Rereading the Gettysburg Address and the Cooper Union speech of Lincoln, I wondered for a few moments whether there are others with similar gifts for words who might be on film or tape. It got me thinking about the vast gulf between religion on the one hand, and faith and justice on the other hand.
The site offers a lot. E-mail updates on issues, cheap DVDs of the movie ($10.00 each for the first 10, $9.00 each for the next 10 . . . you may want to get a copy for each social studies classroom), background stories to the movie, story of Annie Leonard, background sheets, lists of organizations working on the issues and reading lists and more. I found no lesson plans, but you can surely cobble one together for an hour class, with 20 minutes taken up by the film. Plus you can download the movie, for free.
Go noodle around the site: There are lots of possibilities for student projects, student discussions, in-class exercises, homework, and fun.
This movie details, quickly and with good humor, the economics of recycling, the economics of waste disposal, and the economics of production. This provides a great gateway to talk about civics and government, and how to make things happen like garbage collection and recycling; a gateway to talk about economics, especially the various flows of money and goods; a gateway to talk about geography and how we have used our land and rivers to bury and carry waste; and how we use natural resources generally.
This would also be a good video for Boy Scout merit badge classes for the Citizenship in the Community and Citizenship in the Nation badges.
Contrasted with most of the industrial grade video I’ve seen for economics classes, this is fantastic. It’s better than any of the sometimes ambitious, but ultimately dull productions from the Federal Reserve Banks (are you listening, Richard Fisher? Hire Will Brehm’s group). (No offense, Osgood — yours is the best of that lot.)
Sen. Tom Coburn, R-Okla., probably has political objections to the movie, claiming it leans left, which indicates it’s in the mainstream. If you’re using any other supplemental material in your classes, this just balances it out.
Screen capture from the film, “Story of Stuff”
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Our friends and benefactors at the Bill of Rights Institute put up a great branch of their site, Founders Online. A grant from the Shelby Cullom Davis Foundation made the project possible.
This page should be a first stop for your students doing biographies on any of these people, and it should be a test review feature for your classes that they can do on the internet at home, or in class if you’re lucky enough to have access in your classroom.
Good on-line sources are still too rare. This is stuff you can trust to be accurate and appropriate for your students. Send a note of thanks to the Bill of Rights Institute, and send your students to the site.
Three or four times I’ve started out to look at events of September 11, today. Apart from my understanding that too much action was started in the wake of the events of September 11, 2001, without understanding the history of the people involved, the nations involved, or the people to be involved in future action, the posts all dissolve into rant.
Anger makes it difficult to say anything erudite, or informative. Maybe later.
I would like to hear from teachers who dealt with kids today. It was six years ago — high school students, and perhaps 7th and 8th graders, have great interest in the World Trade Center bombings, and often those interests produce questions that go unanswered. In one six-week period, I had a woman (now graduated) who complained that we didn’t spend enough time on the event — a week would have been appropriate, she thought, in a course that covered from 1900 to 2005 in six weeks.
What are your students’ concerns. What do you do in class to commemorate the events, or to teach from the events, and what do you wish you could do?
Comments are open.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Your kids don’t quite get the point of non-violent protest? The “Scarface” t-shirts outnumber “I Have A Dream” t-shirts on August 28? Do you wish you had some current examples of non-violent protest for classroom discussion?
Nonviolent protest helped disrupt a rally of VNN Vanguard Nazi/KKK in Knoxville, Tennessee, last may — courtesy of the usual clowns. You know, the ARA (Anti-Racist Action) clown block. It’s a good example of using peace to combat violence and hate.
“White Power!” the Nazi’s shouted, “White Flour?” the clowns yelled back running in circles throwing flour in the air and raising separate letters which spelt “White Flour”.
“White Power!” the Nazi’s angrily shouted once more, “White flowers?” the clowns cheers and threw white flowers in the air and danced about merrily.
“White Power!” the Nazi’s tried once again in a doomed and somewhat funny attempt to clarify their message, “ohhhhhh!” the clowns yelled “Tight Shower!” and held a solar shower in the air and all tried to crowd under to get clean as per the Klan’s directions.
At this point several of the Nazi’s and Klan members began clutching their hearts as if they were about to have a heart attack. Their beady eyes bulged, and the veins in their tiny narrow foreheads beat in rage. One last time they screamed “White Power!”
The clown women thought they finally understood what the Klan was trying to say. “Ohhhhh…” the women clowns said. “Now we understand…”, “WIFE POWER!” they lifted the letters up in the air, grabbed the nearest male clowns and lifted them in their arms and ran about merrily chanting “WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER! WIFE POWER!”
Yes, it’s the Liberty Bell, photographed from underneath, with the lights shining through the crack.
I guess it was a lot more obvious than I thought. No one guessed wrong.
This is the bell that resided in the bell tower of the Pennsylvania Statehouse, what we now call Independence Hall. It is the bell that was rung to proclaim the Declaration of Independence in 1776. The bell was cast with several flaws in 1752. It had to be recast shortly after it was delivered, and then cast a third time. It cracked in the early 19th century (legend has it cracking while pealing during the funeral of Chief Justice John Marshall — I won’t vouch for that story). It was last rung in 1846, on the anniversary of George Washington’s birth.
Enshrined in art and legend, the bell appeared on the reverse of the Franklin half-dollars (when was the last time you saw any 50-cent piece in circulation?). It was put on tour after the Civil War in an effort to get the nation reunited around old symbols (but, considering it was first called “the Liberty Bell” by early abolitionist groups, one might wonder how effective was the tour). When I visited it in the 1990s, the bell rested in its own pavilion about a half-block away from Independence Hall. Renovations of the historic site included construction of a new museum, which required the bell to be moved again.
The photo is from the NSF team that did the study; it shows the inside of the bell and part of the “spider” support system that helps hold the bell together and support display.
My probably faulty recollection is that we studied the story of the Liberty Bell each year in grades 1 through 5, which in my case includes schools in the states of Idaho and Utah. My baseline U.S. history tests over the past four years show that about half the students I had, in grades 7, 10, 11 and 12, could not identify the bell or tell why it is revered in U.S. history.
The bell’s yoke is made of American elm, a tree that is threatened with extinction by Dutch elm disease.
Replicas of the bell were cast in France and presented to each state in 1950 as part of a government bonds drive. Utah’s replica resides just outside the chamber of the Utah House of Representatives; according to Answers.com, New York’s replica bell “hangs in the lobby of the Kew Gardens Hills branch of the Queens County Savings Bank in New York City, a building that is a replica of Independence Hall.”
Other famous replicas: In neon, at Citizens Bank Park, home of the Philadelphia Phillies; now gone, in plastic, twice life-size, at Ameriquest Field in Arlington, Texas, home of the Texas Rangers (Ameriquest became insolvent in 2006, and the park was renamed and the bell removed); in Liberty Square, Magic Kingdom, DisneyWorld Park in Buena Vista, Florida; in the Rotunda of the Academic Building at Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas, honoring A&M alumni who served in World War II (this is probably the state replica from 1950).
The bell was originally cast by Whitechapel Bell Foundry in England, which also cast the bell in London famously known as Big Ben, which also is cracked. Whitechapel Hand Bells are used by handbell ringers around the world.
It’s an act worthy of Nicolae Ceauşescu, or Idi Amin — but the Turkish creationist Adnan Oktar has taken legal action that effectively blocks more than a million weblogs from access in Turkey — all the blogs on WordPress, the host of this blog.
I suggested in comments that protests should be made to the European Union. Turkey is working to gain admittance to the EU, and childish, totalitarian eruptions such as Oktar’s getting a court to censor a million blogs, significantly detract from Turkey’s chances and case. There is high irony here, too — Oktar is one of those who has willingly spread false claims that evolution was a cause of the Holocaust (when he’s not busy denying the Holocaust happened; consistency and accuracy are not among his strong points) — heck, just a few months ago he was claiming evolution is the cause of terrorism.
Do you have better ideas about what to do?
I hope the few of you who read this blog will spread this word far and fast.
Such disruptions of communication over an entire nation are the dreams of terrorists. Are we to understand that Adnan Oktar does this because Darwin convinced him? Or are his actions direct denial of his earlier claims?
I have been a journalist for a long time, having joined the Society of Professional Journalists in 1974. I spent many years in Washington, slugging it out against people who wished they had the power of censorship, and some who actually did have that power in other nations. I do not recall any similarly stupid activity outside of totalitarian governments, most of which are now gone.
Nuts.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Today is the 46th anniversary of the beginning of the Berlin Wall. The post I wrote last year on this topic continues to be popular, day in and day out, but especially when high school curricula get to the Cold War, the Berlin Airlift, the 1960s, and the collapse of the Soviet empire, best exemplified by the destruction of the Berlin Wall itself and the reunification of Germany.
Here is another photo from his collection. It comes without caption; from the barbed wire and the uniform and helmet, I would say This is cropped version of a photo of an East German soldier, Conrad Schumann , assigned to shoot people trying to breach the wall to escape to West Germany, who instead decided to leap to freedom himself, probably at Checkpoint Charlie, one of three gates between East and West Berlin. I regret I have no further credit information on the photo on August 15, 1961. The photo is by West German photographer Peter Leibing, then working for Contiepress, in Hamburg.
German authorities announced the Wall was open for travel between the two entities of divided Germany on November 9, 1989. Jubilant Germans on both sides of the wall tore down sections, poked holes in the concrete barriers, and generally vandalized the wall over the next few weeks. Negotiations then led the way for the Reunification of Germany on October 3, 1990.
The Chinese government has begun a concerted campaign of economic threats against the United States, hinting that it may liquidate its vast holding of US treasuries if Washington imposes trade sanctions to force a yuan revaluation.
On so many levels, that discussion offers opportunities for students of economics to understand how markets, finance, and borrowing work. This news report alone could be the foundation for a couple of weeks of lesson plans on international finance, the Federal Reserve system, government spending, and general operation of markets.
Two officials at leading Communist Party bodies have given interviews in recent days warning – for the first time – that Beijing may use its $1.33 trillion (£658bn) of foreign reserves as a political weapon to counter pressure from the US Congress.
Shifts in Chinese policy are often announced through key think tanks and academies.
Described as China’s “nuclear option” in the state media, such action could trigger a dollar crash at a time when the US currency is already breaking down through historic support levels.
It would also cause a spike in US bond yields, hammering the US housing market and perhaps tipping the economy into recession. It is estimated that China holds over $900bn in a mix of US bonds.
Xia Bin, finance chief at the Development Research Centre (which has cabinet rank), kicked off what now appears to be government policy with a comment last week that Beijing’s foreign reserves should be used as a “bargaining chip” in talks with the US.
Could China afford to try such a move? Would it sink their economy, too? How could the U.S. try to mitigate such a move? Does this mean the U.S. needs to seriously control trade with China, or would that kind of interference in free markets do more damage by itself?
Disregard all hysteria. The ailing Greenback will not collapse this year, not in ten years, not in twenty years, not in half a century. There is no credible currency against which it can collapse. (Unless you count gold). None of the world’s rival power blocs have the economic and demographic depth to challenge American dominance.
What do your local newspapers say? How can you use this to weave together a coherent narrative for your economics curriculum, starting in a week or two?
Rosten is probably most famous for the introduction he once gave to the comedian W. C. Fields, a spur-of-the-moment bon mots that so exactly described Fields comedian persona that it is often listed as a line Fields himself wrote: “Any man who hates dogs and children can’t be all bad.”
That story also tells us that Rosten looks at Adam Smith coolly, through no rose-colored glass.
It is a clumsy, sprawling, elephantine book. The facts are suffocating, the digressions interminable, the pace as maddening as the title is uninviting: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. But it is one of the towering achievements of the human mind: a masterwork of observation and analysis, of ingenious correlations, inspired theorizings, and the most persistent and powerful cerebration. Delightful ironies break through its stodgy surface:
“The late resolution of the Quakers [to free] their Negro slaves may satisfy us that their number cannot be very great …”
“The chief enjoyment of riches consists in the parade of riches.”
“To found a great empire for the sole purpose of raising customers [is] unfit for a nation of shopkeepers, but extremely fit for a nation whose government is influenced by shopkeepers.”
So comprehensive is its range, so perceptive its probings, that it can dance, within one conceptual scheme, from the diamond mines of Golconda to the price of Chinese silver in Peru; from the fisheries of Holland to the plight of Irish prostitutes in London. It links a thousand apparently unrelated oddities into unexpected chains of consequence. And the brilliance of its intelligence “lights up the mosaic of detail,” says Schumpeter, “heating the facts until they glow.” Sometimes.
Adam Smith published The Wealth of Nations in 1776 – not as a textbook, but as a polemical cannon aimed at governments that were subsidizing and protecting their merchants, their farmers, their manufacturers, against “unfair” competition, at home or from imports. Smith set out to demolish the mercantilist theory from which those politics flowed. He challenged the powerful interests who were profiting from unfree markets, collusive prices, tariffs and subsidies, and obsolete ways of producing things.
The Texas Freedom Network has sponsored high-level criticism of Bible study class curricula; their critiques forced changes in the curriculum used in Odessa, but the modified curriculum does not pass Constitutional, academic or Bible study muster, according to a careful report from Southern Methodist University (in Dallas) Bible study professor Mark Chancey. TFN has several reports and press releases on the general issue:
In the continuing religious freedom/education drama in Texas, the school district in Odessa, Texas, approved a Bible study course using a curriculum indicted by the Texas Freedom Network’s expert-in-Bible-studies advisors as religious indoctrination rather than academically rigorous study. Citizens in Odessa sued the district to have that action declared unconstitutional.
The case is being readied for trial, with motions from plaintiffs and defendants flying back and forth. I should be watching it carefully, and I probably should be offering close coverage here for teachers, parents and administrators in Texas.
This would be a good topic for a civics class project, too, it seems to me. You may want to capture documents as they come out for DBQ exercises in the coming school year.
Spread the word; friends don't allow friends to repeat history.
Immigrants’ Contribution to Economic Growth “The pace of recent U.S. economic growth would have been impossible without immigration. Since 1990, immigrants have contributed to job growth in three main ways: They fill an increasing share of jobs overall, they take jobs in labor-scarce regions, and they fill the types of jobs native workers often shun. The foreign-born make up only 11.3 percent of the U.S. population and 14 percent of the labor force. But amazingly, the flow of foreign-born is so large that immigrants currently account for a larger share of labor force growth than natives (Chart 1).”
Foreign-born share of U.S. Labor Force and Labor Force Growth; Orrenius, Dallas FRB
Or, until that account is unsuspended by the forces supporting Donald Trump: Follow @FillmoreWhite, the account of the Millard Fillmore White House Library
We've been soaking in the Bathtub for several months, long enough that some of the links we've used have gone to the Great Internet in the Sky.
If you find a dead link, please leave a comment to that post, and tell us what link has expired.
Thanks!
Retired teacher of law, economics, history, AP government, psychology and science. Former speechwriter, press guy and legislative aide in U.S. Senate. Former Department of Education. Former airline real estate, telecom towers, Big 6 (that old!) consultant. Lab and field research in air pollution control.
My blog, Millard Fillmore's Bathtub, is a continuing experiment to test how to use blogs to improve and speed up learning processes for students, perhaps by making some of the courses actually interesting. It is a blog for teachers, to see if we can use blogs. It is for people interested in social studies and social studies education, to see if we can learn to get it right. It's a blog for science fans, to promote good science and good science policy. It's a blog for people interested in good government and how to achieve it.
BS in Mass Communication, University of Utah
Graduate study in Rhetoric and Speech Communication, University of Arizona
JD from the National Law Center, George Washington University
Posted by Ed Darrell 
It was put on tour after the Civil War in an effort to get the nation reunited around old symbols (but, considering it was first called “the Liberty Bell” by early abolitionist groups, one might wonder how effective was the tour). When I visited it in the 1990s, the bell rested in its own pavilion about a half-block away from Independence Hall. Renovations of the historic site included construction of a new museum, which required the bell to be moved again.
Millard Fillmore's Bathtub 
