March 16, Freedoms Day – How to celebrate James Madison?

March 16, 2013

March 16 falls on Saturday this year, so celebrations of James Madison, who was born on March 16, 1751, will get lumped into the “something else to do” during Saturday errands, category.

March 16 is not a holiday.  It’s not even a Flag Flying Day (though, if you left your flag up for March 15th’s anniversary of Maine’s statehood . . . no one would notice).

Secretary of State James Madison, who won Marb...

Secretary of State James Madison, who won Marbury v. Madison, but lost Judicial review. Photo: Wikipedia

Should we leave James Madison out of our celebrations of history with such vengeance?

Madison left a great legacy.  The question is, how to honor it, and him?

  • Madison is known popularly, especially for elementary school history studies (the few that are done anymore), as the Father of the Constitution.  It’s fitting:  Madison engaged in a great, good conspiracy with George Washington and Alexander Hamilton to get the convention to “amend” the Articles of Confederation and create a better, probably stronger, national government.  But Washington stayed behind the scenes, and pulled very few strings Madison didn’t tell him to pull. Hamilton’s support from New York was weak; while Hamilton played a hugely important role in getting the convention called, and in getting New York to ratify the Constitution with the creation of the Federalist Papers project, the day-to-day operation of the convention and direction of the political forces to make it work, fell to Madison.
  • Madison’s notes on the Philadelphia convention give us the best record of the then-secret proceedings. 

    English: James Madison, fourth president of th...

    Notice the error in this caption:  “James Madison, fourth president of the United States wrote the Constitution at his estate near Orange Virginia, called Montpelier. Pictured here after an extensive renovation.” Photo from Wikipedia.  (James Madison didn’t write the Constitution; it was hammered out in Philadelphia, not Montpelier; the patriot and rake Gouverneur Morris wrote out the final draft.)

  • Madison devised the scheme of getting conventions to ratify the Constitution, instead of colonial/state legislatures.  He had Patrick Henry in mind.  Henry opposed any centralized government for the colonies, to the point that he refused to attend the Philadelphia convention when he was appointed a delegate; by the end of the convention, Henry was off to another term as governor where he hoped to orchestrate the defeat of ratification of the constitution in the Virginia legislature.  Madison circumvented that path, but Henry still threw up every hurdle he could.  (Henry organized the anti-federalist forces in the Virginia Convention, and hoping to kill the Constitution, called it fatally flawed for having no bill of rights; when Madison’s organizing outflanked him, especially with a promised to get a bill of rights in the First Congress, Henry blocked Madison’s election to the U.S. Senate, and organized forces to stop his popular election to the U.S. House.  That failed, ultimately, and Madison pushed the legislative package that became the Bill of Rights).
  • Andrew Hamilton started writing a series of newspaper columns, with John Jay, to urge New York to ratify of the Constitution; but after Jay was beaten nearly to death by an anti-federalist mob, Hamilton invited Madison to step in and help.  Madison ended up writing more than Hamilton and Jay put together, in that collection now known as The Federalist Papers.
  • Madison backed down George Mason, and got the great defender of citizens’ rights to add religious freedom to the Virginia Bill of Rights, in 1776.  Religious freedom and freedom of conscience became a life-long crusade for Madison, perhaps moreso than for Thomas Jefferson.
  • A sort of protege of Thomas Jefferson, Madison pushed much of Jefferson’s democratic and bureaucratic reforms through the Virginia legislature, into law.  Especially, it was Madison who stoppped Patrick Henry’s plan to have Virginia put preachers on the payroll, and instead pass Jefferson’s Statute for Religious Freedom into law in 1786.
  • Madison wrote the best defense of American religious freedom in the Memorial and Remonstrance, a petition to the Virginia legislature to get Jefferson’s bill passed.
  • Madison sponsored and passed more Constitutional Amendments than anyone else in history.  We have 27 amendments to our Constitution.  Madison pushed through the first 10, now known as the Bill of Rights.  In the original package proposed out of Congress were a dozen amendments.  One of those became salient again in the late 20th century, and was finally ratified in 1992 — the 27th Amendment.  Madison is the author of 11 of the 27 amendments, including the first ten and the last one.
  • Yeah, James Madison was the defendant in Marbury v. Madison; he made history even when he didn’t do anything
  • Madison is the only president to face enemy gunfire while president, commanding troops on the frontlines during the British invasion of Washington in 1814.
  • Madison took over the creation of the University of Virginia when Jefferson’s death prevented his following through.
  • Madison’s record as an effective, law-passing legislator is rivaled only by Lyndon Johnson among the 43 people we’ve had as president.  Both were masters at get stuff done.
  • Madison is the ultimate go-to-guy for a partner.  In his lifetime, to the great benefit of his partners, he collaborated with George Washington to get the convention in Philadelphia; he collaborated with Ben Franklin to get Washington to be president of the Philadelphia convention, without which it could not have succeeded; he collaborated with Hamilton on the Constitution and again on the Federalist papers; he collaborated with Jefferson to secure religious freedom in 1776, 1786, and 1789; Madison collaborated with Jefferson to establish our party political system (perhaps somewhat unintentionally), and to get Jefferson elected president; Madison collaborated with Jefferson and Jay to make the Louisiana Purchase; Madison took James Monroe out of the Patrick Henry camp, and brought Monroe along to be a great federalist democrat, appointing Monroe Secretary of State in Madison’s administration, and then pushing Monroe to succeed him as president.  Also, Madison was a prize student of the great John Witherspoon at what is now Princeton; Witherspoon took Madison, studying for the clergy, and convinced him God had a greater calling for him than merely to a pulpit.

As the ultimate Second Man — when he wasn’t the First Man — Madison’s role in history should not be downplayed, not forgotten.

March 16 is Madison’s birthday (“new style”).

What would be fitting ways to celebrate Madison’s life and accomplishments, on his birthday?  Nothing done so far in the history of the Republic adequately honors this man and his accomplishments, nor begins to acknowledge the great debt every free person owes to his work.

(Dolley Madison?  There are two topics for other, lengthy discussions — one on their marriage, and how they worked together; one on Dolley, a power in her own right.)

Previously, at Millard Fillmore’s Bathtub:

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5 Comments | First Amendment, Heroes, Historic documents, History, James Madison, Presidents, Religious Freedom, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

If it’s an election year, it must be Bogus Quote Time! Patrick Henry on the Constitution

August 14, 2012

Keep your collections of Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, and “the founders” close to you, and right next to your Bartlett’s or Yale.  It’s an election year, and that means people are pulling out all the stops to get you to act against your interests and common sense, including making up stuff that they claim famous people said.

This quote falsely attributed to Patrick Henry piqued my interest last night:

“The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.”  ~ Patrick Henry

Patrick Henry before the House of Burgesses, painting by Peter F. Rothermel

As the painter imagined it, Patrick Henry before the House of Burgesses, by Peter F. Rothermel. The painting was done in 1851, 52 years after Henry’s death. It commemorates his famous speech against the Stamp Act of 1775, “If this be treason, make the most of it.”  Henry was both fiery in oration and stubborn in policy; it is unlikely that he would have abandoned his staunch opposition to the U.S. Constitution, to praise its defenses of individual rights, the very thing he criticized it for failing to do.

How do we know Patrick Henry did not say it?

Recall, you students of history, that Patrick Henry bitterly opposed the Constitution and its ratification.  He considered it too much government, too much intrusions of a centralized, federal government over the states and the citizens of Virginia in particular.

Henry refused to serve when elected delegate to the convention in Philadelphia in 1787.  Henry made it clear that he opposed any new charter of government that set up a real, workable, national government. Henry held considerable sway in Virginia — he was serving one of his six terms as governor, and he had the legislature wrapped around his finger, doing his bidding.  Because of that, James Madison devised a plan for ratification that excluded governors and state legislatures, but instead asked for ratification by the people of each state, in specially-called conventions.

Henry tried to stack the Virginia convention against ratification.  He did his best scuttle Madison’s attending.  Henry thundered against the Constitution from the floor of the convention, claiming that it would forever trample the rights of citizens.  Partly as a result, and partly to get the document approved, Madison pledged that he would create a bill of rights to clarify protections of citizens.  Madison thought that rights were already protected, but he conceded for political reasons.

Madison won in the convention, and Virginia voted to ratify the Constitution.  Henry was livid.

To prevent Madison from creating a bill of rights, Henry fixed the election of the new senators in the state legislature, excluding Madison.  If Madison were to carry out his promise, he’d have to get elected to the House of Representatives — but as a popular man in his home county, that should not have been a problem.  Henry persuaded the only man in the county more popular than Madison, James Monroe, to run against Madison.  It’s a great story, but for another time — Madison eked out the win.

Henry opposed ratification of any of the twelve amendments Madison proposed, which Congress approved.  Eventually ten of the amendments won ratification; we call those ten our Bill of Rights.

President-elect George Washington asked Henry to serve in the new government, perhaps in the president’s cabinet as Secretary of State.  Henry refused.  Supreme Court?  Henry refused.

Get the picture yet?  Patrick Henry was not a fan of the U.S. Constitution.  He complained that it fettered citizens of the states, and that it fettered the states.

How likely is it that he would then turn around and praise the document as a tool for restraining the state against the citizen?  Henry was a stubborn man.  It is not likely.

On history alone, then, we should regard that quote attributed to Henry as bogus.  It’s a fake, a sham, a blot on Henry’s legacy and a warping of history.  Heck, it covers up great stories about Henry fighting the Constitution — it’s not much fun, either.

The words offered most likely never crossed Patrick Henry’s mind, let alone his lips.  Of course, this quote shows up at many so-called patriotic sites — none with good attribution.  I was interested to find this very statement at Wikiquotes, listed under quotes misattributed to Henry:

The Constitution is not an instrument for the government to restrain the people, it is an instrument for the people to restrain the government — lest it come to dominate our lives and interests.

More and Related Material:

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4 Comments | America's founding, Bogus history, Bogus Quotes, History, James Madison, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

May 7: Anniversary of the 27th Amendment to the Constitution

May 8, 2011

Oops.  I forgot this anniversary yesterday.

September 25, 1789, Congress had approved and enrolled the proposals, and sent twelve proposed amendments to the Constitution to the states for ratification.  Ten of the twelve amendments were approved, rather quickly, and by 1791 the were attached to the Constitution.  These ten we now call the Bill of Rights.

James Madison before he was president

James Madison proposed the first 10 Amendments to the Constitution, and the 27th Amendment; the 203 years it took to ratify the 27th Amendment is the longest legislative process in the history of the U.S., and probably the world.

The two proposals that failed to earn the required approval of three-fourths of the 13 states fell into a special limbo for Constitutional amendments that became clear only in the late 1970s when Congress discussed how long to wait for states to approve the Equal Rights Amendment (this is a much-simplified explanation, I know).  Congress put deadlines on the ratification process in the late 20th century, but the first twelve proposals had no deadlines, nor did any other proposal before the Equal Rights Amendment proposal.  In the 1980s, Congress passed a law that said any amendments floating around, unapproved, would be considered dead after a date certain.  There were six amendments in that category.

Before that date certain passed, more states took a look at one of James Madison’s 1789 proposals.  They liked it, and they ratified it — 34 states total.

That amendment became the 27th Amendment to the Constitution, on May 7, 1992, 203 years after it was proposed:

No law, varying the compensation for the services of the Senators and Representatives, shall take effect, until an election of Representatives shall have intervened.

This is the longest legislative procedure in U.S. history, perhaps the longest ever — it lasted much longer than many nations.  By that ratification in 1992, James Madison became the person who proposed both the first, and last amendments to the Constitution.

Madison’s reaching out from the grave 156 years after his death — he died on June 28, 1836 — is one of the greatest legislative coups in history, too.

2 Comments | Bill of Rights, Heroes, Historic documents, History, James Madison, Legislation, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Utah report: More false “founders’ quotes” plague American discourse

April 25, 2010

Utah has a movement out to slander education and the Constitution, with a pointless claim that the Constitution cannot be called a “democracy,” damn Lincoln, Hamilton, Madison, Washington, both Roosevelts, and Reagan.

Sadly, it started in my old school district, the one where I got the last nine years of public school education, Alpine District, in the north end of Utah County.

They even have a website, Utah’s Republic. (No, Utah was never an independent republic before it was a state — it’s not like the Texas Republic wackoes, except in their wacko interpretations of law and history, where they are indistinguishable.)

At the blog from that site, there is a silly discussion on how a republic is a much superior form of government to a democracy.  Never mind that sheer numbers in our nation have always made democracy impossible (can’t get 150 million voters in one hall), or that distance makes it impossible to work (vote tomorrow in Washington, D.C.?  Everybody call the airlines, see if you can make it.)

So, I pointed out how a republic can also suggest tyranny.  And the response?  A flurry of “quotes from the founders.”

Can you vouch for any of these “quotes?”  Is any one of them accurate?

The Jefferson “mob rule” quote isn’t in any Jefferson data base that I can find. I find it also attributed to George Washington — but almost always without any citation, so you can’t check.

That maneuver is one of the key indicators of Bogus Quotes, the lack of any citation to make it difficult to track down.  All of these quotes come without citation:

As for a moral people, Washington said there could be no morality without religion and called it the “indispensable support,” not education. Obviously Jefferson and the Founders wanted education of the constitution to take place but we are very far removed from it in our education system.

Democracy… while it lasts is more bloody than either aristocracy or monarchy. Remember, democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts, and murders itself. There is never a democracy that did not commit suicide. – John Adams

A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. – Thomas Jefferson

The democracy will cease to exist when you take away from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not. – Thomas Jefferson

Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote. – Benjamin Franklin

Democracy is the most vile form of government… democracies have ever been spectacles of turbulence and contention: have ever been found incompatible with personal security or the rights of property: and have in general been as short in their lives as they have been violent in their deaths. – James Madison

As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy. – Abraham Lincoln

The last one is probably accurate, but irrelevant to this discussion (nice red herring, there, Oak).  Can you offer links to verify any of them?

Is this what I suspect?  The “Utah Republic” drive is not only a tempest in a teapot (though perhaps caused by other more serious maladies), but also a tempest based on false readings of history?

The website for “Utah Republic” is maintained by a guy named Oak Norton, who is obviously in thrall to the voodoo histories of David Barton and Cleon Skousen (I think Barton stole a lot of his voodoo history from Skousen, but that’s another topic for another day).

Funny:  Nowhere do these guys discuss one of the greatest drivers of the republic, over more egalitarian and more democratic forms of government.  Remember, Hamilton preferred to have an aristocracy, an elite-by-birth group, who would rule over the peasants.  He didn’t trust the peasants, the people who he saw as largely uneducated, to make critical decisions like, who should be president.  Norton doesn’t trust the peasants to get it right, and so he wants to dictate to them what they are supposed to know, in Nortonland.

Just because Oak Norton slept through high school history and government is no reason to shut down Utah’s Alpine School District or any other school; he’s not offered much evidence that everyone else missed that day in class, nor evidence that it has any significant effect.

Jefferson's advice on quotes found on the internet

Jefferson’s advice on quotes found on the internet, backdropped by his books now held by the Library of Congress.

28 Comments | Accuracy, Bad Quotes, Bogus history, Democracy, Education, Fake Quotes, Government, History, James Madison, Santayana's ghost, Thomas Jefferson, U.S. Constitution, Voodoo history | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

How will you celebrate James Madison’s birthday? What happened to James Madison Week at JMU

March 14, 2010

James Madison joined the world on March 16, 1751.  Tuesday is the 259th anniversary of his birth.

James Madison University, appropriately, made hoopla during the whole week in 2009.  What about this year?

Exhibit: Creating the United States”James Madison, David Edwin engraving after Thomas Sully Portrait - Library of Congress

David Edwin (1776–1841). James Madison, President of the United States. Engraving after painting by Thomas Sully. Philadelphia: W.H. Morgan, ca.1809–1817. Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress (107.01.00)

The Culpepper, Virginia, Star-Exponent, said there will be celebrations at Montpelier, Madison’s mountaintop home a short distance from Charlottesville.

James Madison’s Orange County home offers free admission all day Tuesday in honor of the fourth president’s 259th birthday.

Born 1751 at Port Conway in King George while on a visit to his grandmother, Madison was raised at Montpelier, the oldest of 12 children. He is buried on the grounds of his lifelong home in the family cemetery, site of a special ceremony in honor of his birthday March 16 at 1:30 p.m.

Former Deputy Secretary of Education Eugene Hickock will deliver remarks at the cemetery along with Quantico Marine Corps Base Chief of Staff Col. Thompson Gerke, who will lay a wreath on the fourth president’s grave on behalf of President Barack Obama. Numerous other groups will also honor Madison by placing wreaths on his grave Tuesday.

The U.S. Marine Corps has a long-standing tradition of attending the annual birthday ceremony because of Madison’s connection to the naval force’s founding. As Secretary of State under Thomas Jefferson, Madison recommended sending a squadron of naval ships to fight pirates off the coast of Africa, ultimately leading to their demise by 1805.

As president, Madison again called on the Marines to lead the nation during the War of 1812.

Nice of the Marines to show.  Nice of President Obama to send a wreath.  Maybe we can understand why Republicans wish to avoid any celebration of Madison.

Resources:

1 Comment | Bill of Rights, First Amendment, Heroes, History, Human Rights, Icons of history, James Madison, Presidents, Religious Freedom, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

James Madison, Father of the Constitution, March 16

March 16, 2009

Col. James Madison of the Virginia Militia, Citizen Soldier – National Guard image

Col. James Madison of the Virginia Militia, Citizen Soldier – National Guard image

James Madison was born on March 16, 1751 — date depending on which calendar you use.

Madison was one of our nation’s top two legislating presidents, on a par with Lyndon Johnson.  The essential ally for the creation of America, he is known as the Father of the Constitution for his work to shepherd that compact into existence.  A great ally of George Mason, Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, James Monroe, and sometimes nemesis of some of these men, Madison campaigned for freedom of religion, freedom of speech and freedom of the press his entire life.

Madison was delegate to the Virginia assembly, and wrote freedom of religion into the Virginia Bill of Rights.  He wrote the Memorial and Remonstrance defending religious freedom and opposing re-establishment of religion in Virgina, led the assembly to pass instead Thomas Jefferson’s Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom, helped settle the dispute over fishing and navigation in the Chesapeake, between Virginia and Maryland.  In league with George Washington, he convinced the Continental Congress to try to fix the Articles of Confederation with a convention in Philadelphia in 1787, then he hijacked the convention to write a new charter instead.  He wrote most of the Federalist Papers, with Alexander Hamilton, after John Jay was attacked and beaten by a mob.  He campaigned and won a seat in the First Congress, defeating the popular James Monroe who then became his fast friend.  Madison proposed and was chief sponsor of the 12 amendments to the Constitution that we now know as the Bill of Rights — two of the amendments did not win approval in 1791, but one of those did win approval in 1992 — so Madison wrote the first ten and the twenty-seventh amendments to the Constitution.

Electratig has a fine commentary on Madison and his birthday here, explaining the calendar shenanigans.

Go read the First Amendment, read a newspaper, and watch some news; say a prayer, and thank the stars and God for James Madison.

2 Comments | Bill of Rights, Heroes, History, James Madison, Presidents, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

‘We don’t got no stinkin’ education. We don’t need no stinkin’ education!’

October 12, 2008

My family’s heritages are migrant and education. By that I mean that moving someplace else for a better life, and getting the kids into better schools, has been a tradition running back at least 6 generations. My paternal grandfather was a seaman in the British merchant marine. He married a woman in Guyana, then moved the family for a job in the stockyards in Kansas City, a better place to raise kids. His children became nurses, politicians, law enforcement officers, successful trucking magnates; his grandchildren are doctors, lawyers, nurses, business executives, and teachers — one Rhodes Scholar. I am second-generation American on my father’s side.

My maternal grandfather was a farmer of great skill. He moved from Provo, Utah, to the frontier town of Manila, Utah, then to Delta, then to Salt Lake City, in a quest for riches from farming. Deciding that wouldn’t work, he took a job with Utah Oil Co., a company that was eventually merged into Standard of Indiana and now, British Petroleum. His children all graduated from high school, except for the daughter lost in infancy. Several went on to college. They became construction company owners, contractors and engineers, railroad engineers, small company entrepreneurs and retailers. His grandchildren are physicians, lawyers, business executives, successful salesman, investors — and a couple of good old boys who scrape by (every family has some). My grandfather was second-generation from pioneers, people who moved their families west in wagons, or if necessary, on foot and pushcart. They were people who fought Indians sometimes, and died in those fights and in the migrations. They left legacies in the towns named after them, and in their records as educators — both my maternal grandparents were schoolteachers early on, many of their cousins were college professors, one a college president.

Education in our family was always viewed as a ladder to personal success, to a good life, if not always a key to economic well-being. Especially in the case of my maternal grandparents, there was great assistance from the Latter-day Saint emphasis on education.

If I had to typify their version of the American dream, certainly a huge part of that dream involved the kids getting educated well beyond their parents, and getting a better life as a result.

Education was a part of the American dream from pre-Revolution days. Foreign visitors often commented that in America the crudest of men read the newspapers and discussed politics with vigor and earnestness absent in other nations. Education was the cornerstone of freedom, in the view of Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and as demonstrated by Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and George Washington.

Sometime in the 1980s, I think, the tide changed. Certainly the Reagan Revolution had something to do with it. Cuts in Pell Grants, the grants that got thousands of kids into college, were a signal that education was no longer valued as it once was. One by one the federal government stripped away some of the most important building blocks of our modern society, things like the GI Bill, which had provided America with a highly-trained, highly-skilled corps of engineers in the 1950s. Those engineers invented the infrastructure to our nation that now crumbles, and they invented the industrial processes, and sometimes the industries, that we now use daily. Transistors, which make computers possible on the scale we have today, were invented and developed into powerful “cogs” for machines that do what had not even been dreamed of 40 years earlier.

I can’t tell you exactly when the tide turned, but I can tell you when I first realized it had. After staffing the Senate Labor Committee for most of a decade, I escaped to the President’s Commission on Americans Outdoors, a good place for a budding environmental lawyer to work, I thought at the time. The chairman of the commission was Tennessee Gov. Lamar Alexander (now senator from Tennessee). Lamar had two big projects in Tennessee that he pinned his hopes for the state upon. Both were influenced in no small part by his work trying to recruit auto manufacturers to build production facilities in Tennessee.

Nissan and Toyota had levelled with him: Tennessee looked good, but for two things. First, there were few good ways to get products like automobiles out of the state to markets they needed to be sold in. Second, Tennessee’s education system wasn’t providing the highly-educated workers the car makers needed to run highly-sophisticated machinery in a fast-moving, just-in-time inventory system that produced high quality products at lowest cost.

Alexander responded with one initiative to build good roads out of Tennessee to major markets. He called that initiative “Good Roads.” He responded to the education needs with a program designed to plug money and support into Tennessee schools to improve education, bolstered by the report of the Excellence in Education Committee in 1983. He called that initiative “Good Schools.” In retrospect, those were good places to focus development efforts. Tennessee got at least one Japanese company to locate a plant there, and snagged the much-desired Saturn production plant of General Motors.

The Commission had some hearings in Tennessee. I was along on one of those hearings, and I was with Alexander when he was met by a Tennessee constituent who just wanted to talk to the governor. Alexander, being from Tennessee, hoping to keep his election chances good, and being a good governor, agreed to give the man and his wife a few minutes — I watched. The constituent complained about all the changes coming to Tennessee. He complained about the costs of the roads, and the costs of improving the schools. He worried about taxes, because, he said, he didn’t make a lot of money. Alexander assured him that his taxes would not rise much if any at all, and that especially the education part of the program would benefit all Tennesseans. “Do you have children?” Alexander asked the man.

He responded that he had two kids, both in their early teens. And then he said something that just stunned me: “You know, I’ve gotten by pretty good with my 8th grade education all these years, and I don’t see why my kids need to have any more than that. I’m not sure we need Good Schools.”

To Lamar Alexander’s everlasting credit — or shame, if you’re very cynical — he didn’t strike the man down. Alexander spent a few more minutes explaining the benefits the man’s children would have from better education, and he closed off telling about his meetings with car company executives who made it clear that they wanted to hire only good students who had graduated from good high schools, and maybe who had enough college that they could do the complex mathematics to run big machines. Alexander asked the man for his name and address, said his opinion was very important to him, and promised to get back in touch.

I suspect Alexander did contact the man later. His office tended to work very well on such matters as constituent contacts.

But I’ll wager he didn’t change the man’s opinion about education.

Sometime in the mid-1980s many Americans began to look on education as unnecessary, as expensive, and as “elitist” in a new, derogatory sense. Instead of education being something blue-collar workers hoped their children would earn, it became something blue collar workers felt oppressed by, somehow.

From that commission, I moved to the U.S. Department of Education, in Bill Bennett’s regime. Over the next few months I observed the same anti-education phenomenon playing out in debates about school reform in dozens of states. Then I got out of government and into private business, where education was demanded, and I only occasionally worried about the drama I had seen.

The past few weeks, especially since the nomination of Sarah Palin, have heightened my fears about the loss of the shared dream of better education for our children. It was part of the American psyche, woven into the fabric of our government from the “Old Deluder Satan” law in Massachusetts, which required towns of any size to set up some kind of school, through the Northwest Ordinances, which set aside sections of every township to be used for the benefit of public education, through the settlement of the west where nearly every town with a kid in it built a school — schools were built in Utah before many pioneers had houses to get them through the winter — through the dramatic rise of public education that helped knock out child labor, and that provided us with truly American armies and navies to get us out on top of two world wars.

Now comes conservative columnist David Brooks to explain how this process has been aided and abetted, if not intended, by the Republican Party, “The Class War Before Palin.”

In 1976, in a close election, Gerald Ford won the entire West Coast along with northeastern states like New Jersey, Connecticut, Vermont and Maine. In 1984, Reagan won every state but Minnesota.

But over the past few decades, the Republican Party has driven away people who live in cities, in highly educated regions and on the coasts. This expulsion has had many causes. But the big one is this: Republican political tacticians decided to mobilize their coalition with a form of social class warfare. Democrats kept nominating coastal pointy-heads like Michael Dukakis so Republicans attacked coastal pointy-heads.

Over the past 15 years, the same argument has been heard from a thousand politicians and a hundred television and talk-radio jocks. The nation is divided between the wholesome Joe Sixpacks in the heartland and the oversophisticated, overeducated, oversecularized denizens of the coasts.

What had been a disdain for liberal intellectuals slipped into a disdain for the educated class as a whole. The liberals had coastal condescension, so the conservatives developed their own anti-elitism, with mirror-image categories and mirror-image resentments, but with the same corrosive effect.

It’s a sobering piece. Please read it.

We remain a nation of migrants, a nation that migrates. We remain a nation that desires economic success and is willing to move to get it. Have we lost the good sense to remember that education improves our chances at success? Does Brooks explain the entire motivation for the War on Education?

What do you think?

4 Comments | Ben Franklin, Campaigns, Economics, Education, George Washington, Higher education, History, Immigration, James Madison, Lessons of history, Politics, Public education, Thomas Jefferson, War on Education | Tagged: , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Dirty play on PUMA blogs, and election history (1800)

September 1, 2008

Oh, it’s only a little dirty, sure.  With but with Democrats like the PUMAs, sometimes you wonder why we need Karl Rove.  With Hillary supporters like a few of the PUMAs, who needs Monica Lewinsky?

At the Confluence, anything that displeases the board moderators gets edited to say something completely trivial and, the board’s moderators appear to hope, embarrassing.  Even compliments from people they don’t like get edited.  So much for robust discussion and debate.  So much for fairness.

The Ghost of Goebbels smiles.  The Ghost of Alexander Hamilton paces nervously. Hamilton, you recall, paid editors and writers to put all sorts of scandal and calumny against Thomas Jefferson into their newspapers, in 1796 and 1800.  Dumas Malone wrote in his Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of Jefferson that fully half the American electorate was convinced that Jefferson was an atheist who hated religious freedom by election day, 1800.  Still, Americans voted overwhelmingly for the Jefferson/Burr ticket.  So Hamilton’s skullduggery didn’t pay off.

Alas, prior to the 12th Amendment, electors in the electoral college all had two votes, and the rule was that the winner became president, the 2nd place person became vice president.  The electors of the Democratic Republican Party (the modern-day Democrats) each cast a vote for Jefferson for President, and a vote for Burr.  In electoral votes, there was a tie for the presidency.  The election went to the House of Representatives (see the Constitution, Article II, Section 1, Clause 3).

The new Congress had not been sworn in yet, so the old, Federalist-controlled Congress got to make the decision between the two top electoral college vote getters (same as today — the old congress decides).  A history site at the City University of New York gives the short version:

Uneasy about both men, the Federalists in the House of Representatives took five days and 35 ballots to choose Jefferson over Burr. The deadlocked election between the two allies spawned the Twelfth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1804, which led to separate Electoral College ballots for president and vice-president. Jefferson called the election the “Revolution of 1800.”

35 ballots in the House of Representatives, before Jefferson was chosen on the 36th! When an election goes to the House, each state gets one vote; the Representatives and Senators must decide how to cast that state’s vote.  34 times that ballot came up inconclusive between Jefferson and Burr, both men despised by the Federalists due to the poisoned waters from the campaign.

Alexander Hamilton knew both men well.  Hamilton and Jefferson both served in Washington’s cabinet.  He had been a friend of Jefferson and guest at Jefferson’s table for the great compromise that gave us the first U.S. bank and put the capital on the Potomac.   Hamilton had worked closely with James Madison on policy and speeches in the Washington administration, an on the conspiracy to get the Constitution before that — Madison was Jefferson’s “campaign manager” in the election.  Hamilton also had crossed paths with Aaron Burr in New York, where both men practiced law.  Eventually, Hamilton persuaded a few Federalists to vote for Jefferson over Burr, and persuaded a few others to abstain from voting in their state delegations, throwing those delegations to Jefferson, too.  Jefferson was thus elected president, and Burr became vice president. Alexander Hamilton had to eat crow to keep his worst enemy, Burr, from becoming president.

Hamilton’s agonies did not end there.  After engineering Burr’s defeat in New York’s gubernatorial election in 1804, Burr claimed Hamilton had insulted Burr’s reputation.  A string of letters failed to resolve the situation, and Burr challenged Hamilton to a duel.  On July 11, 1804, Burr mortally wounded Hamilton in a dawn duel at Weehawken, New Jersey (dueling being illegal in New York).

Alexander Hamilton, hero of the American Revolution, created much of the financial underpinnings of our modern economic system, with a central bank and a view looking toward promoting trade to benefit the citizens of the nation.  He worked with Madison and Washington to created the Constitution, and worked with Jay and Madison to compose what became the Federalist Papers, originally a set of essays to persuade New Yorkers to ratify the Constitution, now a legal and history backgrounder in what the Constitution is and how it is supposed to work. Few important events in international or domestic affairs did not feature work by Hamilton, from Washington’s inauguration in 1789 to Hamilton’s death in 1804.  When his country called, Hamilton responded.

Hamilton’s death creates one of the greatest “what if” questions in American history:  What if Hamilton had lived, perhaps to serve as president himself? Opportunities lost do not knock again.

Resources:

Alexander Hamiltons gravestone, in the courtyard of Trinity Church, close to the location of the former towers of the World Trade Center, New York. AmericanRevolution.com

Alexander Hamilton’s gravestone, in the courtyard of Trinity Church, close to the location of the former towers of the World Trade Center, New York. AmericanRevolution.com

Another version of the same photo, Alexander Hamilton’s grave.

 

4 Comments | Elections, History, James Madison, Politics, Thomas Jefferson, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Torturing children, the Constitution, and a teacher’s duty to protect children

June 23, 2008

This is the device Ohio teacher John Freshwater was using to shock students and brand them with crosses: A BD-10A high-frequency generator tester for leak detection, from Electro-Technic Products, Inc.:

BD10ASV OUTPUT: 10,000-50,000 volts at frequency of approx. 1/2 megahertz. Power 230 V, with a momentary ON/OFF switch

BD-10A high frequency generator tester leak detector, from Electro-Technic Products.  “BD10ASV OUTPUT: 10,000-50,000 volts at frequency of approx. 1/2 megahertz. Power 230 V, with a momentary ON/OFF switch”

As described at the company’s website:

  • Model BD-10A is the standard tester
  • Model BD-10AS features a momentary ON/OFF switch
  • OUTPUT: 10,000-50,000 volts at frequency of approx. 1/2 megahertz

The company also offers a line of instruments for teaching science — notably absent from that part of the catalog is this shocking device (literally).

Generally, this tester should not produce serious injury, even when misapplied. Standard middle school lab safety rules would suggest that it should never be used to “test” a human for leaks. Such voltages are designed to produce sparks. Sparks do not always behave as one expects, or hopes. High voltages may make cool looking sparks, but the effects of high voltage jolts differ from person to person. It may be harmful.

“We have instructions to warn people that it’s not a toy,” said Cuzelis, who owns Electro-Technic Products in Chicago. “If this device is directed for seconds (on the skin), that’s a clear misuse of the product.”

Cuzelis said he is not aware of anyone seriously hurt with the device and said that his company has never been sued for injuries.

What sort of lab safety rules did Freshwater have for other experiments?

If you discovered your child’s science teacher had this device, designed to produce high-voltage sparks to highlight holes in rubber and plastic liners of tanks, would you be concerned? If you know what should go on in a science class, you’d know there is probably little use for such a device in a classroom. It’s been described as a Tesla coil.

Tesla coils of extremely small voltages can be safe. They should be safe. But one occasionally finds a safety warning, such as this generalized note at Wikipedia:

Even lower power vacuum tube or solid state Tesla Coils can deliver RF currents that are capable of causing temporary internal tissue, nerve, or joint damage through Joule heating. In addition, an RF arc can carbonize flesh, causing a painful and dangerous bone-deep RF burn that may take months to heal. Because of these risks, knowledgeable experimenters avoid contact with streamers from all but the smallest systems. Professionals usually use other means of protection such as a Faraday cage or a chain mail suit to prevent dangerous currents from entering their body.

Freshwater was using a solid state Tesla coil, if I understand the news articles correctly. Knowing that these sparks can cause deep tissue and bone damage in extreme cases, I suspect that I would not allow students to experience shocks as a normal course of a science classroom, especially from an industrial device not designed with multiple safety escapes built in.

Freshwater had been zapping students for years.

Here is a classic photo of what a Tesla coil does, a much larger coil than that used by John Freshwater, and a photo not from any classroom; from Mega Volt:

Tesla coil in action, from Mike Tedesco

Tesla coil in action, from Mike Tedesco

There is nothing in the Ohio science standards to suggest regular use of a Tesla coil in contact with students performs any educational function.

I offer this background to suggest that the normal classroom procedures designed to ensure the safety of students were not well enforced in Freshwater’s classrooms, nor was there adequate attention paid to the material that should have been taught in the class.

The teacher, John Freshwater, has been dismissed by his local school board. Freshwater supporters argue that this is a case of religious discrimination, because Freshwater kept a Bible on his desk.

Among the complaints are that he burned crosses onto the arms of students with the high-voltage leak detector shown above. This gives an entirely new and ironic meaning to the phrase “cross to bear.”

Cafe Philos wrote the most succinct summary of the case I have found, “The Firing of John Freshwater.” Discussion at that site has been robust. Paul Sunstone included photos of one of the students’ arms showing injuries from the schocks. He also included links to news stories that will bring you up to date.

Amazingly, this misuse of an electrical device may not be the most controversial point. While you and I may think this physical abuse goes beyond the pale, Freshwater has defenders who claim he was just trying to instill Biblical morality in the kids, as if that would excuse any of these actions. Over at Cafe Philos, I’ve been trying to explain just why it is that Freshwater does not have a First Amendment right to teach religion in his science class. There is another commenter with the handle “Atheist” who acts for all the world like a sock puppet for anti-First Amendment forces, i.e., not exactly defending a rational atheist position.

Below the fold I reproduce one of my answers to questions Atheist posed. More resources at the end.

Read the rest of this entry »

16 Comments | Academic freedom, Accuracy, America's founding, Bill of Rights, Classroom management, Creationism, Education, Education quality, First Amendment, Free speech, Freedom - Political, History, Intelligent Design, James Madison, Lessons of history, Pedagogy, Politics, Public education, Religion, Religious Freedom, Santayana's ghost, Science, Separation of church and state, Teaching, Thomas Jefferson, U.S. Supreme Court, War on Education, War on Science | Tagged: , , , , , , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

James Madison’s birthday, March 16

March 15, 2008

James Madison, portrait from Whitehouse.gov, and Wikimedia

Freedom of Conscience Day?

James Madison’s birth day is March 16, Sunday. He was born in 1751, in Conway, King George County, Virginia.

Father of the Constitution, fourth President of the U.S., Great Collaborator, and life-long champion for religious freedom and freedom of speech, press and thought: How should we mark his birthday?

9 Comments | 1787, Bill of Rights, Education, First Amendment, Free press, Free speech, Freedom - Political, Freedom of Information, Freedom of the Press, History, James Madison, Politics, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Tagged by Myers to do history! Meet James Madison

March 1, 2008

One of those memes. I’ve got a couple of them hanging fire still, I really do badly at this stuff.

So I have to start chipping away at them. Latest first.

P. Z. Myers at Pharyngula tagged me. As he describes it, it’s a meme of history; here’s what I’m to do:

  1. Link to the person who tagged you.
  2. List 7 random/weird things about your favorite historical figure.
  3. Tag seven more people at the end of your blog and link to theirs.
  4. Let the person know they have been tagged by leaving a note on their blog.

Okay, #1 is out of the way.

Now the trouble. A favorite “historical” figure? Maybe for Myers, a biologist, that’s easy. But I teach history. I like teaching the quirky stuff. The universe of possibilities is so enormous! Whom to choose? How to choose? Which seven little snippets?

Here are some of the possibilities — you may as well share in my misery.

I could designate Douglas Stringfellow. You’ve never heard of him, most likely. He was known most famously as a congressman from Utah’s 1st District in the 1950s. Stringfellow rose to prominence on the strength of his stories of behind-enemy-lines work, kidnapping physicist Otto Hahn, losing the other 29 members of his squad, escaping to France and losing the use of his legs from a land mine there. He was elected to Congress, joined the anti-Communist faction, and was zooming on the way to re-election when one of his old Army buddies got off the train in Salt Lake City, read the story, and blew the whistle. Stringfellow spent the war in the U.S. He wasn’t a spy, not a hero. His wounds were not from combat. Stringfellow resigned his candidacy at the insistence of the Mormon Church and Utah Republicans (perhaps the last time an organized religion and the Republicans acted nobly, together). It’s a story that should be made into a movie. There’s a good account published by the Taft Institute of Public Policy at the University of Utah, but it’s difficult to get (funding f0r the Taft Institute ran out, I hear, and it was replaced by the Huntsman Seminars on Politics — but that may be erroneous information, too).

Or I could talk about Richard Feynman, an inspiration to me, and to our two sons, both of whom fully enjoyed his books, and one of whom seems destined to follow Feynman into physics (the other works to understand neuroscience, still inspired by Feynman to do science). Everybody knows the story of Feynman, though.

Millard Fillmore is already covered pretty well here; adding more would be gilding the lily, or covering tracks, or something. I could write about one of my modern heroes of history, Mike Mansfield, one of the best bosses I ever had — but trying to find seven items that could be explained quickly might be difficult. I could write chapters about one of my other bosses, too, Orrin Hatch. Or I could write about Jefferson.

I’ll try to go right down the middle on this one: James Madison it is.

Seven items about James Madison, our fourth president, and “the Father of the Constitution”:

  1. See that scar on his nose? It’s from frostbite. When Gov. Patrick Henry blocked Madison’s appointment to the U.S. Senate, in order to fulfill his commitment to James Madison create a bill of rights, Madison had to run for election to the U.S. House of Representatives. Henry thought he could block that, too, by picking James Monroe to run against Madison, and getting lots of support for Monroe. In the last debate, a good buggy ride away from their homes, the two men decided to share the fare. Monroe said Madison won the debate handily; Madison wasn’t sure. On the buggy ride back to their homes, at night on a very cold winter, the two got involved in a long discussion about the new government, the new nation, and their hopes and dreams about the future. Discussion was so engrossing that Madison failed to notice his nose was freezing. Fast friends ever after, Madison won the election; Madison introduced Monroe to Jefferson. Patrick Henry’s plan to frustrate the Constitution and the new government was thwarted. And Madison bore the scar the rest of his life.
  2. Good government as religion — Long before the concept of an American secular religion, Madison attended the College of New Jersey (later to become Princeton), aiming for a career in the clergy. College President John Witherspoon, a Presbyterian minister, urged Madison to take not just any calling, but the highest calling. Madison went into politics and government. Religionists try to paint Madison as a secularist; early on, his drive for religious freedom was fueled by his faith. It’s an example more church people should follow.
  3. Egalitarian trends — On his trip to New York for the inauguration and opening of the 1st Congress, Madison stopped off at Mt. Vernon. (See notes about ghosting below — it was an eventful trip.) One of the topics of conversation was what form of address to use for the chief executive. Two camps were forming, one favoring “Your Highness,” the other favoring “Your Excellency.” Asked for his opinion, Madison suggested “Mr. President.” Some tried to make a more formal, more stuffy title official later in the year, but we still call our chief executive today by the unroyal sobriquet Madison suggested, “Mr. President.”
  4. Romance with George and Martha as cupids — Madison’s bachelorhood was a challenge to George and Martha Washington. Once the government got underway in Philadelphia, and after Aaron Burr introduced Madison to the woman, George and Martha worked to match up Madison with a vivacious widow, successfully. James Madison and Dolley Payne Todd were married in 1794.
  5. Great Madison’s Ghost! — Madison played ghost writer for George Washington, and others. On his way to the first inauguration, at his courtesy stop at Mt. Vernon, Madison was asked to draft a speech suitable for a president at inauguration. He happily complied. With some irony, whether it was known or not, once Washington delivered the address, Congress designated Madison to write Congress’s reply. Madison’s writing shows up under many other names, including that of “Publius,” in the Federalist Papers. Madison also contributed major parts of the farewell essay Washington planned to use in 1792; Madison and Washington were not on such good terms when Washington actually bid farewell in 1796. Alexander Hamilton got the last crack at ghosting the piece, and added some barbs aimed at Thomas Jefferson. Madison’s own ghosting had come back to haunt him, and John Adams won the election of 1796. (Madison got revenge, if you can call it that, in 1800, when Jefferson won the rematch, but not until the House of Representatives had to break a tie between Jefferson and his vice presidential slate-mate, Aaron Burr; it was Hamilton who finally had to eat some crow and urge the Federalists in the House to go for Jefferson over Hamilton’s more bitter enemy, Burr.)
  6. Offending the great man — Madison was off getting married when Washington and Hamilton headed the army and put down the Whiskey Rebellion. Madison suggested to Washington that alternative resolutions would have been possible. Washington took offense. It is unclear whether they ever spoke to each other after that, but that event breached the once-warm and cordial relationship that had produced the Constitution and got the new government off to a fine start, not to mention got Madison into a good marriage.  It’s fascinating Washington would show such pique, and fascinating that Madison stood for it.
  7. America’s greatest collaborator? Madison got to the Virginia Assembly late in the Virginia Bill of Rights process, but collaborated with George Mason to add a clause on religious freedom, helping to secure George Mason’s reputation. He collaborated with Thomas Jefferson, pushing Jefferson’s legislative ideas while Jefferson was in France, getting immortality for Jefferson with the Virginia Statute for Religious Freedom. He collaborated with Washington to resolve the Chesapeake dispute between Maryland, Virginia and Pennsylvania; he collaborated with Washington and Alexander Hamilton to get the Continental Congress to call the Philadelphia convention. He collaborated with Ben Franklin to convince Washington to attend the convention, and to get Washington elected president of the convention. When John Jay was physically beaten badly at a demonstration for ratification, Madison stepped in to collaborate with Hamilton on what we now call the Federalist Papers. He collaborated with Washington on the formation of the new government; collaborated with Jefferson on a bill of rights and foreign affairs. In an era when one did not run for office one’s self, Madison got Jefferson on the ballots in 1796 and 1800, essentially managing the campaigns that put Jefferson into office. He was with Jefferson on the butt-kicking they got from John Marshall on the Marbury v. Madison decision. At the end of their lives, and especially after Jefferson’s death, Madison followed through on the establishment of the University of Virginia, Jefferson’s prize project. In each case, Madison’s collaboration improved the project, and in several cases, the projects would have failed but for Madison’s work. Madison may take the title of the most successful legislator ever in U.S. history (competing perhaps with LBJ), but he definitely takes the crown as the best collaborator for the public good. Had Madison not been the collaborator on these things, would they have happened? In all of these projects, the people with whom he collaborated achieved their highest aims. Who wouldn’t want to collaborate with Madison?

Let’s get some good stuff in here in the tagging. Let’s tag some diverse blogs and bloggers who write a fair amount. I tag Pam at Grassroots Science, Bug Girl, Miguel at Around the Corner, Ron at Route 66 News, Curious Expeditions, Dorigo at Quantum Diaries Survivor, and Barry Weber at The First Morning.

Whew!  There’s good reading at those places even if they don’t do anything new.

Thanks, P.Z., for the kick in the rear to think about Madison, and to think about seven (out of dozens) of good blogs to refer people to.

6 Comments | Capturing history, History, James Madison, Weblogs | Tagged: , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Founders online, great interactive site

December 12, 2007

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.

Bill of Rights Institute logo

Check it out:

John Adams | Samuel Adams | Alexander Hamilton | Patrick Henry
Thomas Jefferson | James Madison | GeorgeMason | Gouverneur Morris
James Otis | Thomas Paine | George Washington | John Witherspoon

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.

Just in time for Bill of Rights Day, December 15 . . .

Leave a Comment » | 1787, 1789, Accuracy, Ben Franklin, Civil Rights, Classroom technology, Declaration of Independence, Education, Famous quotes, Freedom - Economic, Freedom - Political, George Washington, Heroes, Historic documents, History, James Madison, John Adams, On-line education, On-line learning, Student projects, Technology in the classroom, Thomas Jefferson, U.S. Constitution | Tagged: , , , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Texas was thankful first

November 22, 2007

Thanksgiving? Texas had it first. No kidding (unless you count the Vinlanders, who probably were grateful to be out of Greenland, but left no records that they ever actually had a feast to say so — but see the comments in the posts linked at various places).

Mrs. Bathtub is in the hospital. Nothing major, but it appears the staff who should have signed her out yesterday all headed off for Turkey Day and may not return until mid-December, so Mrs. Bathtub languishes at the expense of the insurance companies because security is tight and there are only enough sheets to get her down two stories, and she’s on the third floor (and the people-with-unknown-fathers at the hospital have sealed the door to the balcony anyway — that’s got to get you thinking). So Mr. Bathtub is frantically reading the back of the Libby’s Pumpkin can, and you can imagine what antics are up in the kitchen today. Blogging will be sparse.

So it’s reprise post stuff, mostly, today. If you need more, go here:

Google's Thanksgiving logo, 2007

Here’s the main reprise post, text below (there were some good comments last year); Margaritas and nachos do sound good, don’t they?
___________________________
Patricia Burroughs has the story — you New Englanders are way, way behind.

Palo Duro Canyon in a winter inversion

Palo Duro Canyon during inversion, Winter 2001, site in 1541 of the first Thanksgiving celebration in what would become the United States. Go here: www.visitamarillotx.com/Gallery/index3.html, and here: www.tpwd.state.tx.us/park/paloduro/

Update, 11/27/2006: Great post here, “Top 10 Myths About Thanksgiving.”

_______________________

Resources for 2007:

1 Comment | Abraham Lincoln, DBQ sources, Fly your flag today, Food history, Franklin Roosevelt, George Washington, Historic documents, History, James Madison, Rachel Carson, Separation of church and state, Texas history, Thomas Jefferson, Travel | Tagged: , , , , | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

Constitution Day, September 17

September 9, 2007

Get ready.

Constitution Day is September 17, 2007. It’s the anniversary of the day in 1787 when 39 men signed their names to the proposed Constitution of the United States of America, to send it off to the Continental Congress, who was asked to send it to specially convened meetings of citizens of the 13 states for ratification. When and if nine of the former colonies ratified it, it would become the document that created a federal government for those nine and any of the other four who joined.

Banner from Constitution Day website

For Texas, the requirement to commemorate the Constitution was changed to “Celebrate Freedom Week” effective 2003. This week is expected to coincide with the week that includes national Veterans Day, November 11. School trustees may change to a different week. (See § 74.33 of the Texas Education Code) Texas does require students to recite a section from the Declaration of Indpendence. (Recitation is highlighted below the fold.)

Knowledge of the Constitution is abysmal, according to most surveys. Students are eager to learn the material, I find, especially when it comes presented in interesting ways, in context of cases that interest the students. The trick is to find those things that make the Constitution interesting, and develop the lesson plans. Some classes will be entertained by Schoolhouse Rock segments; some classes will dive into Supreme Court cases or other serious issues, say the legality of torture of “enemy combatants” or warrantless domestic surveillance. Some classes will like both approaches, on the same day.

Texas teachers have two months to get ready for Celebrate Freedom Week. Constitution Day is just a week away for anyone who wants to do something on September 17.

Sources you should check out:

Read the rest of this entry »

4 Comments | 1787, 1789, Bill of Rights, Government, Historic documents, History, Icons of history, James Madison, Lesson plans, Supreme Court cases, TAKS, TEKS, U.S. Constitution | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

The story is the thing; tell the story in history

July 15, 2007

Son James and I spent July 4 in Taos, New Mexico, where we were working with Habitat for Humanity building homes (a project of the youth group at the church we attend, First Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) of Duncanville, Texas). We took that day off, saw Transformers, looked at the sights in Taos, and drove to Eagle Nest Lake to see fireworks.

Lincoln reading to son, Tad; LOC photo

At some point through the week I was discussing with others the stories that make history memorable, in my view, and we discovered that few others on the trip knew the story of the deaths of both John Adams and Thomas Jefferson on July 4, 1826, the 50th anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It’s a story that is generally glossed over in U.S. history texts, but one that I make room for in U.S. history courses. My experience is that once kids get the story, that these two great men from such radically different backgrounds became great friends, then in presidential politics, great enemies, and then were reconciled, and then died on the exactly the same day which commemorated the event that both made them famous and that they made famous, kids don’t forget the story.

The story of their friendship is powerful and can be accompanied by readings from their letters in their later life (DBQ opportunity, teachers!). Generally, the story gets told in response to a question from a student. If I do it well, there will be sniffles from the class when we get to the part about Jefferson’s near-coma, awakening to ask whether it is the 4th of July, and then dying, and Adams’ death a few hours later, saying in error that “Jefferson still survives” (which is good that some students choke up, because it always gets me).

The story offers several mnemonic opportunities: 1826, the 50th year after the Declaration (1776); the presidencies of Adams and Jefferson, following one another; the fact that Adams and Jefferson were on the committee to write the Declaration, and that Adams nominated Jefferson as the better writer; the order of the terms of the presidency; the bitter politics at the end of Washington’s presidency (kids get interested in conflict, and the founding seems more vital to them when the controversies rear up); the reverence for law; Adams’ and Jefferson’s service as foreign ambassadors; and so on.

Once I’d told the story, others got the point. The story illustrates Mark Twain’s point about how much more difficult it is to write fiction. Fiction must stick with possibilities, Twain noted, while reality isn’t so constrained. If you wrote a screenplay with two heroes like Adams and Jefferson, and then had them die on the same day within a few hours of each other, hundreds of miles apart, you’d be criticized for being unrealistic. But it happened in history. It’s a true story, better than any lipsticked version Parson Weems could ever invent.

Study of history should never be a drudging trudge to memorize dates. The stories are what count, they are the things people remember. The stories tell people why history is important, and what mistakes to avoid, to satisfy Santayana’s ghost.

Such stories, especially about the founding of America, make history come alive and, often, grab students by the throat and make it memorable for them.  History is Elementary carries a nice story with the same message, though using Washington’s surprise attack on the Hessians from Trenton.  Teachers in need of such stories might do well to pick up a copy of David McCullough’s 1776, or Joseph Ellis’s Founding Brothers.

What other stories are there?  Well, the story about the scar on James Madison’s nose, and how it led to the cementing of the American Revolution (James Monroe, by the way, also died on July 4 — but in 1831).  The story of Lincoln’s trip to New Orleans; the story of Teddy Roosevelt’s capture of Mike Finnegan and two other outlaws, in the Dakotas; the story of Calvin Coolidge’s son’s death; the story of Robert Lincoln’s brushes with presidential assassinations; the story of the Civil War beginning in one man’s back-40 acres, and ending in his parlor; the story as Stephen Ambrose tells it of three men pinned down on a beach in Normandy on D-Day, and deciding the best course of action was to move forward to win the war; American history is rife with bizarre coincidences and seemingly minor events that go on to have great consequences.

I love to hear the story, especially told well.  Well told stories help students learn and retain history, and, I’ll wager, they boost the scores on standardized tests.

4 Comments | 1776, 4th of July, America's founding, Brain learning, Capturing history, DBQ sources, Education, George Washington, Historic documents, History, History and art, History blogs, History museums, James Madison, John Adams, Lesson plans, Patriotism, Santayana's ghost, Teaching, Thomas Jefferson | Permalink
Posted by Ed Darrell

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