"Parents and Schools"

 Whether the current Administration is the most corrupt in the history of our nation, I leave to those better qualified to decide. But, as we know from the influence peddling of Hunter Biden and the recent revelations of Merrick Garland’s son-in-law’s business ties to the teaching of critical race theory, there is no question as to its corruption.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Parents and Schools”

October 16, 2021

 

“I don’t think parents should be telling schools what they should teach.”

                                                                                            Terry McAuliffe

                                                                                            Democrat gubernatorial candidate, Virgini

                                                                                            September 29, 2021, in debate with Glenn Youngkin

 

“Regardless of family background, students whose parents are involved in their

schooling are more likely to have higher grades and test scores, attend school

regularly, have better social skills, show improved behavior, and adapt well to school.”

                                                                                        National Coalition for Parent Involvement in Education, 2006

 

Terry McAuliffe was correct in the sense that it would be impossible for a school to design individual syllabuses for each child. Nevertheless, the input of parents should be sought, not denied. As the NCPIE (quoted above) expressed, when parents do take an active interest in the education of their children they achieve higher grades, gain better social skills and more easily adapt to school.

 

It was once rare for any American of any political persuasion to deny the importance of parents in the education of their children. As educator and author Dorothy H. Cohen (1915-1979) once observed. “No school can work well for children if parents and teachers do not act in partnership on behalf of the children’s best interests.” Now, Attorney General Merrick Garland’s weaponization of the Justice Department has put that partnership at risk. In response to a letter to President Biden from the National School Boards Association, which likened parents’ protests to acts of domestic terror, Mr. Garland said he would use the Patriot Act against those parents who have “threatened” school boards for the teaching of critical race theory-type themes, adopting NEA New Business Item 39[1], cancelling history and tradition, distributing sexually explicit curricular materials, and allowing transgender bathrooms.

 

Violence against any person, including school board members, is a crime, but disallowing dissenting voices of parents is a violation of their First Amendment rights. As for the rights of public schools to teach what they choose, consider Justice Clarence Thomas’ 2011 dissent in Brown v. Entertainment Merchants: “The ‘freedom of speech’ as originally understood, does not include a right to speak to minors without going through the minors’ parents or guardians.” To arbitrarily ignore parents’ concerns is what one would expect of a totalitarian regime more interested in indoctrination than education, not from the world’s foremost and oldest constitutional republic. 

 

In America, education flourished when it emphasized the basic elements or reading, writing and arithmetic, and, as students progressed, when it encouraged skepticism, inquiry and empiricism. Unfortunately, public school education today de-emphasizes education in favor of equity, to achieve graduation rates that reflect the racial composition of the student body. Standardized tests have been eliminated. The Regent Exams in New York have been watered down over the years, and in 2019 a commission was established to potentially eliminate the exams as a requirement for high school graduation. In this past year, New York’s Mayor de Blasio ordered the elimination of the city’s gifted and talented programs. In Oregon, Governor Kate Brown signed a bill ending a requirement that high school students prove they are proficient in reading, writing and math before they are granted diplomas. 

 

This dumbing down of educational standards is being done in the name of social justice, as the claim is that standardized tests are unfair to racial minorities and people of color. The sad thing is that those are the very people who have benefitted by such programs. In a list of the top ten secondary schools around the world attended by Nobel recipients over the past one hundred and twenty years, five are in the United States, four are in France and one in England. Of the five in the United States, four are elite public high schools in New York City. Historically, these schools have accepted the brightest students, regardless of race or color. While the student bodies of these schools may not be representative of the population, they reflect a truism that progressives do not acknowledge – that while people are equal in rights and under the law, they are not and never will be equal in abilities or aspirations. If there are too few blacks admitted to these elite high schools that is the fault of their elementary and middle schools, not of the tests. To claim otherwise suggests innate racial differences, which I do not believe to be true, and neither do the parents of these children, which can be seen in their demand for more charter schools and vouchers.

 

Wealthy parents, which include most members of Congress and a substantial number of the Washington bureaucracy, do not have to engage in heated discussions with local school boards, as they have options. If they do not like a school’s curriculum, they can move to a different district or enter their child in a private school. Poorer parents, regardless of race and especially those in inner cities and in rural areas, do not have that option; so, if they see or hear something of which they disapprove, they can and they should express their opinions. It is their duty as a parent.

 

The decline of the nuclear family has adversely affected all children, as it pertains to education Aristotle wrote that the family is nature’s established association for the supply of mankind’s everyday wants. In 1995, Daniel Patrick Moynihan was asked what was the biggest change he had seen over his 40-year career. He responded: “The biggest change, in my judgment, is that the family structure has come apart all over the North Atlantic world.” In the April 24, 2012 edition of The New York Times, William Bennett, former secretary of education, wrote: “The family is the linchpin of society, both economically and socially.”

 

Yet traditional family formations have been in decline for over half a century. According to PEW Research, 64% of all children today – those under age 18 – live in married two-parent households. In 1960 that number was 88%. According to the CDC, four out of every ten children today are born to unwed mothers. The statistics for black children are more devastating. In 1965, 24% of black children were born to unwed mothers. By 2018, according to the National Vital Statistics Report, 69% of black children were born out of wedlock. Because of the effects such births have on poverty and education, reasons for this decline should be investigated by a bi-partisan panel. One consequence, as it affects education, is that school boards, unions and teachers have accrued power at the expense of parents.

 

Schools should teach history and civics with honesty and without bias, while keeping historical actions taken and words written within the context of time and place. Like a nation, schools do not have to be perfect to be good. But they should not teach discriminatory policies, treat children as other than their biological selves, or alienate parents who only want what is best for their children. Morally and ethically, this is the right path to follow.

 

 

 

 

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[1] The NEA New Business Item states: “The NEA will provide an already-created, in-depth, study that critiques empire, white supremacy, anti-Blackness, anti-Indigeneity, racism, heteropatriarchy, capitalism, ableism, anthropocentrism and other forms of power and oppression at the intersections of our society, and that we oppose attempts to ban critical race theory and/or the 1619 project.”

"Risk"

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

Thought of the Day

“Risk”

July 15, 2020

“Only those who will risk going too far

can possibly find out how far one can go.”

                                                                                    T.S. Eliot (1888-1965)

                                                                                    Preface

Transit to Venus by Harry Crosby, 1931

Risk is confrontation with fear. Seventy years ago, my wife, as a young girl, would put on her roller skates and, with her older brother, sail down paths in New York’s Central Park. They went unaccompanied. At the same time, on a rocky farm in southern New Hampshire, I would get on my horse, along with a brother and/or sister, and gallop off along trails through the woods, also unaccompanied by an adult. Any concern our parents may have had, they kept to themselves. They loved us as much as we love our children. We were told to be careful; we respected their advice. Nevertheless, we took risks.

Immigrants, from the early 17^th Century to today’s migrants, did and do take risks. The earliest immigrants had no idea what they would find when they set sail across an unmapped sea, yet they were willing to take a chance that a better and freer life could be had than the one left behind. Social media, communications and government largesse have mitigated those risks, but emigration is still a leap into the unknown.

Success is impossible without risk. Entrepreneurs take risks, as do writers, musicians and artists. However, in all societies, risk-taking is never ubiquitous. Success comes to the talented and the aspirant – and those willing to take risks. The result is a society unequal in outcomes, but a fair one. What makes for a fair society are equal opportunities and the willingness to take risks, to grab the ladder’s rungs and make one’s way up, step by step. Consider the obstacles overcome by Americans like Abraham Lincoln and Clarence Thomas. At birth, neither had material advantage. Both were born in rural poverty. What they had was diligence, a desire for self-improvement and a willingness to take risks. They both recognized that victimhood was not the answer. While they were endowed with aspiration, dedication and intellectual talent, they knew they had to take risks and work harder than their peers.

Risks associated with COVID-19 have caused businesses to shutter and jobs to be lost. Yet the risk of COVID-19 is not unitary. The risk of serious illness or death varies depending on age and comorbidities. When we avoid the risk of infection, we risk financial and mental health well-being. Fear of contacting the disease has caused authorities to re-think the opening schools, as they balance the risk of the virus spreading against the risk of limited learning, social isolation and unemployed parents. In Tuesday’s Wall Street Journal, John Hasnas, an ethics professor at Georgetown wrote about his decision to return to the classroom this fall: “There is no alternative to learning to live with the risk of infection as generations before us lived with similar dangers. COVID-19 is part of life.” COVID-19 does represent a risk, but we must either live with it or hide from it.

Risk and opportunity are ever-present. My youth preceded the concept of “helicoptering” parents. Hand-held electronic devices have now replaced daydreams we once lived. Identity politics have swept the nation, dividing people into myriad categories, including victims and oppressors. But in the world when I grew up, being a victim was unacceptable. In school, bullies picked on the vulnerable. That happened to me until one day I took a risk and fought back. Being a “victim” removes the opportunity for improving one’s self. We should take chances and challenge the status quo. Eleanor Roosevelt once told us: “Do one thing every day that scares you.” Mark Zuckerberg said, “The biggest risk is not taking any risk.”

A diminution of risk is fueled by a culture of fear, a concept used by tyrannical types to achieve and hold power, whether in sports, business the military or government. It was a tactic used by Nazis to gain support for a regime that few dared confront.  In college, academic risk expands one’s mind. The provision of safe spaces by universities attenuates risk in that it spares students hearing or reading “harmful” words. As a consequence, students learn less and universities have become more authoritarian and less diverse, as have media and entertainment businesses.

General George Patton spoke of “calculated risks,” where the odds of success are measured, but where consequences can be deadly. Risk, definitionally, is risky. On March 23, 1775 Patrick Henry spoke at St. John’s Church in Richmond, Virginia, ending with his most famous words: “Almighty God! I know not what course others may take, but as for me, give me liberty or give me death!” A little more than a year later, fifty-six men signed the Declaration of Independence. The document ends “...we mutually pledge to each other our lives our fortunes and our sacred honor.” The United States would never have been born without the willingness of those men to take risks, which would have cost them their lives and their fortunes had the Revolution failed. Today, are we willing to assume the same risks to assure that liberty survives?

The question is more than rhetorical. Risk is more than a child galloping his horse down New Hampshire’s dirt roads or roller skating through Central Park without one’s parents. Free speech today is threatened by fear of reprisal. The stakes in speaking out against the superciliousness of the politically correct have never been higher. It should not be so. Speaking one’s mind should not involve risk. The arrogance of the Left has birthed a conformity of intolerance, as can be seen on university campuses, in corporate boardrooms, in federal bureaucracies and within the newsrooms of our nation’s radio, television and newspapers. Liberty depends on the willingness of people to speak and write freely, even when doing so involves personal risk.

"Indulging Victimhood"

Sydney M. Williams

Thought of the Day

“Indulging Victimhood”

March 5, 2018

“You always have to play the hand you are dealt.

If you’re dealt a bad hand, you still have to play it.”

                                                                                    Clarence Thomas (1948-)

                                                                                    Supreme Court Justice (1991-)

                                                                                    At a panel, Library of Congress, February 2018        

No person chooses their parents, their place of birth, their nationality or their color. We have no say as to whether we will be born to a rich family or a poor one, to an educated or uneducated one. We are not given options as to physical or mental attributes. As Justice Thomas said, we must play the hand we are dealt.

Certainly, some are more privileged, but that has been true throughout history. However, almost all immigrants to America, whether they came in the 17^th Century or the 21^st, emigrated because they were poor and persecuted. But early settlers did not consider themselves victims. They couldn’t. They would not have survived. Through belief in themselves, hard work and perseverance, they converted difficult circumstances into opportunities. In Justice Thomas’ words, they played well the hand they were dealt. Some failed, but most succeeded. Had they not, we would not now have the country we have.

Setting aside the role chance plays, success is a function of aspiration, creativity, tenacity, hard work, risk-taking and being opportunistic – a “can-do,” positive spirit. Justice Thomas grew up in the Jim Crow South, with few options open to poor, rural blacks. He never knew his father, and when his mother’s home was destroyed by fire he went to live with his grandparents on their hard-scrabble farm. Every critic of Justice Thomas – and they are legion among progressives – should read his memoir, My Grandfather’s Son, so as to understand the obstacles this man overcame. A bust of his grandfather, a dirt-poor Georgian with nine months of education, sits in his office. It is inscribed with his grandfather’s favorite quote: “Old Man Can’t is dead. I helped bury him.” His grandfather was victimized against but was not a victim.

Victimization has been (and is) a legitimate experience for many. Most ethnic groups (especially blacks) have been (and are) victims of discrimination. Slaves were victims of slave traders and owners. One thinks of now fully integrated groups who were once subject to discrimination, like the Chinese, Irish and Italians in the 19^th Century, Germans during World War I, Jews from the 1920s through the 1950s, or Japanese who were interred during World War II. Early (and pre-union) factory workers were victimized by wealthy manufacturers. Vulnerable women were (and are) victims of unscrupulous men. The seventeen children murdered and wounded in Parkland, Florida were obviously victims.

Those who have been victimized deserve our support. But, as Arthur Brooks wrote over two years ago in The New York Times, “the line is fuzzy between fighting for victimized people and promoting a victimhood culture.” Victims and their advocates rely on free speech to relay their message, as did Martin Luther King in the 1950s and 1960s. A culture of victimhood, on the other hand, inhibits speech; it protects the sensitivities of those allegedly victimized. The first gave us Civil Rights. The second gave birth to “trigger warnings” and “safe places” in colleges and identity politics in Washington that create feelings of self-indulgence and dependency.

Identity politics, an outgrowth of victimhood, has become institutionalized. It was described in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed by Edwin Meese and Mike Gonzalez: “The artificial segmentation of Americans into antagonistic groups organized along often imagined ethnic, racial and sexual categories.” It is, they assert, “tearing America apart.” A consequence has been policies that promote victimhood and discourage personal independence. Unstated, but embedded in these policies, is a rejection of virtues that lead to success: work, determination, self-reliance, responsibility and independence – characteristics that allow people to become masters of their futures.  

In no sector have government policies (and cultural norms), which foster victimhood and dependency, had a more devastating impact than in the black community. In a recent issue of the Weekly Standard, Joseph Epstein wrote about Chicago, where he was born in 1937 and where he grew up. He wrote of neighborhoods divided by ethnicity, of individuals and families striving for success, to become part of the American dream. He wrote of the city’s long history of violence, and organized crime that has morphed into gang violence. And he wrote of the “dismal” failure of black leadership: “…no one has emerged to organize and lead Chicago’s black population out of the wilderness of their increasingly crime-infested neighborhoods, where drug trafficking, high unemployment, and disproportionate poverty rates reign and seem unlikely soon to decline.” Blacks comprise 32% of Chicago’s population, yet 75% of those murdered are black and 71% of murderers are black. Yes, those killed are victims, but not the killers. Mr. Epstein writes that no black leaders have “stood up to ask why, if black lives truly matter, black-on-black murders have been allowed at the horrendous level they have.”  Politicians find it easier to put the onus on victimhood, rather than encourage the dignity that comes from work and the acceptance of personal responsibility.

Victimhood leads to self-pity, that someone else is responsible for one’s inadequacies. This is not a new phenomenon. The author Allan Massie wrote a dozen years ago in The Spectator that Hamlet could be seen as “a mixed-up kid, immature, uncertain of himself, veering from self-love to self-lathing by way of self-pity.” It is wrong to indulge this sense of sorrow, as supporters of victimhood do. In The Last Chronicle of Barset, Anthony Trollope writes of Reverend Josiah Crawley, a poor vicar who has been accused of stealing twenty pounds. His poverty and pride made him unreachable to those who might help. He is in despair, knowing he is innocent, yet unable to prove it. His wife speaks to him: “I will not let you pass, Josiah. Be a man and bear it. Ask God for strength, instead of seeking it in an over-indulgence of your own sorrow…Yes, love – indulgence. It is indulgence. You will allow your mind to dwell on nothing for a moment but your own wrongs.” Victims of victimhood are entrapped in self-indulgent webs of self-pity.

A sense of victimhood is not limited to the left. In 2000, sociologist Professor Mitch Berbrier of the University of Alabama argued that behind the white supremacist movement is a carefully crafted victim ideology – victims of coastal elites. Following the shooting in Parkland, Florida, a demonized NRA is at risk of following the same self-indulgent path. Conservatives who are denied the opportunity to speak on university campuses must take care they do not consider themselves victims. Movements like the Tea Party, Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter and #MeToo, which allow citizens to gather and protest, to express discontent, are the positive manifestation of a free society. But when they tilt from victimization to victimhood independence and self-respect are lost. And America loses. When he spoke of his grandfather, Clarence Thomas said: “At some point, we’re going to be fatigued with everybody being the victim.”

Those who have experienced real victimization, the kind I never have, might consider my musings as those of an elderly, privileged white man who never suffered the ignominy of being a minority. They would be right. But, like most, I have had setbacks. I dropped out of college. I lost jobs and have gone through periods where I did not know from whence my next dollar would come. But I am an optimist who takes inspiration from Nat King Cole, “Pick yourself up, dust yourself off, and start all over again,” and from the can-do attitude of Justice Thomas and his grandfather. My advice: don’t think of yourself as a victim. Ignore “trigger warnings” and avoid “safe places.” Life can be trying but don’t indulge in self-pity. Be responsible and self-reliant. Work hard. Be independent and, if necessary, be willing to start all over again.