In Title 42, Gorsuch plays the little boy who declared the emperor was wearing no clothes. Now, if only he’ll be consistent in applying his new understanding of the Court beyond just immigration...
Thom, I bought your book on the Supreme Court and have been reading it. This was after they overturned Roe v Wade and I was trying to understand their processes - and just how they could completely ignore precedence and how many times that decision had been upheld. The more I read about the Court as nd especially how they have no “gatekeeper” - as do our other branches of govt. Madison (I believe) called it “despotic” and questioned its existence at all. For Gorsuch to blithely say “the Court doesn’t make policy” - well, that would almost be hilarious, if it weren’t so completely absurd and a downright lie. I’d say, just say FIRST and foremost, if Citizens United isn’t policy for all our oligarchs and greedy politicians (and an urging for the Koch family to set up their network to CHOOSE their politicians and therefore which party shall dominate Congress) then, boy, I don’t know “policy” at all. The Supremes have made voting much harder by their picking and choosing of the laws in the Civil Rights bill passed by Congress & signed by President Johnson - that’s not policy-making, it is most definitely legislating! I don’t even see ANY need fit this Court anymore. The first mistake made in forming it was to call it “Supreme”
The Supreme Court was originally modeled on the Iroquois Nation's (Haudenosaunee Confederacy) structure of Tribal government. The Clan mothers were essentially the Supreme Court that over-rode the Chiefs (executive branch) and other Clan/Tribal leaders (the House of Representatives/Senate). The Clan Mothers (and many were the mothers of the Chiefs and other leaders) would step in and rule, but more often negotiate when the men (essentially) overstepped their power and infringed on other's rights. The Seal for the US actually has the eagle holding 11 (I think) arrows that represented the 11 major tribes of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. If only our US Supreme Court had maintained it's original purpose; to slap the hands of Jr. when he got out of line!
Thom - I love your work - and really wish you would not make statements like - "Now the pandemic crisis is largely over".
It isn't remotely over. I suggest you peruse this latest post by Katelyn Jetelina. In China, COVID is wildly out of control. Further, China is not reporting any genomic information, so there is no way to track variant evolution from the largest country in the world. It is a ticking bomb simply waiting for the right mutation.
Yes, thank you. That did pop out in an otherwise excellent article. We are far from being out of the woods.
And to be considered a moral and honorable nation, we must get rid of this Title 42 nonsense, reform immigration laws, and allow a timely process to address the needs of all potential immigrants and asylum seekers as well as instituting fair and humane enforcement procedures when our laws are not respected. It's all just common sense and common decency -- which is why none of it will happen. As long as fools keep electing fools to positions of power greater than swamping out bars on Sunday mornings, there will always be an OMG "crisis on the Southern border!" It's a forever wedge issue to fire up racists at home in the Republican Party.
It has been a very long time since I was in high school (1950's) and decades since I took Political Science classes in college (1960's and 70's) but I am certain that I heard that phrase "co-equal branches of government" a lot and have always believed that the Supreme Court was meant to have great power as the court of last resort. So much for civics classes. What else did they get wrong? I do not believe I was unique in having learned the bare minimum (mostly as a matter of disconnected memorized data), most of which was forgotten hours after the test. Thom is the best teacher one could ask for. But high school isn't the best place for this kind of learning, and students must have a personal interest and recognize their own personal stake in accurate information and grounded, connected knowledge accruing for their own purposes within a milieu free of competition, coercion, excessive evaluation, and false expectation. Now, how will millions of people get the message and learn that John Roberts is not a king or a deity, either? School's out.
Janet, I graduated in '59 believing I had received a splendid education, despite being semi-literate, inept, ignorant about most everything happening around me and the world, and over-confident about my future. It was all an illusion. I had daydreamed through much of 12 years, and mostly faked it, although I did have a few incredible teachers. But had I actually been at the top of my class, I wouldn't credit the school or the "educational system". My grandson gave me the book, "Lies My Teacher Told Me". There are innumerable examples and many which are at the center of our worldview and our faulty perceptions about the nation and the world. The truth is that school, primarily because of compulsory attendance laws, is structured to inhibit exploration, curiosity, critical thinking, autonomy, and a true understanding of and appreciation for liberty, justice, and the American way. The laws were never about education or free agency or intellectual growth and knowledge acquisition. School has always been the agency to control the population, to perpetuate the power structure and the economic system, and a means for preventing the masses from figuring out how the wealthy overlords are sticking it to them. Nothing will change; nothing can change, until those laws are obliterated.
You refer to what you were taught and what is being taught now in public schools. This conception of education as being what is "taught" is where we made our first mistake. Education is not a process of sitting at the feet of the master and learning all the master has to offer, which may or may not be worth knowing or accurate, may or may not be understood and acquired thoroughly, and which probably has a shelf life that expired yesterday. Even Thom, who has an amazing amount of knowledge and who we have proved we can trust much more than most such scholars cannot merely impart his astounding knowledge and wisdom to us through some type of transmission or osmosis.
When teachers and schools are seen as repositories of knowledge and information instead of as conduits, sources or resources, and guides, and when they provide more structure and control, rather than inspiration, they undermine the educational process. No one has ever said it better than the great poet of a century ago, Kahlil Gibran, in his poem on education. He said, “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”.
There are many people with knowledge and expertise which can be extremely useful and we should seek them out for what we can use in our own search for meaning, comprehension, experience, and knowledge, of course. But that is just the bare-bones framework for what should become our own self-created “body of knowledge” (emphasis on body). Movement, activity, experience, observation, contemplation and rumination, and living life in the real world are where education happens.
You have stated that your own reading and research after college and your learning while in college, presumably toward your own goals and because of your own initiative were of much greater relevance and value to you. The issue I see is not what “they are teaching” in public schools”. The issues are that authorities, officials, supposed experts, and professional educators have presumed to know what should and should not be taught or how it should be taught, and that children are obliged to attend regardless of their interests, aptitudes, backgrounds, maturity, engagement, psychological or mental security and development, social skill, intellectual capabilities, or life circumstances. Forced learning is by definition indoctrination. The problem as I have stated here dozens of times now is the law which mandates attendance. The laws dictate that school will be an authoritarian bureaucracy in the absence of heroic and extraordinary efforts to resist the machine, always leading to huge sacrifices and eventual burnout.
The myths about school have pervaded society to the point where I find myself starting to write an entire book every time I encounter someone who so sincerely schools me on the benevolence and benefits, or at least the necessity of the traditional paradigm. I think I will have to try to give you the thumbnail version and possibly refer you to some literature.
Like nearly everyone else in the modern world, you appear to use the terms “school” and “education” interchangeably. They are NOT the same. Not even close. What you left unsaid but which is clearly intimated is that there are children who would not attend school if their parents were not required by law to get them there. What does that say about the schools? Do you hear the paternalism in that supposition? Are we talking about a particular demographic? Could it be that some parents were so poorly served, so humiliated, so discriminated against, so frustrated, or so abused that they want to spare their kids from such pain and misery?
The very things that make schools a place that feels so inhospitable and even offensive to certain individuals or groups are the things that spring forth from the legal compulsion. Free schools do not repel students and cause revulsion as a rule. Getting rid of the unconstitutional and misanthropic laws would do nothing other than to make them free schools where power does not reside in the hands of anonymous or self-important and imperious officials and frequently incompetent administrators.
I hear echoes of the “back to basics” philosophy in your words. My great granddaughter’s basics are not the same by any stretch as your grandson’s basics. The basics that can somehow be distilled out and reconstituted for whole classes of students are imaginary, cooked up by some egotistical brainiac. Children come with a complete set of unidentified and unimaginable basics on the first day of school. Bulldozing their conceptions and ideas and beliefs and trying to impose your own miniaturized version of a lot of academic Pablum is not doing them any favor in my opinion. Not to mention the fact that they may have zero interest in sitting at a desk and doing ridiculous exercises and busy work. I think the first duty of a teacher is to ask questions and discover what the students know or think they know and to build on that individually.
You say that children “…need to learn language, math, science, and other basic skills…”. First, learning of the sort you are referring to cannot be forced. That is a 17th century misconception. Learning does occur in schools because children are typically primed to figure some things out with a few cues and clues, they are ordinarily bright and insightful, and most teachers manage to sugar-coat the coercion with persuasive techniques, individual attention for certain kids, and lots and lots of repetition. However, some of the kids got it on the first day and are idling in neutral or becoming cynical and frustrated while others need extra help for hours or days, and in far too many instances, there are at a minimum, two or three who only appear to have a comprehensive grasp of what is being presented, which escapes them in short order, leaving them out of the next successive loop.
Critical thinking skills are not taught. You learned yours through extensive practice over lengthy periods, by observation, through trial and no small amount of error, by reading about a wide variety of situations and examples, and primarily through a great deal of private, personal ideation. Schools as we know them specialize in preventing private, personal thought. They are designed to undermine critical thinking which might motivate a student to recognize the hypocrisy, wasted time and effort, indoctrination, inequality or unfairness, and arbitrariness. Critical thinkers are branded as misfits for the most part. Look around at the high school graduates you see and ask yourself how many learned critical thinking skills in twelve years of subjugation.
Mass education is the stuff of mythology. You spoke of social services. Schools would be great if they would stick to providing social services and adults who respect and like kids enough to avoid trying to mold them in their own image, to control them, or to transform them into little adult soldiers saving the country from ignorance.
The long and the short of it is that compulsory attendance laws give the state dominion over the lives of children which no state should have and no state is remotely qualified to possess. If the people truly value education, knowledge, and intellectual development, they will fund those things and make them appealing and achievable enough that they will have many more enthusiastic takers than they can imagine.
Weeks ago, I sent Thom a compilation of excerpts, citations and quotes, and observation with incontrovertible proof that our schools are failing miserably on many fronts. It is only thirty pages, only because most of the current research is now behind a pay wall and inaccessible to me. Otherwise, I have no doubt I could have easily found ten times that amount, had I found the time to dig through it all. He is greatly concerned about those “corporate criminals” and other mercenary bean counters who want to privatize schooling, as am I. Unfortunately, the massive failures resulting from compulsory attendance laws have greased the skids and opened all kinds of doors for those people to swoop in and pretend to save the day. We may already be past the point of no return. No one is willing to fight to free children from corrosive environments and authoritarianism masking as education.
BTW, I am all for increasing teacher pay and I do not believe unions should be scapegoated. There are many wonderful people in the profession who make incredible sacrifices for kids. But once again, the bureaucracy and the misguided practices and procedures set the stage for many who are unqualified, cruel, over-ambitious, or apathetic.
Justice Gorsuch is one to watch. He has an interesting background. Despite a very Catholic education, after he married, he switched to an Episcopal church. Nope to a pope.
I wondered what it must have felt like to get the stolen seat on the Court, thinking it had to take the shine off such a prize. I think this line from WIKI may answer some of that: "It was reported by the Associated Press that, as a courtesy, Gorsuch's first call after the nomination was to President Obama's pick for the same position, Merrick Garland, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit."
Their life-paths may cross once again if AG Garland decides prosecute the former president.
Another great history lesson and myth-busted by Thom..
Black-robed priests and priestess issuing religious edicts from on high, legislating from the bench, openly taking bribes from wealthy authoritarian bigots, laughing in our faces -- fascism at its finest in good-old-boy Meerkkka.
Thom, I bought your book on the Supreme Court and have been reading it. This was after they overturned Roe v Wade and I was trying to understand their processes - and just how they could completely ignore precedence and how many times that decision had been upheld. The more I read about the Court as nd especially how they have no “gatekeeper” - as do our other branches of govt. Madison (I believe) called it “despotic” and questioned its existence at all. For Gorsuch to blithely say “the Court doesn’t make policy” - well, that would almost be hilarious, if it weren’t so completely absurd and a downright lie. I’d say, just say FIRST and foremost, if Citizens United isn’t policy for all our oligarchs and greedy politicians (and an urging for the Koch family to set up their network to CHOOSE their politicians and therefore which party shall dominate Congress) then, boy, I don’t know “policy” at all. The Supremes have made voting much harder by their picking and choosing of the laws in the Civil Rights bill passed by Congress & signed by President Johnson - that’s not policy-making, it is most definitely legislating! I don’t even see ANY need fit this Court anymore. The first mistake made in forming it was to call it “Supreme”
Too many fragile egos there to contain that term.
try 'formerly-Supreme'
it Works for me.
The Supreme Court was originally modeled on the Iroquois Nation's (Haudenosaunee Confederacy) structure of Tribal government. The Clan mothers were essentially the Supreme Court that over-rode the Chiefs (executive branch) and other Clan/Tribal leaders (the House of Representatives/Senate). The Clan Mothers (and many were the mothers of the Chiefs and other leaders) would step in and rule, but more often negotiate when the men (essentially) overstepped their power and infringed on other's rights. The Seal for the US actually has the eagle holding 11 (I think) arrows that represented the 11 major tribes of the Haudenosaunee Confederacy. If only our US Supreme Court had maintained it's original purpose; to slap the hands of Jr. when he got out of line!
Correcting myself; it's 12 arrows and 12 Tribes....
Thom - I love your work - and really wish you would not make statements like - "Now the pandemic crisis is largely over".
It isn't remotely over. I suggest you peruse this latest post by Katelyn Jetelina. In China, COVID is wildly out of control. Further, China is not reporting any genomic information, so there is no way to track variant evolution from the largest country in the world. It is a ticking bomb simply waiting for the right mutation.
https://open.substack.com/pub/yourlocalepidemiologist/p/covid-in-china-the-us-and-everything?r=5pz0z&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web
Ted
Edward R. Fahy, MD FAAP (Pediatrician)
Yes, thank you. That did pop out in an otherwise excellent article. We are far from being out of the woods.
And to be considered a moral and honorable nation, we must get rid of this Title 42 nonsense, reform immigration laws, and allow a timely process to address the needs of all potential immigrants and asylum seekers as well as instituting fair and humane enforcement procedures when our laws are not respected. It's all just common sense and common decency -- which is why none of it will happen. As long as fools keep electing fools to positions of power greater than swamping out bars on Sunday mornings, there will always be an OMG "crisis on the Southern border!" It's a forever wedge issue to fire up racists at home in the Republican Party.
“We are a court of law,
not policymakers of last resort.”
.
when it's convenient
"Republicans" will do
the Right Thing but to
look for Ethical behavior
in the morally-challenged
is like asking an Elephant to
walk thru the eye of a needle.
It has been a very long time since I was in high school (1950's) and decades since I took Political Science classes in college (1960's and 70's) but I am certain that I heard that phrase "co-equal branches of government" a lot and have always believed that the Supreme Court was meant to have great power as the court of last resort. So much for civics classes. What else did they get wrong? I do not believe I was unique in having learned the bare minimum (mostly as a matter of disconnected memorized data), most of which was forgotten hours after the test. Thom is the best teacher one could ask for. But high school isn't the best place for this kind of learning, and students must have a personal interest and recognize their own personal stake in accurate information and grounded, connected knowledge accruing for their own purposes within a milieu free of competition, coercion, excessive evaluation, and false expectation. Now, how will millions of people get the message and learn that John Roberts is not a king or a deity, either? School's out.
Janet, I graduated in '59 believing I had received a splendid education, despite being semi-literate, inept, ignorant about most everything happening around me and the world, and over-confident about my future. It was all an illusion. I had daydreamed through much of 12 years, and mostly faked it, although I did have a few incredible teachers. But had I actually been at the top of my class, I wouldn't credit the school or the "educational system". My grandson gave me the book, "Lies My Teacher Told Me". There are innumerable examples and many which are at the center of our worldview and our faulty perceptions about the nation and the world. The truth is that school, primarily because of compulsory attendance laws, is structured to inhibit exploration, curiosity, critical thinking, autonomy, and a true understanding of and appreciation for liberty, justice, and the American way. The laws were never about education or free agency or intellectual growth and knowledge acquisition. School has always been the agency to control the population, to perpetuate the power structure and the economic system, and a means for preventing the masses from figuring out how the wealthy overlords are sticking it to them. Nothing will change; nothing can change, until those laws are obliterated.
Janet,
You refer to what you were taught and what is being taught now in public schools. This conception of education as being what is "taught" is where we made our first mistake. Education is not a process of sitting at the feet of the master and learning all the master has to offer, which may or may not be worth knowing or accurate, may or may not be understood and acquired thoroughly, and which probably has a shelf life that expired yesterday. Even Thom, who has an amazing amount of knowledge and who we have proved we can trust much more than most such scholars cannot merely impart his astounding knowledge and wisdom to us through some type of transmission or osmosis.
When teachers and schools are seen as repositories of knowledge and information instead of as conduits, sources or resources, and guides, and when they provide more structure and control, rather than inspiration, they undermine the educational process. No one has ever said it better than the great poet of a century ago, Kahlil Gibran, in his poem on education. He said, “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”.
There are many people with knowledge and expertise which can be extremely useful and we should seek them out for what we can use in our own search for meaning, comprehension, experience, and knowledge, of course. But that is just the bare-bones framework for what should become our own self-created “body of knowledge” (emphasis on body). Movement, activity, experience, observation, contemplation and rumination, and living life in the real world are where education happens.
You have stated that your own reading and research after college and your learning while in college, presumably toward your own goals and because of your own initiative were of much greater relevance and value to you. The issue I see is not what “they are teaching” in public schools”. The issues are that authorities, officials, supposed experts, and professional educators have presumed to know what should and should not be taught or how it should be taught, and that children are obliged to attend regardless of their interests, aptitudes, backgrounds, maturity, engagement, psychological or mental security and development, social skill, intellectual capabilities, or life circumstances. Forced learning is by definition indoctrination. The problem as I have stated here dozens of times now is the law which mandates attendance. The laws dictate that school will be an authoritarian bureaucracy in the absence of heroic and extraordinary efforts to resist the machine, always leading to huge sacrifices and eventual burnout.
RBE (Barry)
Janet,
The myths about school have pervaded society to the point where I find myself starting to write an entire book every time I encounter someone who so sincerely schools me on the benevolence and benefits, or at least the necessity of the traditional paradigm. I think I will have to try to give you the thumbnail version and possibly refer you to some literature.
Like nearly everyone else in the modern world, you appear to use the terms “school” and “education” interchangeably. They are NOT the same. Not even close. What you left unsaid but which is clearly intimated is that there are children who would not attend school if their parents were not required by law to get them there. What does that say about the schools? Do you hear the paternalism in that supposition? Are we talking about a particular demographic? Could it be that some parents were so poorly served, so humiliated, so discriminated against, so frustrated, or so abused that they want to spare their kids from such pain and misery?
The very things that make schools a place that feels so inhospitable and even offensive to certain individuals or groups are the things that spring forth from the legal compulsion. Free schools do not repel students and cause revulsion as a rule. Getting rid of the unconstitutional and misanthropic laws would do nothing other than to make them free schools where power does not reside in the hands of anonymous or self-important and imperious officials and frequently incompetent administrators.
I hear echoes of the “back to basics” philosophy in your words. My great granddaughter’s basics are not the same by any stretch as your grandson’s basics. The basics that can somehow be distilled out and reconstituted for whole classes of students are imaginary, cooked up by some egotistical brainiac. Children come with a complete set of unidentified and unimaginable basics on the first day of school. Bulldozing their conceptions and ideas and beliefs and trying to impose your own miniaturized version of a lot of academic Pablum is not doing them any favor in my opinion. Not to mention the fact that they may have zero interest in sitting at a desk and doing ridiculous exercises and busy work. I think the first duty of a teacher is to ask questions and discover what the students know or think they know and to build on that individually.
You say that children “…need to learn language, math, science, and other basic skills…”. First, learning of the sort you are referring to cannot be forced. That is a 17th century misconception. Learning does occur in schools because children are typically primed to figure some things out with a few cues and clues, they are ordinarily bright and insightful, and most teachers manage to sugar-coat the coercion with persuasive techniques, individual attention for certain kids, and lots and lots of repetition. However, some of the kids got it on the first day and are idling in neutral or becoming cynical and frustrated while others need extra help for hours or days, and in far too many instances, there are at a minimum, two or three who only appear to have a comprehensive grasp of what is being presented, which escapes them in short order, leaving them out of the next successive loop.
Critical thinking skills are not taught. You learned yours through extensive practice over lengthy periods, by observation, through trial and no small amount of error, by reading about a wide variety of situations and examples, and primarily through a great deal of private, personal ideation. Schools as we know them specialize in preventing private, personal thought. They are designed to undermine critical thinking which might motivate a student to recognize the hypocrisy, wasted time and effort, indoctrination, inequality or unfairness, and arbitrariness. Critical thinkers are branded as misfits for the most part. Look around at the high school graduates you see and ask yourself how many learned critical thinking skills in twelve years of subjugation.
Mass education is the stuff of mythology. You spoke of social services. Schools would be great if they would stick to providing social services and adults who respect and like kids enough to avoid trying to mold them in their own image, to control them, or to transform them into little adult soldiers saving the country from ignorance.
The long and the short of it is that compulsory attendance laws give the state dominion over the lives of children which no state should have and no state is remotely qualified to possess. If the people truly value education, knowledge, and intellectual development, they will fund those things and make them appealing and achievable enough that they will have many more enthusiastic takers than they can imagine.
Weeks ago, I sent Thom a compilation of excerpts, citations and quotes, and observation with incontrovertible proof that our schools are failing miserably on many fronts. It is only thirty pages, only because most of the current research is now behind a pay wall and inaccessible to me. Otherwise, I have no doubt I could have easily found ten times that amount, had I found the time to dig through it all. He is greatly concerned about those “corporate criminals” and other mercenary bean counters who want to privatize schooling, as am I. Unfortunately, the massive failures resulting from compulsory attendance laws have greased the skids and opened all kinds of doors for those people to swoop in and pretend to save the day. We may already be past the point of no return. No one is willing to fight to free children from corrosive environments and authoritarianism masking as education.
BTW, I am all for increasing teacher pay and I do not believe unions should be scapegoated. There are many wonderful people in the profession who make incredible sacrifices for kids. But once again, the bureaucracy and the misguided practices and procedures set the stage for many who are unqualified, cruel, over-ambitious, or apathetic.
Justice Gorsuch is one to watch. He has an interesting background. Despite a very Catholic education, after he married, he switched to an Episcopal church. Nope to a pope.
I wondered what it must have felt like to get the stolen seat on the Court, thinking it had to take the shine off such a prize. I think this line from WIKI may answer some of that: "It was reported by the Associated Press that, as a courtesy, Gorsuch's first call after the nomination was to President Obama's pick for the same position, Merrick Garland, Chief Judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit."
Their life-paths may cross once again if AG Garland decides prosecute the former president.
Another great history lesson and myth-busted by Thom..
THOM,
You refer to one of the Justices as "Johnson", I believe she is Katenji Brown-Jackson'
may as well have it all: JUSTICE
Ketanji Onyika Brown Jackson
accent on the
'Justice.'
'bout Time.
and she Refuses to
allow the 'right' to
Frame the Issues
.
for that she gets a Medal.
she'd make Onehellova
Chief Justice . whoa
wouldn't a Chief Justice Jackson!
be a Force to Reckon with?
specially with a 9-6*
Majority although
Good Justices
can be rather
Fluid in their
Decisions
.
*worth a peek:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q4m-3Eo3suE&ab_channel=TobiOjo
my Favorite West Wing
thank you Janet
and Likewise!
be Well!
Black-robed priests and priestess issuing religious edicts from on high, legislating from the bench, openly taking bribes from wealthy authoritarian bigots, laughing in our faces -- fascism at its finest in good-old-boy Meerkkka.