The Culture of Parenting

The author, September, 1964

Perhaps every generation looks at its childhood as idyllic. I have idolized my pre-adolecent summers from 1964 to 1974 as a 9AM to 9PM adventure in the Northern California suburban outdoors, mostly playing pickup games of baseball but also hanging out with other boys and hiking in the hills, fighting crayfish and attempting to catch bullfrogs, riding our bikes around town, creating small explosives with match heads, and releasing paper gliders off of kites. I had to conform to two rules: report back for meals and be home before it got dark. My parents did not set up play dates, nor did they supervise any of the activities. No parents on my block did. My father's summers in the 1930s and 1940s were similar, though growing up on the streets of Brooklyn and San Francisco he witnessed considerably more violence and cruelty than I. Skipping forward to the 1990s and beyond, however, my children experienced a quite different style of parenting during their summer break. They participated in organized sports and the games were closely observed by their parents. They were driven to play dates. They never simply left the house without telling me where they were going. They never went out and came back in twelve hours with bruises and bee stings.

Historian Jon Grinspan traces a short history of parenting from the late 19th century to today in the May 31, 2014 New York Times article The Wild Children of Yesteryear (link here). Boys were expected to spend "their childhoods in a rowdy outdoor subculture" to foster a young republican outlook: self-reliant, democratic, striving and entrepreneurial. Late 19th and early 20th century changes, especially the progressive movement, urged laws to protect children. Additionally demographic changes (less children) created more worried parents. The movement to becoming helicopter parents, Grinspan argues, began not in the 1970s but before the McKinley administration.

Parents have becoming more involved in education as well, and what parents think is good for educating kids may not be. Sociologists Keith Robinson and Angel Harris argue that parental involvement in children's education is unnecessary. In the April 12, 2014 NYT article Parental Involvement is Overrated (link here)and in their book, The Broken Compass: Parental Involvement with Children's Education, Robinson and Harris argue that "most forms of parental involvement yielded no benefit to children's test scores or grades, regardless of racial or ethnic background or socioeconomic standing." Occasionally parental involvement did matter, but the research showed it depended on which behavior and which ethnic group. For example, regularly reading to elementary school children benefited white and Hispanic children but not black children. The researchers argue that policy makers need to take into account the factors of behavior, academic outcome, grade level, racial and ethnic background, and socioeconomic standing when advocating for the very few parental involvements that help kids. More simply, though, "parents should set the stage and then leave it." This adage may apply to kids' play lives as well.

Franklin and Winston

Journalist Jon Meacham has written a fascinating memoir in Franklin [Roosevelt]) and Winston [Churchill]: an Intimate Portrait of  an Epic Friendship (2003, Random House, New York). The book should be read by every president that manufactures alliances and manages international conflicts. That would be every one! If our current president had read this book he may not have as quickly characterized Churchill as a reactionary colonialist and removed the Churchill bust from the White House. Churchill was a defender of the British Empire and unwilling to let colonial people have self-determination, but he was also the last European hope against Hitler. His success in lining up American help against the Nazi's, not an easy task in isolationist America, not only saved Britain. Churchill was instrumental in getting the U.S. in the war before it was too late for the free world.

Meacham analyzes the contrasting management styles of Roosevelt and Churchill. Roosevelt was practical, devious, always withholding a part of himself. He controlled his emotions completely, met women he wasn't supposed to see, and could completely compartmentalize his personal and private life from his public duties. He was a fair weather friend--publicly embarrassing and ignoring Churchill when, acting in matters of state as he saw them, he cozied up to Stalin. Roosevelt had utmost faith in his ability to charm anyone, even the Soviet dictator, and had he lived until the end of 1945, he may have been able to convince Stalin to act less aggressively in Poland and the rest of Eastern Europe. Roosevelt may have reacted less vociferously than Truman to Soviet provocations, keeping tensions between America and the Russians below the boiling point. Right before his death, Roosevelt avoided confrontation and suggested a middle course with Stalin (P.341).

In contrast to FDR, Churchill was a straight shooter, courageous, honest, devoted, warmhearted, magnanimous, and an ornate, brilliant orator. He saw black and white, good and evil, when battling Naziism, and history shows his was the correct attitude, when many in his government wanted to make a negotiated peace with Hitler. He was also prescient in predicting and exposing the nefarious intentions of the Soviet empire after the war was over. Roosevelt was starting to come around to Churchill's view of Stalin when Roosevelt suffered the cerebral hemorrhage that ended his life.

Two themes run through the book that also resonate throughout the history of 20th and 21st century presidents. Should a president campaign as though he is healthy even though he is gravely ill, and how much time does a president need in order to recuperate from the weighty pressures of the office?
Roosevelt had congestive heart failure and  hypertension, which eventually killed him. At some level he knew he was dying but felt he had to lead the war to a successful conclusion, and no one else could have done it as well. The last point is debatable, but it was obvious to all who met him that FDR looked terrible by mid 1944. He looked haggard, had lost weight, and had energy for only four hours of hard work each day, when the war demanded much more time from the leader of the western world. Roosevelt campaigned like a champion in the 1944 election for a fourth term, slogging through a nasty storm in New York City in an open car. The press put the photographs in all the newspapers. He was fine the voters thought or, wanted to think.

John F. Kennedy was also much sicker than voters knew. Despite his chronic ill health he looked like Adonis (according to journalist and newscaster Walter Cronkite) in his critical televised debate with Nixon and governed with youthful vigor. (See my review of Kennedy here.) If voters knew the truth about Kennedy's health would they have voted for him over Nixon? Woodrow Wilson was cursed with chronic ill health before his debilitating stroke near the end of his second term. Running against the athletic and larger-than-life Theodore Roosevelt in 1912, Wilson could not afford to let the American people know he was a frail academic.

Do presidents need to be flying to Camp David, playing golf, attending lavish banquets, and just plain enjoying themselves as much as they do? Presidents are always "on" and Meacham's book gives the reader more respect for the formidable pressures of the office, especially in war time. Older, sicker men need time to recharge, whether it's collecting stamps (FDR) or collecting conquests  vacationing at Hyannis Point (JFK). The American people can rightly ask if a president is vacationing in order to work better or, like a Roman emperor, taking the job for what it's worth in order to enjoy frequent, free and lavish vacations.

What Presidents Teach Us about Luxury

Photo from PBS

Eleanor Roosevelt's austerity in the White House kitchen (abstract here) seems quaint today. Franklin D. Roosevelt put up with meals costing ten cents per serving (adjusted by inflation to $1.70 today). Despite the strains of the Great Depression and WWII on a polio-ravaged body, FDR traveled abroad for conferences with the allies, campaigned vigorously, battled the Great Depression (unsuccessfully but with great energy) and the Axis powers (successfully), and vacationed 958 days in close to 12 years as president, about 80 days per year. During much of those 958 days he was still engaged in executive duties in his vacation house in Warm Springs, Georgia. Most considered his vacations neither frivolous nor overly expensive.

Obama vacations are much more expensive, not because of his rented house (which he pays for), but because his large Praetorian Guard must be jetted over to Hawaii and put up in hotels.The latest $7 million dollar vacation can be inspected here. Let us put this most recent vacation in perspective. This one trip will cost more than the average American would make in 175 years of work. When Obama's wife or children vacation away from the president, they too must be guarded by a large entourage, and taxpayers foot the bill.

I am aware that George W. Bush vacationed a greater amount of time than any president including Obama. However, most of that was at the Crawford Ranch, 1,300 miles away, "working at home," which W preferred. That may be qualitatively different than jetting 4,800 miles to Hawaii to play golf and enjoy a tropical paradise, maybe not, since W's trips were also expensive. Most will agree that the attitude towards luxury and the use of taxpayer funds is quite different than what FDR experienced at the hands of his wife. Neither W nor Obama seem embarrassed by these trips, 54 Christmas trees in the White House, or, most fittingly, lavish White House state dinners (such as the million dollar gala for Mexico's president). Too bad FDR wasn't invited. He would have enjoyed a little caviar and champagne.

Eleanor Roosevelt was implicitly telling the public that the Roosevelts may be rich but they can live frugally and responsibly, and she vicariously shares the hardship of most Americans during the Great Depression. The current White House attitude is the opposite in every respect. Corporate boards often tie CEOs' bonus pay to corporate performance. Maybe we should do the same for presidential vacations, limiting taxpayer funds as long as America's economic performance is sub par.

Lincoln--The Movie

I rarely watch new movies, unmoved by the current excesses of sex and violence that seem to be matched to the tastes of Caligula, but finally, Hollywood has released a movie that is as engaging and intellectually stimulating as the writings of Winston Churchill or Edmund Morris. That movie is Lincoln.

I knew the movie would be good but was worried about how it would portray the war and all its gore. I was relieved to find that the fighting was de-emphasized. Even Lincoln's assassination at Ford's theater was only announced rather than acted out on screen. The war's violence did not haunt me. Instead, hours after viewing the film, I still felt inspired by Lincoln's leadership, his decision-making process, and his greatness of character.

I must give credit to Dr. Jane who invited me to go with her and her mother who saw the movie first and knew it would be perfect for me. Dr. Jane bought our tickets for the price of a glass of wine--a bargain I couldn't refuse. As a history teacher I was well aware of what the movie would be about-- a screen play based on Team of Rivals: The political Genius of Abraham Lincoln-- and how Lincoln sought after his cabinet's counsel, managed the great egos of the men involved, and, against the odds, defeated the Confederate armies and passed the Thirteenth Amendment barring slavery. For a specific description see David Wolfford's wonderful review here.

I hope my fellow movie goers will forgive me for whispering excitedly in Dr. Jane's ear, "There's William Seward." "Goodness, it's Edwin Stanton". "It's radical Republican Thaddeus Stevens". "That little guy is Confederate Vice President Stephens." "Do you recognize Robert E. Lee on horseback?" The actors looked uncannily like their namesakes pictured in the history books. The actors also portrayed their characters' personalities accurately. Seward was confident and full of himself. Stanton was serious in purpose and impetuous. Lincoln and Grant were both rough-hewn and honest.

The movie revolved around the political maneuvering in passing the Thirteenth Amendment. It was quite entertaining watching the anti-Amendment Democrats get bribed (with political patronage), bullied, cajoled, or persuaded to vote for the Amendment. Interwoven with the political fight over the Amendment were the themes of prosecution of the war and prospects for a negotiated peace--these factors determined whether the Thirteenth Amendment would pass on schedule.

This movie is about personal and political relationships--Lincoln's relationships with his wife and children, his cabinet, his party, the opposition party, slaves and freedmen, the voters, and the public. It is a successful movie because people can be fascinating if you let them be, and Lincoln does.

The Left's View of Thanksgiving--A Rational Response

Robert Jensen's No Thanks for Thanksgiving (link here) twists and falsifies history. Let's look at what really happened.

Jensen: "But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the genocide of indigenous people..."

Most Native American deaths in the Americas were due to disease. Smallpox killed biologically unprepared indigenous people much more efficiently than Spanish conquistadors, destroying 90 percent of those infected, and most of its victims never saw a white man.

Englishmen had less use for natives than the Spanish. The English were not interested in gaining gold from the Indians. Instead the English and Native Americans competed for land. Sometimes, as in the cases of the Pilgrims and the Quakers in Pennsylvania, both sides cooperated, but most of the time, the two sides descended into armed conflict.

Jensen: But it's also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders.

The Powhatan Indians started the war against the English in Massachusetts, massacring women and children. The English responded with "Irish tactics," using the same scorched earth policy that successfully broke the Irish resistance. What's more, infectious disease took a great toll on the tribes, and total war and disease was responsible for pretty much wiping them out. Disgraceful, terrible, but not genocide.

Jensen: The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Jensen fails to account for disease in his statistics, and the Indians of the Great Plains killed a fair share of white civilians as well, fighting bravely against the U.S. army with stone-age technology, and then later, with rifles (bye, bye, General Custer).

The Native Americans were doomed by European diseases and the sheer numbers of land-hungry English colonists and, later, American citizens. The cooperation between natives and whites during the Pilgrims' first winter shows how things could have been and should be celebrated in the holiday of Thanksgiving.

25 Years Later: What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know?

Diane Ravitch/Picture from Stanford.edu

Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn assessed high school seniors' grasp of American history and literature in their classic book, What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know, released in 1987. The conclusions of What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know may be more relevant today than they were 25 years ago. Ravitch and Finn write about the amount of information available to the average teenager. Today's students are even more bombarded with information--from computers and cell phones--nonexistent in 1987.

But can they make sense of what they see and hear? Do they have the perspective to separate what is important from what is trivial? What is durable from what is ephemeral? Can they interpret the significance of the day's news? Are they able to discern patterns of trends and events? Are they capable of introspection? Can they relate their experiences to universal themes that have been explored by great writers through the ages? These are only a few of the potential benefits of the study of history and literature (P.202).

Ravitch and Finn found that students scored poorly in their understanding of history and literature. Things are worse now. Students, especially boys, read less today than they did in the 1980s, and their corresponding amount of knowledge has shrunk further. (See my blog, How Boys Can Do Better in School.)

Thus the answer to all of Ravitch and Finn's questions above would be an emphatic "no!" Only the elite, perhaps the top 20 percent of graduating California high school seniors can separate the wheat from the chafe and put their experience in a larger context and make sense of the world around them. I find these kids in our Advanced Placement (college-level) program.

What to Do

Since students today come to class with less background knowledge and a smaller vocabulary than their cohort of 25 years ago, teachers must assume that they are less capable. Below are words used for one of my lessons on industrialization. These words and phrases are difficult for my average high school sophomores. They have trouble understanding what the words mean. When these words are mastered we can better place the terms into historical context.

• wages docked
• consent
• figuring out the number of hours on the job--6AM to 7PM
• the sick fund
• dismissal
• deference
• untrue allegations
• wage advances

Once we have mastered literacy concerns the history itself may be understood. So literacy becomes a part of most lessons. I ask the students to define vocabulary. "What does this mean?" and I put vocabulary words on tests. Secondly, most students need assistance understanding most high school World and U.S. History textbooks. They cannot decipher textbooks on their own, so teacher summaries and read-alouds, pair-share, and teacher-monitored jigsaws of reading materials are essential.

Third, Ravitch and Finn write about the need to include chronology in history lessons, giving the curriculum more meaning by putting it into context with other historical facts they may (we hope) know. This is even more important today. I enjoy creating parallel timelines that show world and American history in sequence. Most male students are interested in transportation, Stephenson's Rocket to the Model T, weaponry, the musket to the M-16, and technology, the typewriter to the PC, so add those categories on your timelines.

Adults Acting Like Adults

Ravitch and Finn are squarely against "romantic" practices such as letting adolescents learn what they want to learn--the view that naturalness is good and schools should provide freedom where children can develop naturally. (See my blog Educational Ideologies and Applications here.) Instead, Ravitch and Finn concede that children do not

...naturally gravitate to academic subjects or spontaneously immerse themselves in the lore of their civilization. Children are often not the best judges of what they need to do and know. In general, we believe that children learn pretty much what the important adults in their lives make a point in seeing that they learn: in school, at home, and through a myriad of other means (P. 203).

A lot is at stake. "Failure to make this cultural knowledge part of every child's inheritance serves to reinforce invidious social class distinctions (P. 235)." In other words, those who favor social justice and equality should demand that all children learn America's historical canon.

Clarence Darrow's Defense of Labor

Harvard history professor Jill Lepore has reviewed two biographies on trial lawyer Clarence Darrow, and in doing so, gives us an exciting look at the man's philosophies, paying special attention to his eight-hour closing statement in an important but lesser known trial, the 1898 labor case, Wisconsin v. Kidd. (See the abstract of the May 23, 2011 New Yorker article here).

Working closely with industrialists that opposed strikes, the State of Wisconsin tried to convict union organizer Thomas Kidd, the general secretary of the Amalgamated Woodworkers International. If Kidd was convicted, there was no right to strike. Darrow successfully defended Kidd and the right to strike by appealing to the jurors' sense of importance and social justice. Darrow, in his summing up, stated, "Back of all this prosecution is the effort on the part of  [lumber company owner] George M. Paine to wipe these labor organizations out of existence, and you know it. That's all there is to it."

The Kidd trial "was a landmark in the Gilded Age debate about prosperity and equality" (P.45), a test case of the interests of the workers against wealthy industrialists and their allies in government. Lepore tries to extend this debate to current controversies over public-sector bargaining in Wisconsin. This is a bit of a stretch. Few are against unionization in the private sector. The public sector is altogether different. Public sector unions have been consistently opposed by conservatives throughout the 19th and 20th centuries--Calvin Coolidge's opposition to the Boston Police and Ronald Reagan bust of the overreaching air traffic controllers come to mind. But Franklin Roosevelt also opposed bargaining rights for public sector unions. (See NYT editorial on the subject here.) The public sector union's interests may or may not not align with the taxpayers that support it. Fortunately, the unionization of public school teachers has worked out reasonably well. (See my analysis of public school tenure here.)

The Five Best Presidents and the Five Worst

Washington

Listed below are the five most effective and five most destructive American presidents. Some were rich. Some grew up poor. Some were brilliant. Others had only average intelligence. These are my evaluations, based on my understanding and interpretations of history, economics, and human nature and do not necessarily represent the opinions of anyone else. Since all humans have weaknesses and strengths, I also gave a criticism of the policies of the best presidents and a compliment for the successes of the worst presidents.

Five Best

5. Thomas Jefferson: Not interested in serious military preparedness. Saw that the first transition between political parties was seamless. Promoted small farmers over moneyed interests. Expanded the country with the Louisiana Purchase. A genius.
4. Theodore Roosevelt: Put the country on the path to empire. Balanced the needs of capital with the needs of labor. Expanded conservation. Incredible confidence and energy.
3. Franklin Roosevelt: His New Deal was an abject failure but his personality prevented a more damaging lurch to communism or fascism. Successfully led the country through most of WWII.
2. George Washington: Cold and aristocratic. Universally respected. Led by example. A personality marked by moderation and selflessness. Created the office of presidency. Turned down the post of president for life.
1. The best--Abraham Lincoln: Greatly limited states' power. Rags to riches biography. Shepherded the country through its worst crisis, despite vicious political opposition and personal tragedy. Writer of timeless political prose. Embodied wisdom. Died a martyr.

Five Worst

5. Woodrow Wilson: Regulated big business and lowered tariffs. Promised his new income tax would only tax the rich. His Federal Reserve has overseen the loss of almost all of the dollar's purchasing power. Meddled in Mexico, accomplishing nothing. Curtailed civil liberties during WWI. Incapacitated during his second term, and his inability to govern was hidden from the American public.
*4. Barack Obama (as of January, 2012): Oversaw termination of Osama bin Laden. Attempted to reform a broken healthcare system. Pushed through a healthcare bill before it could be vetted. Wasted billions on an ineffectual spending scheme to reduce unemployment. As debt hit critical levels continued to promote deficit spending programs. Went on lavish vacations using the people's money during difficult economic times.
3. George W. Bush: A patriot and leader against Islamic terrorism. Turned the United States closer in spirit to imperial Rome and a police state. Wasted billions on war.
2. Andrew Johnson: Believed with all his being in the sacredness of the Constitution. An opponent of doing anything for the freedmen (ex-slaves). Used presidential reconstruction to get even with plantation aristocracy rather than to do anything for equality. Emotionally unstable.
1. The worst--James Buchanan: Potentially an antebellum president both North and South could trust. Overly sympathetic to the South's cause. Promoted the Dred Scott case as a resolution to North-South divisions. Failed to cool secessionist feelings or stop southern states from seceding.

* Based on lowering of AAA-credit rating and increase of debt, low GDP growth, and poor employment when compared to other post-recessionary periods.

Feel free to comment on who I should have included or left out.

General Douglas MacArthur—Brilliant General or Impossible Narcissist (or Both)

Historians’ views of MacArthur tend to be projections of their politics. Liberal writers view MacArthur as a man who “needed to be worshiped” (Halberstam), a narcissist who, despite his inability for honest self-reflection possessed uncanny military instincts and strategic vision. Conservative writers admire the soldier less grudgingly, and instead, paint MacArthur as a genius and hero, a life that should be emulated by any American. I have compiled a short list of biographies and books on MacArthur’s time period. I picked these books and not others because I was familiar with them. Links follow the summaries.

David Halberstam in The Fifties, (pp. 77-86) entertains the reader by revealing Truman’s understanding of MacArthur as a narcissist and Prima Donna, a supremely confident genius of Inchon who arrogantly underestimated the threat of the Chinese Communists in North Korea. Halberstam painstakingly lays out how the Chinese telegraphed their intent to enter the war if provoked and how MacArthur ignored all the warnings.

The encyclopedic 700-page American Caesar by William Manchester presents a complex individual who personalized conflict, exemplified in his famous, “I shall return.” During WWII he felt that his office required luxuries, and the Japanese were coming after him personally. Like royalty MacArthur often spoke of himself in the third person. This attitude toward himself and his role made him a superb warrior.

A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn mentions only MacArthur’s violent put down of the Bonus Army during the Great Depression (P. 284). Zinn’s social history ignores the rest of the general’s career. This is a shame. How would MacArthur’s great popularity contrast with Zinn’s assessment of the American mood of the early 1950s?

Steve Neal’s Harry and Ike (pp. 204-215) concentrates on MacArthur’s public dissent from White House policies after the Chinese invasion of Korea. The book notes Eisenhower’s opinion of MacArthur from their work together and the political fallout after Truman dismissed him. Both Eisenhower and Truman despised MacArthur.

My favorite book of the bunch reviewed here is John Gunther’s The Riddle of MacArthur, published in 1951. This book concentrates on MacArthur’s masterfully conducted rehabilitation of Japan. The “supreme commander” introduced Japan to democracy and civil liberties and got them to like it. The book goes in great detail about MacArthur’s personal style and how that fit with the needs and wishes of the Japanese people. The Japanese had just suffered a great psychological blow--their culture was not infallible. The book lacks the historical (or revisionist) perspective of the author's 1970s edition or more modern works.

Finally, MacArthur’s autobiography,  Reminiscences, is overblown, melodramatic, and exhaustive. His collection of pictures alone makes it worth perusing—the high drama of him with General Wainwright just before leaving Corregidor, wading ashore at Luzon, majestically leaving the plane to assume command of the Japanese occupation, visiting Inchon, addressing a West Point honor corps, and more.  A Hollywood movie producer couldn’t have produced more intensity. The book is without balance of course, but it also contains MacArthur’s famous speeches.

Here are the books. Buy them or check them out of your library.

The Strange Death of American Liberalism

I recommend reading the political history, The Strange Death of American Liberalism, authored by professor H. W. Brands, especially now, ten years after the book was published. The author's prose sparkles. Brands' clarity of expression and wonderful use of metaphor makes for a most entertaining and rewarding read. Events in education over the past ten years give strong evidence that Brands' analysis was correct.




The author is a famous historian as well as a brilliant writer. Here is how Dr. Brands describes himself. See his website here.

Henry William Brands was born in Oregon, went to college in California, sold cutlery across the American West, and earned graduate degrees in mathematics and history in Oregon and Texas. He taught at Vanderbilt University and Texas A&M University before joining the faculty at the University of Texas at Austin, where he is the Dickson Allen Anderson Centennial Professor of History. He writes on American history and politics, with books including Traitor to His Class, Andrew Jackson, The Age of Gold, The First American, and TR. Several of his books have been bestsellers; two, Traitor to His Class and The First American, were finalists for the Pulitzer Prize. He lectures frequently on historical and current events, and can be seen and heard on national and international television and radio programs. His writings have been translated into Spanish, French, German, Russian, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Ukrainian.

Based on his treatment of controversial presidents Nixon and Reagan (which I find to be a projective test of a scholar's political beliefs), Dr. Brands comes across as a political moderate.

What does the book say? In a nutshell, The Strange Death of American Liberalism describes how liberal action, defined here as expansionist federal government, rarely happens in American history. However, Americans will allow the federal government to work where it can solve a problem better than any other institution. Only government can protect us from foreign enemies,and we have seen most government expansion during wartime. Brands believes that the long-lasting Cold War encouraged liberalism in domestic policy as well. When the United States left Vietnam and President Nixon resigned, American support for the Cold War and trust in government eroded. The country reverted back to its natural distrust of government, and therefore, a distrust of liberal policies.

Brands summarizes his thesis:

For a quarter century Americans had grown used to looking to Washington for leadership, first in matters of national security and then, as the Cold War suffused nearly all areas of American life, in such previously domestic matters as education, transportation, civil rights, and health care. As long as the Cold War preceded successfully for the United States, popular confidence in government appeared justified. A people accustomed to depending on government to protect them from nuclear annihilation didn't find it much of a stretch to look to government to address such comparatively minor challenges as an anachronistic system of race relations and lingering economic inequality. Yet when the war in Vietnam turned sour...the skein of popular trust in government unraveled....It was the liberalism of the Cold War era that was the anomaly (pp. 172-173).

Ironically, the most effective liberal in American history, President Lyndon Johnson, planted the seeds of liberalism's destruction with his prosecution of the Cold War in far away Vietnam.

Liberals, like everyone else, do not want to hear about the unpopularity of their political views, and therefore it was no surprise when esteemed (and quite liberal) historian Eric Foner panned parts of the book. Foner's criticisms, that liberalism reached its modern form in the 1930s New Deal and that the New Deal, not the Cold War, was the defining moment of liberalism, were anticipated by Brands (P. 175). Foner also criticizes Brands' lack of analysis of liberal ideas, especially liberals' pursuit of civil liberties and the decidedly non-liberal response to the events of September 11th, 2001. Foner does enjoy the book's "laser-like" focus on this piece of political history, its usefulness as a survey of American political history, and agrees with the author's portrayal of the Revolutionary War times. (See Foner's review here.)

I am quite interested in how the Cold War resulted in a Federal power grab from the what used to be a state issue--the funding and management of public education. Brands describes (pp.78-79) how the Sputnik scare and the Cold War made education a national priority and the business of Washington and not just the state capitols. The National Defense Education Act authorized $1 billion in spending (in 1958 dollars) and initiated the Advanced Placement (AP) program ubiquitous in high schools today. Johnson's Great Society programs increased federal aid to K-12 education (P. 92).

Few people consider "compassionate conservative" president George W. Bush a liberal in any respect. Yet, in 2001 he crafted No Child Left Behind (NCLB), which further expanded federal power into each state's management of K-12 education, a fairly liberal idea. The law was supported by both conservatives and liberals but not for long. NCLB critics complain that NCLB mandates can never be satisfied, eventually making all schools "failing schools," and the law has become increasingly unpopular among education professionals. We may have seen the apex of federal support (or interference, you pick) in education. Cracks are forming under the enforcement of NCLB, and states are finding ways to get around pieces of the law and perhaps its enforcement entirely. See Montana's reaction here. If Brands is correct, we can expect, as part of liberalism's eclipse, less federal funding for education and less support for NCLB or a rewrite of the law. I will let the reader surmise what the death of liberalism means for the future direction of Congress and the executive branch.

How Students Can Remember the Transcendentalists: Use a Skit

Name_______________________________ Period __________________

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Instructions: If you were picked for a role, please come up to the front of the class. If not, please listen carefully to the skit and fill in the correct names below.

Characters
Ralph Waldo Emerson: Philosopher and writer
Josiah Holbrook: Founder of Lyceum movement
John Brown: Abolitionist militant
Henry David Thoreau: Philosopher and writer
Margaret Fuller: News reporter and intellectual
Walt Whitman: Poet
_______________________________________________________________
Setting: Emerson’s home, Concord, Massachusetts, 1854

Holbrook: Americans love to learn. Look how well they attend Lyceum lectures! I noticed that in addition to Emerson, Margaret Fuller was an especially popular speaker. I’ve never seen a woman make a living as an intellectual before.
Whitman: Emerson lit an intellectual fire under all of us, and we all changed American culture in some way. It’s too bad that Margaret died so young. Look, here’s an unopened letter from her.

Fuller: “My father educated me in Greek and Latin even though I was a girl. To overcome the odds against my sex, I worked so hard in learning languages that I became ill. I am living proof that women are the intellectual equal to men.”

Emerson: I am honored that Margaret was in my intellectual circle. Our movement, transcendentalism, was built on the idea that every individual, by searching within, can encounter the truth. I am sure that Henry and Walt would agree.

Brown: There are limits to your glorification of the individual, Emerson. In times of national crisis, we need to work as one. Today, we need to destroy the evil institution of slavery. Radical measures are needed. Who is with me?

Emerson: We all are. I have modified my views on radical individualism and have become less eager for the individual to stand apart from society. We all need to cooperate in this time of national urgency.

Thoreau: I went to jail rather than support the Mexican War. I knew that a consequence of that war would be the expansion of slavery. I will break the law now to oppose the evil institution of slavery on our shores. It is time for civil disobedience!


Which character espouses the following policy or idea? Pick the one best answer.
1. Civil disobedience:____________________
2. Amazed by American lecture attendance:___________________________
3. Men and women are intellectually equal:_______________________________
4. No longer interested in radical individualism.:_____________________________
5. Grateful for Emerson’s inspiration:__________________________________
6. Radical abolitionist:_____________________
________________________________________________________________________
7. What ended up happening to John Brown? What was Emerson’s reaction?
________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________________

8. What was the significance of Brook Farm?

_______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
9. Would you have preferred to be educated in Margaret Fuller’s day or today? Why?
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10. Should the State be subservient to the wishes of the individual or should the individual be subservient to the State? Why?
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Colonial History--Now You'll Remember It!

I've composed mnemonic aids to helping AP US History students remember chapters one to five in the textbook, American Pageant.

Background material from The American Pageant, Twelfth Edition, is followed by Spinrad mnemonics in italics.

1. New World Beginnings

Three sister farming: beans growing on the trellis of the cornstalks and squash covering the planting mounds to retain moisture in the soil. The rich diet produced the highest population densities in the North American continent, among them the Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee peoples.

Beans, maize, and squash,
Sister farming of three
Sustained the Creek, Choctaw, and Cherokee

New world exports: gold and silver; corn, potatoes, pineapples, tobacco, vanilla, and chocolate; and maybe syphilis. Old world exports: wheat, sugar, rice, coffee; horse, cows, pigs; African slave labor; and smallpox, measles, bubonic plague, influenza, typhus, diphtheria, and scarlet fever.

The new world exported syphilis, silver, and gold.
Europeans sent horse, cows, pigs, and slaves in their ship holds.
America received sugar, rice, coffee, and wheat.
She gave to Europe corn, potatoes, tobacco and a chocolate treat.
But European diseases were also sent.
Indian deaths—ninety percent!

2. The Planting of English America

Virginia Company of London chose a location on the banks of the James River—Jamestown. The Virginia Company was saved from utter collapse by Captain John Smith and new governor, Lord De La Warr.

From Virgin(ia) (queen) then James.
After Smith then War(r).

John Rolfe, husband of Pocahontas, was the father of the tobacco industry and economic savior of the Virginia colony.

Rolfe loved an Indian,
Perfected a good smoke.
To grow it needed lots of men.
Virginia didn’t go broke.


Maryland—Catholic haven,
Supported Act of Toleration

Carolinas exported rice and imported slaves.
CERIS

Georgia served as a buffer colony against Spanish Florida and French Louisiana.
Georgia is in the way of Flo and Lou.

3. Settling the Northern Colonies

Puritans were English religious reformers who wished to undertake a total purification and de-Catholicization of the Church of England. Separatists vowed to break away entirely from the Church of England. The Pilgrims were a group of Puritans, including some Separatists, who secured rights to settle under the Virginia Company’s jurisdiction. Their ship, the Mayflower, missed its destination, and they settled on the shore of Plymouth Bay, New England. All signed the Mayflower Compact, a step toward self-government.

PILGRIMS

Puritans
Icy first winter killed half
Left England and then Holland for America
Good leadership in William Bradford
Refused to be discouraged
In fur, fish, and lumber found prosperity and a thanksgiving celebration with the Indians
Mayflower Compact
Separatists influenced the group.

Massachusetts Bay Colony started off on a larger scale than any other English settlements. John Winthrop believed, “We shall be a city upon a hill” and a calling from G-d to serve the new colony as its governor. The purpose of the government was to enforce G-d’s laws. Only “visible saints” could vote.

Massachusetts Bay Colony,
Not a true democracy.
Votes only for Puritans,
Not rabble that sins.
Governor Winthrop had inspiring skill:
“We shall be as a city upon a hill.”

Anne Hutchinson and Roger Williams challenged the Puritan orthodoxy of Massachusetts Bay. Hutchinson was banished and Williams fled to the Rhode Island area where he built a Baptist church and established complete freedom of religion.

Who Ceri Arf
Williams, Hutchinson, orthodoxy challengers. (He) escaped (to) Rhode Island and religious freedom.

Indian King Philip (aka Metacom) forged an Indian alliance and mounted a series of coordinated assaults on English villages throughout New England, but he was captured and killed. King Philip’s War inflicted lasting defeat on New England’s Indians, and thereafter they posed only sporadic threats to the New England colonists.

King Philip organized in order to fight,
But his head ended up on a pike.
New England’s last serious Indian attack
Set the tribes’ numbers back.

Residues of Charles II’s effort to assert tighter administrative control using English officials aggravated Americans.

Charles’ judges sent
Were viewed by New England with contempt.

William Penn’s colony included an elected assembly, freedom of worship, no restrictions on immigration, and benevolent Indian relations.

Pennsylvania assembly worship, Immigration, Indians
Paw II

4. American Life in the Seventeenth Century

Malaria, dysentery, and typhoid (MDT) cut ten years off the life expectancy of newcomers from England that left for the Chesapeake. Half the people born to early Virginia and Maryland settlements did not survive to celebrate their twentieth birthdays.

Virginia 1600s=MDT minus ten. With luck, ten again.

Both Virginia and Maryland employed the “headright” system to encourage the importation of servant workers. Whoever paid the passage of a laborer (and Britain had a labor surplus) received the right to acquire fifty acres of land. The laborer, an “indentured servant,” voluntarily traded several years of labor for the cost of the transatlantic passage and later clothes, provisions, and maybe a small amount of land. The planters became great land holders. The indentured servants often became low-wage laborers. Bacon’s rebellion showed the tension of the landless former servants against the plantation gentry. African slaves solved the problem for the gentry as the pool of available English laborers shrank in the late 1600s.

Bacon replaced indentured with African slaves.
Brid Africans

Slave life was most severe on rice plantations in the deep south and slaves there didn’t live long. Blacks in the tobacco-growing Chesapeake region had it easier, and by the early 1700s family life and natural increase was possible.

Slave life wasn’t nice
In the deep south growing rice.
Slave health was a great lack,
To import more, slave ships had to go back.
Chesapeake tobacco had more spice
And allowed slaves an easier family life.

Southern society in the seventeenth century was characterized by a few great merchant planters who owned most slaves and land and monopolized political power. Beneath the planters were the small farmers. They tilled modest plots and might own one or two slaves but lived as subsistence farmers. Beneath them were landless whites, most of them former indentured servants. Under them were indentured servants. Black slaves were on the lowest rung of society.

Planters, small farmers, landless whites, indentured servants, black slaves
Pretty Sally Finch loves when I sass brother Sam.

Healthier New England life on average added ten years to an Englishman’s lifespan. A stable family was the center of New England life, and early marriage encouraged a high birthrate.

If on this earth you wanted to stay,
Best to live in Massachusetts Bay.
Strong family units were partly how
People lived almost as long as they do now.

The Puritans’ Congregational Church government led to democracy in political government.

Church democracy to town meeting

By conferring partial membership rights in the once-exclusive Puritan congregations, the Half-Way Covenant weakened the distinction between the “elect” and others, further diluting the spiritual purity of the original settlers’ G-dly community. Strict religious purity was sacrificed somewhat to the cause of wider religious participation.

Partial church membership—
Half –Way covenant
Diluted spiritual purity
Of Puritan Community.
Infused the congregation
With more religious participation.
A group of adolescent girls in Salem, Massachusetts claimed to have been bewitched by certain older women. A hysterical ‘witch hunt” ensued, leading to the execution in 1692 of twenty individuals.

Salem hunt executed “witches”—“bewitched girls of adolescence in Massachusetts.
Shew B Gam

5. Colonial society on the Eve of Revolution

The 18th century American population boom shift the balance of power between the colonies and Britain. In 1700 there were twenty Englishmen for each American colonist. By 1775 the ratio had fallen to three to one.

America grew
To many from few.
In 1776 the British were undone
Partly by a ratio that had fallen to three to one (British to American).

Ethnicities of (non-native) Americans in 1790 were predominantly (in order of population, greatest to least) English, African, Scottish, German, and Scotts-Irish.

English, African, Scottish, German, and Scotts-Irish.
Eat all sweet grapes—stuff it!

Scotts-Irish led the armed march of the Paxton Boys on Philadelphia in 1764, protesting the Quakers’ lenient policy toward the Indians. They also led the Regulator movement, a rebellion against eastern dominance of the South Carolina colony.

The Paxton Boys protested Quakers’ lack of fight.
The Regulators rebelled against South Carolina eastern might.

The colonies’ economy in the 18th century could be explored by region. New England specialized in fishing, whaling, shipbuilding, rum, and trading. The middle colonies grew grain, raised cattle, and traded. The south grew tobacco, rice, and indigo, and traded.

In New England you might trade some fish,
Drying cod for a Spaniard’s dish.
Middle colonies made the bread
Or had cattle in the shed.
Southerners made their dough
From rice, tobacco,
And indigo.

Parliament passed the Molasses Act, disallowing crucial North American trade with the French West Indies. American merchants bribed and smuggled their way around the law.

The Molasses Act didn’t stick to the rum American smugglers bought from the French West Indies.

Two “established” or tax-supported churches in 1775—the Anglican (Church of England) and the Congregational (Puritan) —were strongest in different parts of the country. The Anglicans were established in the south and a part of New York. The Congregationalists were formerly established in all the New England colonies except Rhode Island.

The Anglican or England’s church
Held a strong southern perch.
The Congregational—Puritan—
In New England sermonized sinful men.

Clerical intellectualism and more liberal doctrines set the stage for the religious revival during the 1730s and 1740s known as the Great Awakening. “Old light clergy were skeptical of the emotionalism and theatrics of the revivalists. “New light” clergy defended the Awakening for its role in revitalizing American religion. The Awakening led to the founding of “new light” centers of higher learning such as Princeton, Brown, Rutgers, and Dartmouth and was the first spontaneous mass movement of the American people, unifying them over sectional and denominational boundaries.

Whitefield
Wrath Hellfire ITinerant (preachers) Emotional (in open) FIELD

Peter Zenger’s newspaper assailed the corrupt royal governor. The mere fact of printing, irrespective of the truth, was enough to convict. The jurors defied the judge and declared a verdict of not guilty—a blow for freedom of the press.

Attacking corruption, Zenger’s paper did tell.
The governor put Zenger to trial for seditious libel.
The judge told the jury that whether truth or tale
Just making the statements should send Zenger to jail.
Zenger’s defense—opposing arbitrary power
Won, permitting press freedom to flower.

Compared to Europe, 18th century America offered unusual opportunities for social mobility and a greater level of democracy.

American mobility and democracy
AMAD

My Dining Experience and Culture Change

I assumed that my childhood dining experience was the norm everywhere until I served, in my late 20s, as a counseling intern in a poor urban area of California. I co-facilitated a group of teens in a diversion program. Similar in philosophy to traffic school, the attendees avoided a worse alternative—juvenile hall—by attending sixteen sessions of group therapy. Most of the kids wanted to quickly get through the program and get on with their lives, but more than a few enjoyed engaging in macho posturing and making the therapist squirm. One time my partner went on vacation and I was on my own with seventeen teens, many of them well over 200 pounds with a recent history of low impulse control. My boss told me to call 911 if things got out of hand. Boy, that made me feel empowered! The group sensed my discomfort and I heard comments like, “I’d like to tear off, one by one, the fingers off that cop that hassled me.” “Have you ever done crack?” And my favorite, “Man, this group sucks.” Somehow I survived. Teaching high school was easy after these experiences.

One day I asked the group what they talked about at the dinner table. I received back seventeen blank stares. My more astute partner was familiar with inner city life, and asked, “How many of you eat dinner with your family at the same time?” None did. Instead they would grab something out of the refrigerator and eat it, in their room, alone. Taken aback, I realized that the family life of many inner city children was qualitatively different from mine. What glued these families together? Perhaps their family glue was less sticky than mine. My family’s dining experience was the centripetal force that held us together.

For my first seventeen years of my life, from birth to when I moved away to college, my family ate together whenever possible but especially at dinner. If someone was away or sick their presence would be missed. Dinnertime was when we kids told everyone about our day, usually what happened at school. Topics included who in class got in trouble for placing a tack on the “kiss up” girl’s chair; whether plants grow from the top or from the bottom; pi to ten digits; who got the weekly “room 13 citizen of the week” award; and who threw up during running drills in P.E. and who was forced to clean it up. If you weren’t talkative, you were angry at a family member or “something was wrong with you.” Religion and politics were also highly prized topics of discussion, and non-believers and political enemies were described in colorful and draconian terms as barbarians and evil-doers. Specifically, I remember a dinner time discussion that included the Vietnam War, President Nixon, and Eugene McCarthy after some Berkeley radical or reactionary tore off my father’s McCarthy for President bumper sticker. After a Christian missionary came to our door, we discussed a few differences between Christianity and our Judaism. I was a good son that agreed with his parents and as a devout junior Hasmonean and budding politician looked forward to dinnertime, hungry or not.

Indeed, when I started forming opinions of my own, the discussions became more heated. Our dinner table conversation would have made excellent court room training. We all used time-tested rhetorical techniques on each other, especially ad hominem attacks, and sarcastically questioned our opponent’s intelligence. Yet we children also learned that our opinions mattered and were valued and were taught how to think and retort quickly and sometimes cleverly.

Update: 
My pulse quickened when I found a New York Times article, Why Does it Matter that Families Eat Together? Sam Sifton writes that this communal time inoculates family members somewhat from depression, drug use, obesity and teenage pregnancy. The children do better in school. Read the article here.