The Seven Laws of Teaching by John Milton Gregory

I read The Seven Laws of Teaching by John Milton Gregory because it came up repeatedly on classical education websites as recommended reading. It was brilliant. I can’t adequately describe how much I loved this book from 1884! It’s hard to believe how relevant it is to today. Apparently we’ve been struggling with the same educational theories and irons for a long time!

He boils teaching down into seven laws, which he believes to be as reliable as the laws of science. So while another book I read says teaching is an art, not a science, John Gregory would probably beg to disagree. 

Gregory identifies seven factors about which he states, “These are essential elements in every full and complete act of teaching. Whether the lesson be a single fact told in three minutes, or a lecture occupying as many hours, the seven factors are all present, if the work is effective. None of them can be omitted, and no others need be added. If there is a true science of teaching, it must be found in the laws and relations of these seven factors.” 

He states the laws and then spends the rest of this short book expounding on the laws. They are as follows:

1. A TEACHER  must be one who KNOWS the lesson or truth or art to be taught.
2. A LEARNER is one who ATTENDS with interest to the lesson.
3. The LANGUAGE used as a MEDIUM between teacher and learner must be COMMON to both.
4. The LESSON  to be mastered must be explicable in the terms of truth already known by the learner — the UNKNOWN must be explained by means of the KNOWN.
5. TEACHING  is AROUSING and USING the PUPIL’S MIND to grasp the desired thought or to master the desired art.
6. LEARNING is THINKING into one’s own UNDERSTANDING a new idea or truth or working into HABIT a new art or skill.
7. The TEST AND PROOF of teaching done — the finishing and fastening process — must be a REVIEWING, RETHINKING, REKNOWING, REPRODUCING, and APPLYING of the material that has been taught, the knowledge and ideals and arts that have been communicated. 

(all caps in original)

He rewrites them, addressing them to the teacher:

1. Know thoroughly and familiarly the lesson you wish to teach — teach from a full mind and a clear understanding.
2. Gain and keep the attention and interest of the pupils upon the lesson. Do not try to teach without attention.
3. Use words understood in the same way by the pupils and yourself — language clear and vivid to both.
4. Begin with what is already known to the pupil upon the subject and with what he has himself experienced — and proceed to the new material by single, easy, and natural steps, letting the known explain the unknown.
5. Stimulate the pupil’s own mind to action. Keep his thought as much as possible ahead of your expression placing him in the attitude of a discoverer, an anticipator.
6. Require the pupil to reproduce in thought the lesson he is learning — thinking it out in its various phases and applications till he can express it in his own language.
7. REVIEW, REVIEW, REVIEW, reproducing the old, deepening its impression with new thought, linking it with added meanings, finding new applications, correcting any false views, and completing the true.

Now in more depth:

1. The Law of the Teacher - THE TEACHER MUST KNOW THAT WHICH HE WOULD TEACH.

He must have “such knowledge and appreciation of the truth in its deeper significance an wider relations, that by the force of its importance we ACT upon it — our CONDUCT is modified by it.”

RULES FOR TEACHERS

1. Prepare each lesson by fresh study. 
2. Find in the lesson its analogies to more familiar facts and principles
3. Study the lesson until it takes shape in familiar language.
4. Find the natural order of the several steps of the lesson
5. Find the relation of the lesson to the lives of the learners
6. Use freely all legitimate aids, but never rest until the real understanding is clearly before you.
7. Bear in mind that complete mastery of a few things is better than an ineffective smattering of many.
8. Have a definite time for the study of each lesson, in advance of the teaching. 
9. Have a plan of study, but do not hesitate, when necessary, to study beyond the plan. 
10. Do not deny yourself the help of good books on the subject of your lessons… If possible, talk the lesson over with an intelligent friend; collision often brings light. In the absence of these aide, write your views; expressing your thoughts in writing may clear them of obscurities.

VIOLATIONS AND MISTAKES

1. The very ignorance of his pupils may tempt the teacher to neglect careful preparation and study… The cheat is almost sure to be discovered, and from that time the teacher’s standing with the class is gone.
2. Some teachers assume that it is the pupils work, not theirs, to study the lesson…
3. Others look hastily through the lesson, an conclude that though they have not thoroughly mastered it, … they have gather enough to fill the period…
4. A more serious fault is that of those who, failing to find stimulation in the lesson, make it a mere framework upon which to hang some fancies of their own.
5. There is a meaner wrong done by the teacher who seeks to conceal his lazy ignorance with some pompous pretense of learning…

2.  The Law of the Learner - THE LEARNER MUST ATTEND WITH INTEREST TO THE MATERIAL TO BE LEARNED.

He describes as “secondary passive” attention when one is absorbed in the work so that learning seems almost effortless. Yet it still requires effort and persistence. He states, “It seems to be generally true that these sustained and abiding ‘interests’ are to be purchases only at a price — and the price is strenuous effort.”

RULES FOR TEACHERS

1. Never begin a class exercise until the attention of the class has been secured.
2. Pause whenever the attention is interrupted or lost, and wait until it is completely regained.
3. Never wholly exhaust the attention of your pupils
4. Adapt the length of the class exercise to the ages of the pupils.
5. Arose attention when necessary by variety in your presentation…
6. Kindle and maintain the highest possible interest in the subject.
7. Present those aspects of the lesson, and use such illustrations as will correspond to the ages and attainments of the pupils.
8. Appeal whenever possible to the interests of your pupils
9. The favorite stories, songs, and subjects of the pupils are often keys to their interest and attention
10. Look for sources of distraction… and reduce them to a minimum
11. Prepare BEFOREHAND thought-provoking questions
12. Make your presentation as attractive as possible…
13. Maintain and exhibit in yourself the closes attention to and most genuine interest in the lesson. True enthusiasm is contagious.
14. Study the best use of the eye and the hand. Your pupils will respond to your earnest gaze and your lifted hand.

VIOLATIONS AND MISTAKES

1. Recitations are commenced before the attention of the pupils has been gained, and continued after it has ceased to be given.
2. Pupils are urged to listen after their power of attention has been exhausted…
3. Little or no effort is made to discover the tastes or experiences of the pupils, or to create a real interest in the subject.
4. Not a few teachers kill the power of attention in their pupils by failing to utilize any fresh inquiries or any new, interesting statements to stimulate interest in the subject.

3. The Law of the Language - THE LANGUAGE USED IN TEACHING MUST BE COMMON TO TEACHER AND LEARNER.

Language is both the instrument and vehicle of thought. Teachers must use language that is easily understood by the learner and must seek to clarify any new terms or concepts.

RULES FOR TEACHERS

1. Study constantly and carefully the language of the pupils, to learn what words they use and what meanings they give to these words.
2. Secure from them as full as statement as possible of their knowledge of the subject, to learn both their ideas and their modes of  expressing them, and to help them to correct their knowledge.
3. Express yourself as far as possible in the language of your pupils, carefully correcting any errors in the meaning they read into your words. 
4. Use the simplest and thefts words that will express your meaning
5. Use short sentences, of the simplest construction.
6. If the pupil obviously fails to understand you, repeat your thought in other language, if possible with greater simplicity.
7. Help the meaning of the words by illustrations.
8. When it is necessary to teach a new word, give the idea before the word.
9. Try to increase the number of the pupil’s words, and at the same time improve the clearness of meaning.
10. Do not be content to have your pupils listen in silence very long at a time… Encourage them to talk freely.
11. MAKE HASTE SLOWLY. Each word should b learned thoroughly before others are added.
12. Test frequently the pupil’s understanding of the words that he uses…

VIOLATIONS AND MISTAKES

1. The interested look of the pupils often cheats the teacher into the belief that his language is thoroughly understood… when he has perhaps caught only a mere glimpse of the meaning.
2. Children are often entertained by the manner of the teacher… they will sometimes profess to understand simply to please their instructor and gain his praise.
3. The misuse of language is one of the common faults in teaching… teachers who attempt to cover up their own ignorance or indolence with a cloud of verbiage…[and] many honest teachers who…do not suspect that they may have used words which had no meaning for the class, or into which the children read a wrong meaning.
4. It may be a single unusual or misunderstood term that breaks the connection… and too often [children] are charged with stupidity or inattention when no amount of attention would have helped hem to understand the unfamiliar language.
5. Even those teachers who naturally use simple language to they classes sometimes fail in the higher uses of this instrument of teaching. They do not take the trouble to secure from the child in return some clear statement…
6. Many teachers have no proper appreciation of the wonderful character and complexity of language; 
7. Many of the topics studied in school lie outside the daily life and language of the children; and every science has a language of its own which must be mastered by the student…

4. The Law of the Lesson - THE TRUTH TO BE TAUGHT MUST BE LEARNED THROUGH TRUTH ALREADY KNOWN.

“All teaching must begin at home point of the subject or lesson. If the subject is wholly new, then a known point must be sought by showing some likeness of the new to something known and familiar… All teaching must advance in some direction… Learning must proceed by graded steps.”

RULES FOR TEACHERS

1. Find out what your pupils know of the subject you wish to teach to them; this is your starting point.
2. Make the most of the pupils’ knowledge and experience.
3. Encourage your pupils to clear up and freshen their knowledge by a a clear statement of it.
4. Begin with facts or ideas that lie near your pupils, and that can be reached by a single step from what is already familiar…
5. Relate every lesson as much as possible to former lessons, and with the pupils’ knowledge and experience
6. Arrange your presentation so that each step of the lesson shall read easily and naturally to the next.
7. Proportion the steps of the lesson to the ages and attainments of your pupils. Do not discourage your children with lessons or exercises that are too long, or fail to rise to the expectations of older pupils by giving them lessons that are too easy.
8. Find illustrations in the commonest and most familiar objects suitable for the purpose
9. Lead the pupils themselves to find illustrations from their own experience.
10. Make every new fact or principle familiar to your pupils…
11. Urge the pupils to make us of their own knowledge and attainments in every way that is practicable, to find or explain other knowledge. 
12. Make every advance car and familiar, so that the progress to the next succeeding step shall in every case be on known ground.
13. As far as possible, choose problems which you give to your pupils from their own activities, and thus increase the chances that they will be real and not artificial problems.
14. Remember that your pupils are leaning to think, and that to think properly they must learn to face intelligently and reflectively the problems that arise in connection with their school work, and in connection with their life outside of school.

MISTAKES AND VIOLATIONS

1. It is not unusual for teachers to set their pupils to studying new lessons, or even new subjects, for which they are inadequately prepared or not prepared at all…
2. Many teachers neglect entirely to ascertain carefully the pupils’ equipment with which to begin the subject.
3. A common error is the failure to connect the new lessons with those that have gone before in such a way that the pupils can carry over what they know or have learned into the new field…
4. Oftentimes past acquisitions are considered goods stored away, instead of instruments for further use.
5. Too often elementary facts and definitions are not and thoroughly familiar.
6. Every step is not always thoroughly understood before the next is attempted.
7. Some teachers err in assigning lessons or exercises that are too long for the powers of the pupils, or for their time, making impossible an adequate mastery of principles that may be needful for future progress int the subject.
8. Teaches frequently fail to lace their pupils in the attitude of discoveries. Children should learn to use what they have already been taught in the discovery of new problems.
9. A common fault is the failure to show the connections between parts of the subject that have been taught and those that are yet to come.

5. The Law of the Teaching Process - EXCITE AND DIRECT THE SELF-ACTIVITIES OF THE PUPIL, AND AS A RULE TELL HIM NOTHING THAT HE CAN LEARN HIMSELF.

Since self-learning is the best kind of learning, the teacher's job is to stimulate a desire to learn in the student and create the conditions that foster real learning. "Like a skillful engineer who knows the power of his engine, [the teacher] chooses to stand and watch the play of the splendid machine and marvel at the ease and vigor of its movements. It is only the unskilled teacher who prefers to hear his own voice in endless talk rather than to watch and direct the course of the thoughts of his pupils... Questioning is not, therefore, merely one of the devices of teaching, it is really the whole of teaching. It is the excitation of the self-activities to their work of discovering truth."

RULES FOR TEACHERS

1. Adapt lessons and assignments to the age and attainments of the pupils.
2. Select lessons which relate to the environment and needs of the pupils.
3. Consider carefully the subject and the lesson to be taught, and find its point of contact with the lives of your pupils.
4. Excite the pupil's interest in the lesson when it is assigned by some question or by some statement which will awaken inquiry. Hint that something worth knowing is to be found out if the lesson is thoroughly studied, and then be sure later to ask for the truth to be discovered.
5. Place yourself frequently in the position of a pupil among your pupils, and join in the search for some fact or principle.
6. Repress your impatience which cannot wait for the pupil to explain himself.
7. In all class exercises aim to excite constantly fresh interest and activity. State questions for the pupils to investigate out of class. The lesson that does not culminate in fresh questions ends wrong.
8. Observe each pupil to see that his mind is not wandering so as to forbid its activities being bent to the lesson in hand.
9. Count it your chief duty to awaken the minds of your pupils and do not rest until each child shows his mental activity by asking questions.
10. Repress the desire to tell all you know or think about the lesson or subject; if you tell something by way of illustration or explanation, let it start a fresh question.
11. Give the pupil time to think, after you are sure that his mind is actively at work, and encourage him to ask questions when puzzled.
12. Do not answer too promptly the questions asked, but restate them, to give them greater force and breadth, and often answer with new questions to secure deeper thought.
13. Teach pupils to ask What? Why? and How? -- the nature, cause, and method of every fact or principle taught them; also Where? When? By Whom? and What of it? -- the place, time, actors, and consequences of events.
14. Recitations should not exhaust a subject, but leave additional work to stimulate the thought and the efforts of the pupils. 

VIOLATIONS AND MISTAKES

1. Do not attempt to force lessons by simply telling, "I have told you ten times, and yet you don't know!" A teacher of this sort is unable to remember that knowing comes by thinking, not by being told. 
2. It is another mistake to complain of memory for not keeping what it never held. If facts or principles are to be remembered, the attention must be concentrated upon them at the time, and there must be a conscious effort to remember.
3. A third violation comes from the haste with which teachers require prompt and rapid recitations in the very words of the book.

6. The Law of the Learning Process - THE PUPIL MUST REPRODUCE IN HIS OWN MIND THE TRUTH TO BE LEARNED.

“The work of education, contrary to common understanding, is much more the work of the pupil than of the teacher.” The student must find a way to apply what he has learned and make it of some practical purpose. The earnest student must be able to ask these questions, “What does the lesson say? what is its meaning? How can I express this meaning in my own language? Do I believe what the lesson tells me, and why? What is the good of it — how may I apply and use the knowledge which it gives?”

PRACTICAL RULES FOR TEACHERS AND LEARNERS

1. Help the pupil to form a clear idea of the work to be done.
2. Warn him that the words of his lesson have been carefully chosen; that they may have peculiar meanings, which it may be important to find out.
3. Show him that usually more things are implied than are said.
4. Ask him to express, in his own words, the meaning of the lesson as he understands it, and to press until he has the whole thought.
5. Let the reason WHY be perpetually ASKED till the pupil is brought to feel that he is expected to give a reason for his opinions. But let him also clearly understand that reasons must vary with the nature of the material he is studying.
6. Aim to make the pupil an independent investigator — a student of nature and a seeker after truth. Cultivate in him the habit of research.
7. Help him to test his conceptions to see that they reproduce the truth taught, as far as his powers permit.
8. Seek constantly to develop in pupils a profound regard for truth as something noble and enduring.
9. Teach the pupils to hate shams and sophistries and to shun them.

VIOLATIONS AND MISTAKES

1. The pupil is left in the twilight of an imperfect and fragmentary mastery by a failure to think it into clearness. the haste to go on often precludes time for thinking. 
2. The language of the textbook is so insisted upon that the pupil has not incentive to try his own power of expression. Thus he is taught to feel that the words are everything, the meaning nothing.  
3. The failure to insist upon original thinking by the pupils is one of the most common faults of our schools.
4. Frequently no reason is asked for the statements in the lesson, and none is given. The pupil believes what the book says, because the book says it.
5. The practical applications are persistently neglected. That the lesson has a use, is the last thought to enter the minds of many pupils.

7. The Law of Review and Application - THE COMPLETION, TEST AND CONFIRMATION OF THE WORK OF TEACHING MUST BE MADE BY REVIEW AND APPLICATION.

“Other things being equal, the ablest and most successful teacher is one who secures from his pupils the most frequent, thorough, and interesting reviews… Not merely to know, but to have knowledge for use — to possess it fully, like money for daily expenditures, or tools and materials for daily word — such is the aim of true study.”

PRACTICAL RULES FOR TEACHERS

1. Consider reviews as always in order
2. Have set times for review. At the beginning of each period review briefly the preceding lesson.
3. At the close of each lesson, glance backward at the ground which has been covered. Almost every good lesson closes with a summary. It is well to have the pupils know that any one of the m may be called upon to summarize the lesson at the close of the class period.
4. After five or six lessons, or at the close of a topic, take a review from the beginning. The best teachers give about one-third of each period to purpose of review.
5. Whenever a reference to former lessons can profitably be made, the opportunity thus afford to bring old knowledge into fresh light should be seized.
6. All new lessons should be made to bring into review and application the material of former lessons. 
7. Make the first review as soon as practicable after lesson is first learned.
8. In order to make reviews easily and rapidly, the teacher should hold in his mind the material that has been learned, in large units or blocks, ready for instant use. He is thus able to begin at any time an impromptu review in any part of the field. 
9. New questions on old lessons, new illustrations for old texts, new proof for old statements, new applications of old truths, will often send the pupil back with fresh interest to his old material, thus affording a profitable review.
10. The final review, which should never be omitted, should be searching, comprehensive, and masterful, grouping the different topics of the subject as on a map, and aiding the pupil to a familiar mastery of the material which he has learned.
11. FIND AS MANY APPLICATIONS AS POSSIBLE. 
12. Do not forget the value of handwork in review.
13. Do not forget the value of handwork on the material of previous lessons. Let this be done frequently; the pupils will soon learn to come to their classes with questions ready to ask, and with ready answers for other questions.

VIOLATIONS AND MISTAKES

1. The first violation of the law is the total neglect of review
2. The second is the wholly inadequate review. This is the fact of the hurried and impatient teacher who is often more concerned with getting through the work of the term or semester than making the work the pupils’ own.
3. The third mistake is that of delaying all review work until the end of the semester or term, when, the material of the course being largely forgotten, the review amounts to little more than a poor relearning, with little interest and less value.
4. The fourth error is that of making the review merely a process of lifeless and colorless repetition of questions and answers and often the very questions and answers which were originally used. This is review in name only. 

I probably highlighted more from this book on a percentage basis than any other book. I just need to memorize it!!

By the People by Charles Murray

I love Charles Murray. He is a self-described curmudgeon full of wise advice and original thoughts about society. I was so excited to hear he had a new book out called By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission. That title! That alone, with it’s allusions to the Constitution and the Gettysburg address, along with the word “liberty,” I already knew I would love it. 

Murray first makes the case that the door on a Constitutional Republic has been slammed shut. We will never and can never reclaim a Constitutional government. It is simply too late. Extra-Constitutionalism is baked in and can never be done away with. There’s a happy thought. I said he was a curmudgeon. 

He begins by quoting Alexis de Tocqueville, “I think that the species of oppression by which democratic nations are menaced is unlike anything that ever before existed in the world… 

"The supreme power than extends its arm over the whole community. It covers the surface of society with a network of small, complicated rules, minute and uniform, through which the most original minds and the most energetic characters cannot penetrate to rise above the crowd. The will of man is not shattered, but softened, bent, and guided; men are seldom forced by it to act, but they are constantly restrained from acting. Such a power does not destroy, but it prevents existence; it does not tyrannize, but it compresses, enervates, extinguishes, and stupefies a people, till each nation is reduced to be nothing better than a flock of timid and industrious animals, of which the government is the shepherd.” 

I’m not sure de Tocqueville could have described the state of America today better if he had witnessed it firsthand. We are definitely being oppressed by a benevolent bureaucracy. 

Murray traces the beginnings of this tyranny to the 1930s. Up until that point, the Constitution was still reasonably intact. In fact freedom and liberty had been extended by the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments. But everything changed with Helvering v. Davis in 1937. The Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of Social Security by reinterpreting the “general welfare” clause of the Constitution. Prior to this, the phrase “general welfare” had not been stretched to allow the government to reach outside its constitutionally proscribed enumerated powers. But this decision opened the doors to an activist government that need only make the case that its latest venture enhanced the “general welfare” regardless of whether the actual power was found in the Constitution. The court explicitly knew what it was doing and intentionally overturned precedent which had limited the federal government. 

After that, the Supreme Court continued to expand federal power. Today, the 9th and 10th Amendments are dead letters. The “commerce clause” and the “general welfare clause” allow the federal government to do whatever it sees fit. The court has ruled we do not in fact have rights not guaranteed by the Constitution, contrary to the 9th Amendment. And there are no powers reserved to the states and denied to the federal government. The interpretations have become so embedded in our culture, there is simply no way to reverse course. 

Therefore, we have entered an age of lawlessness. He gives several examples of ways in which our nation is indistinguishable from lawlessness. The legal process is too costly for most. Mens rea (the idea that usually an activity should be against the law because it is wrong on the face of it, like murder) is gone. Now something is illegal because it is illegal. The law is arbitrary and capricious. The law is overly complex to the point that one author claims that every American is guilty of three felonies a day. The law is subjective. The law is discretionary. Everyone is a lawbreaker, so anyone can be subject to punishment at the whim of whomever is in power. Private property is no longer protected and can be taken without compensation. Judges invite innumerable lawsuits by allowing for strict liability. This means that if there is any harm, by definition, a company is liable. No negligence must be proved. Cases can be “forum shopped” in order to find a friendlier jury. And Congress has pushed for a private enforcement regime, in which private citizens, not necessarily regulatory bodies, may sue for violations of federal regulations.This has led to myriad lawsuits filed and won that only have to prove a regulation was violated even if no harm was done. For these reasons, Murray believes we live in a lawless society and should be therefore freed from having to follow the law in all cases. 

It is impossible to roll all these changes back. The problem is simply that while a few benefit mightily from these developments, the costs are spread out widely over society. It is easy for the beneficiaries to fight to keep the perks and hard for those only slightly affected to push back. 

So what to do? Murray has come up with a very interesting idea. He states, “I am not proposing revolution, but I am proposing a declaration of limited resistance to the existing government. I do so because the federal government has in many respects become destructive of our unalienable rights. It has lost elements of its legitimacy.” He claims that, “the federal government lost its legitimacy in theory during the constitutional revolution of 1937-1942, lost its legitimacy in practice during the 1960s, and it has been downhill ever since.” It’s hard to imagine, but only a little over a half century ago, the federal government had very little to do with K-12 education, healthcare, or local law enforcement. 

Back then, we had three tacit compacts between the people and their government that have broken down in irreparable ways. The first “was that the American people wouldn’t expect much from the federal government beyond protection of their freedom at home from enemies abroad.” The second was that the government would let the people work out complex moral issues through Constitutional amendments. The third was that an American who worked hard, took care of his family, and didn’t bother anyone constituted a “good American.” In fact, we are all criminals now and any one of us in is in danger of governmental prosecution. “The federal government has changed from being a vehicle through which the American people celebrate themselves and each other to being a vehicle through which a ruling class hectors and pesters us about our shortcomings.” Of course we feel alienated from and anger toward our government.

He suggests limited civil disobedience. He has in mind the store owner who will fight to the very end over routine violations. Perhaps the mirror in his bathroom is an inch too low for ADA standards. He will fight the fine and the citation as long as possible eventually making the government bureaucrats think twice before attacking otherwise good, law-abiding citizens. This will be funded with a slush fund called The Madison Fund. Its sole purpose will be to help defend citizens from an overzealous and essentially lawless government by effectively using their rules against them. 

The endgame is to finally get the Supreme Court to recognize that simple “enforcement of a regulation can be arbitrary and capricious regardless of whether the content of the rule rises to the that level.” In other words, there must be actual harm before a regulation can be enforced. Wow. Imagine that. 

This will put the regulatory agencies on notice. Those litigants backed by the Madison Fund will continue to tie up limited federal resources in lawsuits, citing the precedent above, the “no harm, no foul” rule. This can eventually lead to de facto unenforceable laws. This will force the agencies to carefully consider the precedents they want to set when the take the risk of enforcing a rule where there has not been, and will not be, any harm. For example if sand is not properly labeled as “poison” and the company owner is prosecuted, and the agency, after expending expensive resources, loses, this could effectively end the rule to label something as a poison. That would not be in the best interest of the agency as real poisons could go unlabeled. 

Murray senses that the time is right. Our society is becoming increasingly individualized and customizable. Yet our government remains sclerotic and unanswerable to the people. A little, or a lot, of civil disobedience may be just the thing to shake the government loose from our daily lives. He likens it it exposing the Wizard of Oz. We are many. They are few. We can fight back if we do it in sufficient numbers to significantly raise the cost of regulating our lives in the most minute details. 

Finally, Murray notes three potential reactions to his proposal. First, he is simply wrong in his diagnosis and therefore wrong in his prescription. Second, he is far too optimistic about the effect a Madison Fund could have. Third, what of the danger of success?

To the first he replies, “Fair enough.”

To the second, he replies, “What other choice do we have?”

To the third, he sympathizes. Success may lead to a further erosion of the legitimacy of the federal government. But he feels it is worth the risk. We are already a very polarized nation. We are not going back to any kind of homogeneity. We may make the divisions worse by engaging in civil disobedience, but it is already pretty bad and getting worse on its own. 

I think he is onto something. I’d love to see someone put his plan into action. My own preference is for a Madisonian “GoFundMe” type website where people can have vetted situations put before a liberty loving public to support them in their fight. 

I’d fund that!

Harvest of Sorrow by Robert Conquest

Somehow the book, The Harvest of Sorrow by Robert Conquest, was recommended to me. It’s about the Ukrainian genocide by the Soviet Union. 

Unfortunately, my unfamiliarity with this issue made reading this book very difficult for me. Without that background knowledge, I gave up. 

Sigh…

Hitch-22 by Christopher Hitchens

I decided to read Hitch 22 by Christopher Hitchens after he died and so many people that I respect wrote moving obituaries on his life and impact. Since I had little knowledge or familiarity with him and his view, other than his fame as an atheist, I decided to learn a little bit more about him by reading his autobiography.

It felt too “inside baseball” and I was unable to relate to much of it. He’s a British intellectual and many of the things and people he casually refers to are unknowns to me. 

Additionally, although I realize it is an autobiography, it felt way too narcissistic, even for that genre. 

Didn’t finish.

The Essential 55 by Ron Clark

After watching the movie The Ron Clark Story, I became a fan. So I looked up any books he had that the library carried. I found this one, The Essential 55, which contains the 55 rules he implements in his classroom.

These are wonderful, common sense rules very applicable to the 5th graders he teaches. In fact, it’s kind of sad that many of them are necessary at all. So many of them should be common sense or at least taught in the home, like "Wash your hands after using the bathroom." But he sees part of his job to instill in his students the kinds of things they apparently aren't getting elsewhere.

Some of my favorites:

Rule 1. When responding to any adult, you must answer by saying “Yes ma’am” or No sir.” just nodding your head or saying any other form of yes or not is not acceptable.

Rule 2. Make eye contact. When someone is speaking, keep your eyes on him or her at all times. If someone makes a comment, turn and face that person.

Rule 9. Always say thank you within I give you something. If you do not say it within three seconds after receiving the item, I will take it back. There is no excuse for not showing appreciation.

Rule 23. Quickly learn the names of other teachers in the school and greet them by saying things like, “Good morning, Mrs. Graham,” or “Good afternoon, Ms. Ortiz. That is a pretty dress.”

Rule 26. Do not save seats in the lunchroom. If someone wants to sit down, let him or her. Do not try to exclude anyone. We are a family, and we must treat one another with respect and kindness.

Rule 33. When we go on field trips, we will meet different people. When I introduce you to the people, make sure that you remember their names. Then, when we are leaving, make sure to shake their hands an thank them, mentioning their names as you do so.

Rule 35. If someone drops something, pick it up and hand it back to them. Even if they are closer to the object, it is only polite to make the gesture of bending down to retrieve the item. 

Rule 52. Accept that you are going to make mistakes. Learn from them and move on.

Rule 55. Be the best person you can be. 

The world would be a better place is we all lived by his rules!

• Addendum: At the end he offered a little speech he gives on the first day of class that I think is invaluable:

“I don’t care if you don’t like me. I couldn’t care less. I am not here to be friends with any of you either. I have plenty offends and I don’t need any more. I don’t care if you get mad and call me bad names in your mind. You are more than welcome to do that, because my objective here isn’t to have you like me; it’s to have you learn. I care about each and every one of you, and I am dedicated and driven to giving you the best education possible. I want each of you to know that I am going to do whatever it takes to make that happen, and nothing is going to stand in my way” The funny think about the speech, though, is that I am telling them just as hard as I can that I don’t care if they don’t like me, but at the same time, I am working my butt off to be the type of teacher they will like.

The Making of Americans by E.D. Hirsch, Jr.

I had read a few books by E.D. Hirsch, Jr. that I really enjoyed and that influenced my thinking on educational philosophy. So when I saw one of his later books called The Making of Americans, I HAD to get it. It did not disappoint.

In his previous book, Cultural Literacy, Hirsch argues for curriculum designed to create culturally literate students. These students would have a shared cultural knowledge base so that they could share a base from which to communicate. He felt this was essential for an "educated" person and that our culture should be able to assume a certain level of familiarity with shared knowledge bases.

He elaborates on that idea in this book to specifically talk about how cultural literacy is needed to make Americans. He bases his ideas on the Founders understanding of the importance of a culturally literate populace from the very beginning.

"The reason that our eighteenth-century founders and their nineteenth-century successors believed schools were crucial to the American future was not only that the schools would make students technically competent. That aim was important, but the main worry was whether the Republic would survive at all... Our educational thinkers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries saw the schools as the central and main hope for the preservation of democratic ideals and the endurance of nation as a republic." It's why Benjamin Franklin called our experiment, "A Republic, madam, if you can keep it."

There was a real concern that we would in fact, not be able to keep our nation a republic. That fear is being born out today as America moves farther and farther away from what it was intended to be.

And so the common school was created with "the center of its emphasis... to be common knowledge, virtue, and skill and an allegiance to the larger community shared by all children no matter what their origin." A fact noticed by Tocqueville when he stated, "It cannot be doubted that in the United States the education of the people powerfully contributes to the maintenance of the democratic republic."

He reiterates the importance of specific subject matter knowledge. In fact he believes that, "A shortfall in conveying this enabling knowledge is a chief cause of our educational shortcomings — including our glaring failure to offer equal educational opportunity to all children." Having to acknowledge that certain knowledge is foundational, has caused Hirsch, a liberal, to call himself an educational conservative. He believes that rather than a place of multicultural diversity, the schools should be what unites its citizens. "All of our earliest educational thinkers argued that precisely because we were a big, diverse country of immigrants, our schools should offer many common topics to bring us together; if schools did so, they felt, we would be able to communicate with one another, act as a unified republic, and form bonds of loyalty and patriotism among our citizens." In fact, he had to admit that the fatal flaw of progressive education "was its faith that the knowledge Americans needed would naturally develop when the child became fully engaged in concrete experiences without the encumbrance of a defined academic curriculum." This idea has patently failed to create Americans with a common cultural heritage.

He states the problem we now face clearly, "It is the duty of American schools to educate competent American citizens.... For the past fifty years we have tiptoed around the idea that the schools should form Americans. Child-centered theories of education have focused more on individual formation than on citizen-making. More recently, identity politics has emphasized membership in subgroups over participation in the larger national community and has viewed traditional goals like assimilation and Americanization with suspicion, as an ideology promoted by long-established WASP groups to continue their domination." This has most hurt the minority children who are never completely welcomed into the American experience but are subdivided and segregated and made to feel as outsiders.

Abraham Lincoln, a true son of the Founders, recognized that the "center of children's upbringing and schooling in the United States should be instruction in a religious devotion to democracy... Lincoln was sensitive to the fragility of peace and harmony in a country where people of different religious faiths and ethnic origins bound themselves into one federation. His tragic sense of how precarious that unity is brought him very early to the view that parents and schools must diligently teach a common creed in order to sustain the union."  

Lincoln believed that we need a political religion called "democracy" to bind us all together as Americans. He states, "Let reverence for the laws, be breathed by every American mother, to the lisping babe, that prattles on her lap -- let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; -- let it be written in Primmers, spelling books, and in Almanacs; — let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice. And, in short, let it become the political religion of the nation; and let the old and the young, the rich and the poor, the grave and the gay, of all sexes and tongues, and colors and conditions, sacrifice unceasingly upon its altars."

Because of the human propensity to divide into groups or tribes and create an us vs. them dynamic, it is imperative that in a multi-ethnic and cultural society as ours that we have a political religion to bind us together. "Under our political religion the sense of the group has gradually been made more expansive, so that race, gender, temperament, and religion cease to be core group characteristics and relegated to the private sphere." It is obvious that our society is going in exactly the opposite direction, largely at the urging and celebration of diversity by the educational system.

This celebration of diversity rather than a unifying curriculum designed to make Americans has hurt all students and our country, but most of all those who most need to be included as one of "us." This has led to huge educational gaps that are growing and the cause of much concern. However, Hirsch states, "The chief cause of the competence and equality gaps has been the anti-curriculum movement that took over in the United States during the latter half of the twentieth century. It cannot be emphasized too strongly, nor repeated too often, that the most important cause of our shortcomings is not laziness, unionism, waywardness, stupidity, or any moral fault among the leaders of our educational leaders of our educational enterprise but rather a system of attractive but unsound ideas."

He calls for both the left, which has championed the anti-curricular idea, and the right to come together for the sake of the children. He is baffled by those who call themselves liberal and then support such anti-liberal ideas that actually hurt kids. While those who espouse the need for a core of knowledge tend to be conservatives. He doesn't talk too much about the Core Curriculum and its chances of success. Apparently, it is somewhat based on his ideas, its implementation has been problematic. Paradoxically, it has actually gained support from the liberals and disdain from conservatives. Unfortunately education has become very polarizing. Our country suffers as a result. Meanwhile we get farther away from an educational system that creates Americans and towards a system that creates barely literate members of various groups based on race, class, and gender. I don't think this ends well.

Amusing Ourselves to Death by Neil Postman

Amusing Ourselves to Death is definitely going to move into my top 10 favorite books. It was written in 1985, but is even more relevant today. It is frightening in its prescience and saddening in its conclusions. It will be the book future generations will look back on as a harbinger. That is, if they can still read. 

Neil Postman lays out his thesis clearly in the beginning of the book, “It is my intention in this book to show that a great media-metaphor shift has taken place in America, with the result that the content of much of our public discourse has become dangerous nonsense.”

Postman believes that have we have moved from oral tradition to what he calls “typographic man,” who got his information from books, to television, and that, “the epistemology created by television is not only inferior to a print-based epistemology but is dangerous and absurdist.” Clear enough. The invention of television has fundamentally changed not only how we receive information, but what kinds of information we receive. And it has certainly not been for our betterment.

With “Typographic America,” we got the Founding Fathers. “Sages, scientists, men of broad cultivation, many of them apt in classical learning, who used their wide reading in history, politics, and law to solve the exigent problems of their time.” This time period was the perfect storm of the wide availability of deep and intellectually satisfying books, coupled with high literacy rates, and no competition from more entertaining media. It cannot be replicated. 

So why is typographic transmission of information better? Postman states, “Whenever language is the principal medium of communication — especially language controlled by the rigors of print — an idea, a fact, a claim is the inevitable result… It is very hard to say nothing when employing a written English sentence.” Books forced authors to make a case for their point of view. At this period of time, books were rarely for entertainment value alone. Even something like Shakespeare or other great literature of the time carried with it the seeds of intellectual discourse. 

But we still read today, don’t we? Well to that Postman rebuts, “To understand the role that the printed word played in providing an earlier America with its assumptions about intelligence, truth and the nature of discourse, one must keep in view that the act of reading in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries had an entirely different quality to it than the act of reading does today. For one thing, as I have said, the printed word had a monopoly on both attention and intellect, there being no other means, besides the oral tradition, to have access to public knowledge. Public figures were known largely by their written words, for example, not by their looks or even their oratory. It is quite likely that most of the first fifteen presidents of the United States would not have been recognized had they passed the average citizen in the street.” Hard to imagine.

He gives this time period the moniker, The Age of Exposition. “Exposition is a mode of thought, a method of learning, and a means of expression. Almost all of the characteristics were associate with mature discourse were amplified by typography, which has the strongest possible bias toward exposition: a sophisticated ability to think conceptually, deductively and sequentially; a high valuation of reason and order; an abhorrence of contradiction; a large capacity for detachment and objectivity; and a tolerance for delayed response.” This is why common people could sit through the Lincoln-Douglas debates lasting for hours in the hot sun. They were used to complicated arguments being made and dissected. They knew how to think critically and evaluate the ideas being presented to them. And it was fun. This was their entertainment. Ideas.

From there we entered The Age of Show Business. To our discredit.

We began with the telegraph. “The telegraph made a three-pronged attack on typography’s definition of discourse, introducing on a large scale irrelevance, impotence, and incoherence.” Information became valuable for its “novelty, interest, and curiosity.” It became a thing. “For the first time in human history, people were faced with the problem of information glut, which means that simultaneously they were faced with the problem of a diminished social and political potency.” They knew a lot, but had no power to act upon that knowledge. Similarly today, we know so much about nuclear weapons, NATO, rates of inflation and unemployment, but of what value is that information to us? What can we actually do with that information. Sure we could vote based on all of it, but a vote is for one person and the issues are myriad. “The news elicits from you a variety of opinions about which you can do nothing except to offer them as more news, about which you can do nothing.” 

Information became largely meaningless. Think that’s hyperbole? In contrast, Postman notes, “A book is an attempt to make thought permanent and to contribute to the great conversation conducted by authors of the past. Therefore, civilized people everywhere consider the burning of a book a vile form of anti-intellectualism. But the telegraph demands that we burn its contents…. The telegraph is suited only to the flashing of messages, each to be quickly replaced by a more up-to-date message. Facts push other facts into and then out of consciousness at speeds that neither permit nor require evaluation.” Think: Twitter. 

Today, information has largely turned into a diversion. We use it for games and quiz shows. What else are we to do with all these facts? He includes photography with telegraphs as a “language that denied interconnectedness, proceeded without context, argued the irrelevance of history, explained nothing, and offered fascination in place of complexity and coherence. Theirs was duet of image and instancy, and together they played the tune of a new kind of public discourse in America.” 

Television married the two technologies of telegraphy and photography together. It “gave the epistemological biases of the telegraph and photograph their most potent expression, raising the interplay of image and instancy to an exquisite and dangerous perfection.” So complete is the informational revolution that he can say, “television’s way of knowing is uncompromisingly hostile to typography’s way of knowing; …television’s conversation promote incoherence and triviality;… the phrase ‘serious television’ is a contradiction in terms; and… television speaks in only one persistent voice — the voice of entertainment.” It has transformed our entire culture into “one vast arena for show business.”

In the next section of the book, he points out exactly how pernicious television is. “Television does not extend or amplify literate culture. It attacks it.” He goes on to clearly state, “The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter, but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining… No matter what is depicted or from what point of view, the overarching presumption is that it is there for our amusement and pleasure. That is why even on news shows which provide us daily with fragments of tragedy and barbarism, we are urged by the newscasters to ‘join them tomorrow.’ What for? One would think that several minutes of murder and mayhem would suffice as material for month of sleepless nights. We accept the newscasters’ invitation because we know that the ‘news’ is not to be taken seriously, that it is all in fun, so to say.” Ouch. In fact he goes on to use the ubiquitous news phrase, “Now, this…” as an example of the incoherence of television information. It’s all so random and disconnected. “The result of all this is that Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.” And this was in 1985!

Television changes the message by its very existence. We have substituted images for words and arguments. Nowhere is this clearer than in advertisements. Early advertisements were small, word-heavy arguments for a product. Today, we have beautiful people using the product. The message has changed from, “Buy our product because it is better than what you are currently using” to “buy our product because beautiful people buy our product.” How is that an argument and not an insult? We will FEEL more attractive, smarter, cooler, and all-around more valuable if we use Tide rather than All. It’s bite-sized, 30-second, therapy designed to make us feel really, really good about ourselves. This is barely conceivable in a book. With television, the medium IS the message.

This slapdash bits of incoherent and irrelevant bits of information coming at us from television (and even more so with the internet) have led to a generation incapable of remembering. We cannot. Without “a contextual basis — a theory, a vision, a metaphor — something within which facts can be organized and patterns discerned," remembering any of what we are bombarded with will be impossible. That is why you can ask college students who won the Civil War and they will look dazed and confused. 

This all has ramifications on our liberty. Postman says we are not so much in danger of an Orwellian future, but one predicted by Aldous Huxley, in which the masses are entertained into stupefaction. He states, “Tyrants of all varieties have always known about the value of providing the masses with amusements as a means of pacifying discontent. But most of them could not have even hoped for a situation in which the masses would ignore that which does not amuse.” This is why we can hear about the latest breach of the public trust, yawn, and say, “We are not amused.” Literally. We are not amused, and therefore we will change the channel and disregard the information. 

This "dying to be entertained" philosophy has infiltrated education as well as every other part of society. But… Sesame Street! you will claim. Sesame Street does not teach children to love school. It teaches them to love television. “The name we may properly give to an education without prerequisites, perplexity and exposition is entertainment. “ We have refashioned “the classroom into a place where both teaching and learning are intended to be vastly amusing activities.” 

At this point, I was only a few pages from the end. Little room left to share some kind of hopeful solution. Alas, there isn’t one. He hopes that in understanding his message, we will begin to question television and its impact on our culture. He offers only two solutions, “one of which is nonsense and can be dismissed almost at once; the other is desperate but it is all we have.” 

The nonsense solution is to have television programming designed to show us how dangerous it is and how it impacts our culture in a negative way. Not gonna happen. 

The desperate answer is to rely on schools to educate our children about the dangers of television. He agrees with Huxley “that what afflicted the people in Brave New World was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.” Let’s just say I’m skeptical that our education system could ever teach this lesson. They are, after all, products of the Age of Show Business.