that mistaken notion is that the baby was stillborn and that isn’t bathwater. Attendance laws never produced ANY positive benefits, contrary to popular opinion and what I insist must be thrown out is solely the ludicrous and paternalistic (and unconstitutional) pretention that forcing children to attend will somehow magically compensate for not understanding what children nee or how they develop and learn.
Compulsory attendance laws are the Straitjacket which proscribes positive change. Nothing good would be lost by eradicating them while literally overnight, children would have autonomy, teachers would have respect, and parents would no longer be blamed for the failures of the institution.
Carolyn,
To whom or to what are you responding? You’ve got me mystified.
I have never to the best of my recollection ever once suggested that schools should not be available, funded by public money and monitored and regulated to protect students and to prohibit discrimination, or that teachers should not be provided and paid well and respected. Have you checked you eyesight lately?
For the record, once again, I fully support free public schooling. They are an essential public service and should be providing much more in the way of service than they ever have in the past.
For the record: Compulsory attendance in those schools for either boys or girls is an abomination. There is no such thing as “mass education” or “compulsory education” and those terms are oxymorons. I have stated repeatedly that the paternalistic, unconstitutional, and counterproductive laws must be eliminated so that schools will finally become hospitable, civil, and safe places for children. The first thing they should be doing is training children to be discerning and to not read into remarks things which are not there.
Carolyn,
You've probably heard what they say about making assumptions. Old age and bad experiences may have something to do with my irritability about having my words misrepresented and about my intelligence being insulted, and I regret that I am not more tolerant in such instances. I am as much a feminist and a respecter of women as you are, believe it or not. However, you jumped to conclusions which have no basis in the statements I made and those conclusions are offensive to me. Ask William if I do not hold males to the same standard.
If you would be so kind as to go back and read what I actually wrote and take the time and trouble to process the logic and the message, you will see how far off base your comments were. You may not have seen my frequent posts here in the past where I have consistently reiterated my support for public schooling, teachers, teachers’ unions, and equality for all. But I did go to some trouble yesterday to spell out my thinking and to focus on the core issue.
Teachers have been given an outsize role and image which is impossible to live up to within an authoritarian paradigm. Every student should be seen as a “prodigy” of one sort or another and no student should be harmed. Maybe you believe that there are benefits which outweigh the harms. But I refuse to see victims as mere collateral damage and I am outraged at the indifference and blasé attitudes I see about what we allow these systems to do to children.
If you have doubts or questions about anything I have said, I will be more than happy to answer respectful questions.
I work for the public school district in Texas. Abbott is trying to collapse the system by pushing vouchers. We should all be afraid if he does.
With unhealthy food, the right wing media, the deep State billionaire globalists, the greedy churches, the right wingers are turning America into another third world failed? NATION is too good a word. You can't help someone who won't help themselves and the writer hell bent on Armageddon, so you better prepare yourself for a bunch of insane chimpanzees knocking on your door. I don't think they can be elected honestly but they are not honest or virtuous. The right are thugs!
Public schools are as good as their community provides and advocates for them. Granted school districts with weak funding will suffer until the state adds more to their budget, wealthy communities have stellar public schools because they recognize the value of a solid secular education, where students are prepared to solve problems, behave in a socially appropriate manner and grow/learn always. They are not perfect, but the alternatives which rely on scripture, alternate history and pseudo science will serve the GOP agenda of having voters who believe what they're told unquestionably and vote as directed whether from the pulpit, the podium, internet, TV or talk radio. The goal is ignorance and obedience, full stop.
This essay is dead on target as usual. I would like to clarify Thom's remarks about private schools sponsored by religious groups might leave readers thinking that they are all like Evangelical Christian grooming factories which often seem to reject a liberal education. Thanks to Trump's Education Secretary DeVos, vouchers became a federally promoted movement. As such, many private money-making scams, like Trump U are flourishing. In these schools ideological grooming overshadows liberal education. Many lack state accreditation and hire teachers lacking education credentials.
Back in the day (1952 until 1980), I graduated from a Catholic grammar and prep school, Got a BA and PhD from non-profit universities sponsored by the United Church of Christ, and my MA was from a state university. I cannot recall any courses that were not accredited, nor were textbooks or library books selectively included or excluded on religious grounds. Participation in religious rites or services at school were always optional. I took one comparative religion course for my BA, and not a single religion course for my PhD. I never felt prostheletized. Such schools still dominate and offer exceptional educations.
Despite my considerable educational experience in religion-sponsored schools, I strongly support policies that prohibit state funding of private schools. If you want to go Ivy League, then pay for it.
One side note. I have observed one edge to attending Christian private schools, and many of my academic colleagues agree. Public high school students today appear to lack critical reasoning skills. I doubt that this is unintended as politics have influence on public school curricula.
Such an important issue. Not easy. "Public Education" can't really altogether compensate for family background. I had the complete Shakespeare in my barely big-enough lap playing the "can you find what they're saying on TV? Isn't this fun?" game when primitive PBS was showing "The Age of Kings." (Isn't it astounding, I remember the title of the series, that was the positive intensity!) We got National Geographic, etc., and stacks of the Time-Life educational picture books were under the coffee tables. My parents called it :"The Hidden Curriculum of the Middle-class Home." Both teachers. Learning needs to be valued in the broader culture; i.e. recognition of upward mobility aspirations. There is almost a glorification of the opposite in the Zeitgeist, and I humbly submit it may be a negative self-reinforcing spiral fueled by frustration of hope, dare I reference Aesop, the fox who justifies failure..... I happen to be reading a novel, the most charming aspect of which, (to me) is a venerable VW camper named "Rocinante." Like the worldwide masses referenced in "Ship of Fools," who do not know what a "curve ball on the inside corner" is, how many, educated enough to commence this book, ("A Darker Place," Laurie R. King) yet never heard of "Rocinante?" Easy to Google, I assume, but curiosity is needed. We are inundated with information at our fingertips, yet seek narrow indoctrination. Is that a reaction to overwhelm?
Nothing brings me scutting to edge