In Last Child in the Woods by Richard Louv, I found an interesting passage which echoes some of my own thoughts on our culture.

Excessive fear can transform a person and modify behavior permanently; it can change the very structure of the brain. The same can happen to a whole culture. What will it be like for children to grow up in socially and environmentally controlled environments–condominiums and planned developments and covenant-controlled housing developments surrounded with walls, gates, and surveillance systems, where covenants prevent families from planting gardens? One wonders how the children growing up in this culture of control will define freedom when they are adults.

Property has always been closely tied to liberty in American thought. It is the basis of our founding. Our founders knew that, and John Adams even noted that “[p]roperty must be sacred or liberty cannot exist.” It is why a nation of affluence fought a long and bloody war to defeat “tyranny” that amounted to less than what we willingly submit to today through local neighborhood associations, not to mention the representatives we have elected to rule over us.

In Federalist number 79, Alexander Hamilton writes, “In the general course of human nature, a power over a man’s subsistence amounts to a power over his will.” Yet we submit. We yearn for someone to rule over us.

Perhaps H. L. Mencken describes it best.

The American moron…wants to keep his Ford, even at the cost of losing the Bill of Rights.

I question what the future holds when we are raising our children thus. But I also question how it is we got here. How does a nation characterized by a certain rugged individualism end up with rows of condominiums indistinguishable from one another in neighborhoods which control what you can do on your own property? Somewhere along the line it goes back to education and the way we have been raised.

Mr. Mencken is not my favorite social commentator for obvious reasons, but he was a good satirist. And when you criticize everyone and everything, you are bound to strike a chord with someone eventually:

The aim of public education is not to spread enlightenment at all; it is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to down dissent and originality. That is the aim in the United States, whatever pretensions of politicians, pedagogues and [sic] other such mountebanks, and that is its aim everywhere else. The Goslings, A Study of the American Schools

I may not agree with him on much else, but when I see neighborhoods consisting of rows of identical houses and increasing laws at every level of government, including neighborhood associations it is hard not not see a correlation.

education, government, property

Hans Rosling, professor of global health at Sweden’s Karolinska University made a rather dramatic presentation at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) in February 2006. I always appreciate good speakers (and writers), and his ability to make these kinds of statistics both entertaining and relevant is truly amazing. This video is a little long (20 minutes) but worth every minute. He quickly shows you why everything you thought you knew about the third world, health and poverty are wrong. There are a few things I could possibly take issue with, but think about the following while you watch and I think you will see why I enjoyed this presentation beyond his wonderful humor.

• While he is talking about global health, it becomes increasingly clear that the problems are local. There may well be a number of things that “we” in the Western World can do to help, but global initiatives which look at the Third World as a whole likely will not be useful. Even regional data is not detailed enough to formulate policy.

• The gap between rich and poor? That really surprised me. The whole concept of developing countries and the traditional idea of aid is questioned. Watching the graph as the years progress really fascinated me. It put a new facet to my view of wealth. All of these countries are closing in on us, something that we hear continually lamented by President Bush. After all, this is a graphic depiction of the global economy we are worried about competing in. But what happens to US wealth as the other countries close in?

• There is a catalyst in the upswing of many of these nations: loosening of trade regulations and a general freeing of the economy.

So basically, he very graphically presents my view of wealth: wealth generated by the free market generates wealth and problems need to be addressed at the local level rather than globally. Enjoy!

Wow! Microsoft has outlined six success factors for educators and divided them up into thirty seven key attributes as part of their Education Competency Wheel. The really neat thing is that you don’t have to actually know anything. Being competent does not even come into play!

In my quest for precision of language, I looked up the word “competency” and found that it was not included in Webster’s 1812 Dictionary of American English. The best, and most applicable definition for competency I could find was this from the Australian National Training Board:

A competency comprises the specification of the knowledge and skill and the application of that knowledge and skill across industries or within an industry, to the standard of performance required in employment.

That is not so bad, except that Microsoft seems to have left off the first half. To be successful in education, you need only know how to manage information and people, not actually have any real expertise in your subject area.

I think Bill Gates actually has more to do with UNESCO than with the Australian National Training Board, so I went there to see what they had to say.

While the UNESCO CST project specifies the competencies needed to implement these changes, it will be up to approved governmental, non-governmental, and private providers to deliver the training for these competencies. The project also includes a mechanism for reviewing and approving the curricula and course offerings of these providers. UNESCO

Have we talked about UN approved curricula here before? Like the International Baccalaureate program (pdf from IBO.org) and its “core values?” Most of it is about developing the “global citizen” who is both socially and environmentally conscious. Which lines up rather well with PISA’s goals.

Globalization and modernisation are creating an increasingly diverse and interconnected world. To make sense of and function well in this world, individuals need for example to master changing technologies and to make sense of large amounts of available information. They also face collective challenges as societies–such as balancing economic growth with environmental sustainability, and prosperity with social equity. In these contexts, the competencies that individuals need to meet their goals have become more complex, requiring more than the mastery of certain narrowly defined skills. OECD.org

Would that be like, say, reading? Math? The history of the United States? Teaching that last one might actually run contrary to the above stated goals.

Which might be why the competencies do not address subject area expertise in any form. Learn to manage the flow and you can be a leader in education.

education, UNESCO, PISA, Gates

With an introduction reminiscent of Gulliver’s Travels, I was introduced to an absurd little island yesterday:

Welcome to another exciting adventure of Jonathan Gullible. As you may recall, we last left Jonathan Gullible on a remote Pacific Island after his boat was blown far off course by a terrific storm…

Eager to learn about the inhabitants of this island, Jonathan questions the natives about their seemingly bizarre customs. But are they so bizarre?

When the tortoise challenges the hare to a little competition to see who can gain the most customers in a week, it seems like an easy win for the energetic, efficient and friendly hare. The tortoise wins, but not because the hare decides to sleep on the job. On the contrary, the hare does double duty and reports to the court house to find that the tortoise has won by delivering only one letter.

Well, everyone knows that the letter was from the Council of Lords, granting the tortoise a legal monopoly over the delivery of all letters. So you see, the tortoise won all the customers by official decree.

Check out this and other exciting adventures from the author of The Adventures of Jonathan Gullible, A Free Market Odyssey, a book which Milton Friedman praised saying,

It certainly presents basic economic principles in a very simple and intelligible form. It is an imaginative and very useful piece of work.

Enjoy!

Update: These are obviously libertarian. While I am libertarian-leaning, I disagree with libertarians on a few issues. A couple of these issues are represented in these radio shorts so you might want to listen to them before sharing them with your children (drugs and pornography). I generally assume people would, but then I have started a video or sound file on a site before and found myself quickly turning off the sound because children walked in!

Jonathan Gullible, libertarian, humor

For obvious reasons, the title caught my eye. I could make the same argument about the Department of Education and No Child Left Behind. But I think I have done that already. Probably more than once.

A while back, we heard about teachers dropping the Holocaust from their lesson plans in order to avoid potential difficulties with Muslims in the class.

It found some teachers are dropping courses covering the Holocaust at the earliest opportunity over fears Muslim pupils might express anti-Semitic and anti-Israel reactions in class. Daily Mail

That was in the UK, but would you have expected anything like it in Israel?

(IsraelNN.com) Arab schoolchildren in Israel will be taught next year that the founding of the State of Israel was a tragedy (Nakba in Arabic) in accordance with a widespread Arab view of the event. Arutz Sheva

So now Israeli citizens will be paying their tax money so that their education system can teach Arabic children the tragedy of the Israeli presence in the Middle East?

Teaching the “Nakba” to Arabs is the latest in a number of dramatic moves by Tamir, a left-wing professor and Peace Now founder who has campaigned against subsidies for Jewish religious education while backing Arab nationalist programs. Ibid

How did she get to head up the Education Ministry in Israel? Unfathomable. Does it appear that all the world is succumbing? Is there an antidote?

Israel, Nakba, education

That a pastor can so succinctly summarize my thoughts on the condition of the family doesn’t really surprise me. The 1861 date did a little. It sounds so much like today (emphasis mine):

It is a fact conceded by all, that the constitution of the Christian family, and its social and spiritual relations, are not as fully developed as they should be. In this age of extreme individualism, we have almost left out of view the mission of home as the first form of society, and the important bearing it has upon the formation of character. Its interests are not appreciated; its duties and privileges are neglected; husbands and wives do not fully realize their moral relation to each other; parents are inclined to renounce their authority; and children, brought up in a state of domestic libertinism, neither respect nor obey their parents as they should. The idea of human character as a development from the nursery to the grave, is not realized. Home as a preparation for both the state and the church, and its bearing, as such, upon the prosperity of both, are renounced as traditionary, and too old and stale to suit this age of mechanical progression and ‘young Americanism.’

The Christian Home As It Is In The Sphere of Nature And The Church, Reverend S. Phillips, 1861

One of the greatest debates in America today is what even lies at the foundation of society: the individual or the family?

Since Rousseau at least, western culture seems to hold that society is based on the individual. Consider these well-known sayings and what they communicate to us:

To each his own.
To thine own self be true.
Look out for number one.

Families get in the way of this view of society because families have the habit of passing on traditions, patterns of behavior and ways of thinking to their offspring.

It entails a view of liberty, but very different from our historic conceptions. It is more closely related to the libertine, also known more recently as the freethinker.

lib·er·tine

n.

1. One who acts without moral restraint; a dissolute person.

2. One who defies established religious precepts; a freethinker.

We have replaced the mission of home as the first form of society. Hence the need to separate the child from the parent and teach him “different points of view.” In other words he must be liberated from the tyranny of the family, as Aldous Huxley did in his final work Island.

Home is no longer necessarily viewed as a haven, a sanctuary or a refuge from the world. Instead, the state is viewed as a haven from the family.

As Allan C. Carlson and Paul T. Mero put it in The Natural Family,

Public authorities actively subvert parental rights and authority, substitution a state morality. Children learn that their futures lie with the modern State rather than the pre-modern family. (p. 70-71)

We are quickly setting a new foundation for society, and its effects are being felt.

family, education, socialization, homeschooling

You would think that the mayor had more important things to do than combat the image that he doesn’t know who Harry Potter is. Such knowledge is hardly a prerequisite for public service.

But as the mayor says,

The greatest quality of us muggles is that we always muggle through.

I guess. But I would like my leaders to do a bit more than just “muggle through.” And reach for foundations set a bit deeper than what can be found in the juvenile section of my local library.

Beutler, Nebraska, Harry Potter, Deathly Hallows

Can you imagine Thomas Jefferson, George Washington or John Adams in meetings with our representatives today? Or what would happen to them if they were to run for office? I’ve often wondered what our founding fathers would say if they were alive today. The more I read of their writings, however, the more I think their general commentary would be, “I told you so.” This, however, might also reflect their general sentiments:

Thanks for the laugh, Ogre.

Technically, a homesteader is someone who settles on public land in exchange for producing something on that land, generally under the Homestead Act which became law on January 1, 1863.

The passage of the Homestead Act by Congress in 1862 was the culmination of more than 70 years of controversy over the disposition of public lands. From the inception of the United States there was a clamor for ever-increasing liberalism in the disposition of these lands. From 1830 onward, groups called for free distribution of such lands. This became a demand of the Free-Soil party, which saw such distribution as a means of stopping the spread of slavery into the territories, and it was subsequently adopted by the Republican party in its 1860 platform. The Southern states had been the most vociferous opponents of the policy, and their secession cleared the way for its adoption. Homestead Act of 1862

The practice officially ended with the Federal Land and Policy Act of 1976 when the government decided that the best use of public lands was to keep them under federal control. It is actually quite interesting to look at maps of the United States which detail federal lands; the further west you look, the more land held by the government.

Who were the homesteaders of the early part of the 20th century? They were newly arrived immigrants, farmers without land in the East, single men, single women, freed slaves…basically anyone who was willing to work for a fresh start.

What united this diverse group of people was the desire to own their own land. Together they were responsible for one of the most significant and enduring movements — both physically and culturally — of the expansion period of United States history. By granting 160 acres of free land to claimants, the Act allowed nearly any man or woman a chance to live the American dream. Nebraskastudies.org

The idea hasn’t totally faded into the history books. Ellsworth County, Kansas brought it back in 2005 to encourage population growth. And the word at least seems to be gaining new life, if with a different meaning. When I first heard of urban homesteading, I knew that a shift in definitions had occurred, reaching for an ideal that once defined part of our history. Land meant hard work, responsibility and, above all, independence.

Something, I suppose, which the “homesteaders” of today hold in common as they strive for a simpler life not cluttered with commercialism and “keeping up with the Jones’.” For more, check out the Carnival of Homesteading. You’ll find some delectable recipes, ideas for simpler living and learn how to sketch a barn swallow.

Update: Make that two carnivals. The Carnival of Homeschooling has also just been posted and for once I’m going to link to it the same day!

photo credit

homesteading, homesteaders, carnivals

In the fall of 1943, the Royal Airforce devastated the industrial town of Kassel, Germany, killing 10,000 people and destroying the beautiful town square. In order “to reconcile German public life with international modernity and also confront it with its own failed Enlightenment,” [source] art professor and designer Arnold Bode instigated an invasion of a different sort. With its debut in 1955, documenta continues to celebrate the contributions of abstract art (declared degenerate by the Nazi government), attracting a diverse group of artists and hundreds of thousands of tourists to this small community for 100 days every five years.

Sounds like a wonderful opportunity for the community. Except for one thing. It is an exhibition which has nothing to do with Kassel. It is organized by an artistic elite and promoted by outside organizations with little regard for the people who live there, a problem which has haunted documenta from the beginning. It has even spawned a counter-exhibition: Poor.

A parallel “alternative” arts festival is attempting to highlight the difference between the city’s glossy Documenta [sic] image and its working-class reality. Members of an action group called Poor hold protests on the city’s streets most nights claiming to protect local culture from the invaders. “People should know that four-and-a-half out of every five years in Kassel are crap,” said Michael Schmeisser, the organiser. The Independent

But it is good for you, citizens of Kassel. While Hitler may have denied you access to this form of art, modern Germany is going to thrust it upon you. Not that the citizens are incapable of stamping a little of their own attitude onto the event. Chilean artist Lotty Rosenfeld had traveled all the way from South America to tape white crosses along the streets in a protest against violence. But her exhibit met with an untimely burial.

For an event that claims the title “World’s biggest contemporary art exhibition”, it was hardly an auspicious start: just hours before the opening of Germany’s prestigious Documenta [sic] modern art extravaganza, street cleaners tore up one of the show’s key exhibits and chucked the remnants into a municipal dust cart. Ibid.

Don’t get me wrong. I love art. Even abstract art. Even when it pushes the boundaries, so long as I am expecting it. But I don’t think I’d like it thrust upon me. It looks like the closest the exhibition came to celebrating something of value to the local community was German artist Joseph Beuy’s planting of 7,000 oak trees back in 1987. The oak is a long-standing symbol of eternality and strength in Germany. Although it, too, met with initial resistance, this exhibit has grown on the people of Kassel. As Dr. Rhea Thönges-Stringaris summarizes the exhibit (my translation):

There is probably scarcely anyone in Kassel who, whether in avenues or in parks, doesn’t come into contact with Beuy’s trees daily: a tree, a stone. We got accustomed to it. They are part of our everyday life and the the same time components of an unusual, because invisible, sculpture. No one can ever see it as a whole. In the traditional sense, a “sculpture” is not conceivable without its countours. But on paper, on the map, contours are not tangible. 7000Eichen.de (German)

That seems to me to better exemplify the purpose of art as a combination of human skill and purpose. More so than attempting to plant a rice paddy on the side of a hill in Kassel, anyway.

Photo credits: Kassel Mission, 7000 Oaks

art, documenta