Sam Patch (Part One)

July 23, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

“Some things can be done as well as others.”

It’s not much of a catch phrase two hundred years later, but at the time, this line of Sam Patch’s was golden. It probably helped that he’d say it right before jumping off a waterfall. That would add a little drama, I’d think.

He’d stand near the crest – or, years later, on platforms or ladders built high above even that – and jump. Body position and breathing were critical from such heights. Knowing where you could and couldn’t safely enter the water at such speeds was pretty important, too. It also helped if you could swim.

Patch was fond of staying underwater after a leap for longer than seemed possible, creating tension and sparking nervous chatter among the crowd. On at least one less-public occasion he swam underwater to a sheltered cave area in order to hide out and panic his friends.

The problem with this is that if you’ve actually died this time, everyone thinks you’re just screwing with them. They figure you’re with Elvis somewhere, laughing at their gullibility.

Sam Patch grew up in early 19th century America, a transitional era during which Jefferson’s agricultural ideal was giving way to a more modern, urban, industrial society, albeit inconsistently, in scattered areas throughout the north. Patch grew up in a mill town, located along the Blackstone River near Providence, Rhode Island. Nature was harnessed and partially consumed, but still managed to assert itself beautifully and violently through displays like Pawtucket Falls.

However stunning the surroundings, these were necessarily utilitarian times. You didn’t come to Pawtucket if things in your life had gone according to plan; the remnants who found work in the mills were either without a male head of house, or stuck with one of little use. You came because you needed work, and Pawtucket was happy to oblige.

These were days when owning land – even a little bit of land – was key to everything else: economic opportunity, social status, political participation. Almost as crucial were one’s extended family – social connections as well as surname. Neither were guarantees of anything, but both were essential to real opportunity in the realities of the times.

Patch had neither. He was, depending on your point of view, either a dirty, uneducated, ne’er-do-well, or the ideal candidate for a great American success story. Paging Horatio Alger… please meet your party at the waterfall…

You know all those nostalgic looks back to less safety-fied and sanitized times, when kids could play outside and get dirty or hurt and the species survived just fine? Patch’s adolescence was the epitome of this. Boys would jump from the main bridge above the river into ‘the pot’, a drop of about 50 feet into an opening carved by centuries of erosion. When that ceased to be terrifying, they’d jump from a nearby building instead, making a leap of around 80 feet straight down with a rather narrow margin of error.

A mistake of a few horizontal feet meant serious injury. If you were fortunate, you’d die suddenly and violently; if not, you’d experience untold broken bones and damn near drown before being hauled to shore and carried back to town to linger a day or two before an intensely painful death. With an audience.

So why do such a thing? Because they were boys, full of testosterone and competition and the rough sort of democracy available to the un-landed, the un-connected. Of course you could get hurt – that was the whole point. But if you had nerve, and skill, and didn’t…

There’s something insanely equitable and meritocratic about such behavior. Too innocent to be Social Darwinism, it nevertheless recognizes that there’s no ‘winning’ without a very real chance of ‘losing’. Without risk, there can be no glory – individually or nationally. Sam Patch and his ilk were in their own rough ways an idyllic, Tom Sawyer-ish, rough-edged version of the American dream – or at least its opening chapters.

Which isn’t the same as being part of the American reality, by the way. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Sam’s first public jump came in defiance of a man named Timothy Crane. Crane was probably not a bad man (in the dinner theater sense of the word), but he did reek of calculated sophistication, and that was bad enough. He’d purchased, ‘improved’, and privatized a public park-ish area near the mills, after which he began charging a small fee to enter.

Besides offsetting his costs, the fee was designed to screen out ne’er-do-wells. The park was designed for the ‘right’ kind of people, who were far more likely to both appreciate and take care of the area. Free admission, he feared, would allow the dregs and drunkards to spoil the space. Their inability to pay was indicative of far more than income level – it was a tag of behavior and education.

You don’t really think those high dollar condos near the mall are that much nicer than the mid-range apartments ten minutes away, do you? Sure, you’re closer to the trendy restaurants – but mostly you’re paying too much for a condo in order to be surrounded by other people who can afford to pay too much for a condo.

It’s the same reason ‘golf’ somehow grew to be thought of as a real sport – the need to justify some basic elitism. Come on, you really thought it was THAT expensive to mow some grass and let people knock a tiny ball into a few holes in the ground? Please.

Crane’s crowing accomplishment was to be a rather ornate bridge which he had built and promised to have maneuvered across the chasm in front of Pawtucket Falls on September 30, 1827, for all to see. You have to keep in mind this is pre-Netflix, pre-Xbox, and even pre-television. Any potential entertainment was a big freaking deal, and this was no exception.

Schools and factories closed, and everyone came out to watch this engineering marvel finalize the glories of man-shaped nature, of improving and standardizing the bucolic. There are few things more American than making nature your bi-atch.

The mechanics of the process took much of the afternoon. At one point there was a small slip and one of the rolling logs being used to help guide and ‘roll’ the bridge across fell into the waters far below. The engineers recovered, but in the short time it took for them to readjust their contraptions, Sam Patch appeared on a rock at the edge of the cliff by the waterfall. He told the few people near him that Mr. Crane had done a great thing, and that he – Patch – meant to do another.

And he jumped.

Nothing in this prevented Crane from finishing his bridge, but for the crowd gathered that day the defiant message was clear. Patch, in channeling this brand of skill and moxy into such a primal act, was providing a sort of artistic and social contrast to the contrived high class aspirations of men like Crane. He was striking a blow for the common man.

Patch built on this theme several times in subsequent years, and eventually became something of a celebrity. Unfortunately, once you’re a celebrity – even in the 19th century equivalent of having a reality show – you’re not the common man anymore. The glories of having come from a dysfunctional family with no resources are all very well – but you’ve still come from a dysfunctional family with no resources. In other words, add a little notoriety, the stresses of minor success, and the chances you’ll become a complete wreck are pretty high.

In a few short years, Patch had a reputation as a drunk – usually the fun kind, but sometimes just the drunk kind. He somehow found himself bestowed with a pet bear, who he began taking with him and apparently lived with as a pet of sorts. And yes – the bear jumped off the same cliffs, bridges, and falls as Patch.

Well, if by ‘jumped’ you mean ‘was pushed or thrown’. Yeah, I know – but they were different times. And the bear seemed to be fine, so… go figure.

How many of YOUR friends can throw a bear off a cliff repeatedly and it’s still their friend?

On November 13, 1829, Sam made his last jump. Something went horribly wrong. It may have been the drinking or a related difficulty, but descriptions from those witnessing the event suggest he died in mid-air from something internal. His body positioning gave way and he fell limply for at least half of the 125 feet he spent in the air, striking the water with an impact which would have been fatal had he still been alive.

Less than a year before, Andrew Jackson had been elected President of the United States. I’m going to argue the two events are related.

RELATED POST: Sam Patch (Part Two)

Boomers & Sooners, Part One ~ Last Call Land-Lovers

June 7, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

If you’re from Oklahoma, or if you follow college football, or if you’ve ever been to OU, or if you have a pulse, you’ve probably more than once been subjected to the Hyper-Sousa-ish throb of the University of Oklahoma’s “Boomer Sooner.” If you’re truly dyed deep in just the right shade of maroon, you may even know the words:

Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner
Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner, Boomer Sooner…

Careful, now – there’s a real switcheroo coming –

O K U !

Those aren’t ALL of the words, of course – that would be silly. The second verse takes the theme to new depths:

Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Oklahoma
Oklahoma, Oklahoma, Oklahoma, O K U!

Were you ready for the twist at the end that time? I’m so proud.

Most of you are at least generally aware that both ‘Boomer’ and ‘Sooner’ refer to some sort of law-breaking, rule-bending, cheating, stealing, land-grabbing behavior on the part of our state’s earliest settlers. But before you get too high and mighty about it, let me just step forward and say proudly that cheating and stealing land are WAY down on the list of atrocities involved in the birthing and subsequent… ‘development’ of our 46th State.

Do you think we’d sing of such things so proudly if they were anywhere NEAR the WORST of it? Hell, these are practically MERITS compared to the Tulsa Race Riots, policies towards the Native populations, lynching, fracking, and Jim Inhofe.

In any case, despite popular misconceptions, ‘Boomer’ and ‘Sooner’ are very different terms about very different types of people. I’m happy to help set your fur’ners straight.

Background to the Boomers

The groups now often referred to as the ‘Five Civilized Tribes’ (5CT) – the Cherokee, Creek (Muscogee), Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole – were moved to Indian Territory (now Oklahoma, more or less) by force in the 1830’s. The atrocities of Indian Removal are well-documented elsewhere, but what’s less-recognized is that for those who survived, life in I.T. was not completely horrible for the next generation.

The land was very different, but they adapted. Governments and schools were rebuilt, newspapers re-established, and life generally settled into a kind of ‘new normal’ – a calm which hadn’t been possible for nearly a century in the Southeastern U.S. from whence they’d come. The 5CT and their slaves (yes, they had slaves – a complex subject for another time) were largely left alone, thanks to the high value white Americans placed on the treaties both sides had signed in good faith.

HA! Just kidding – they were left alone because no respectable white guy would have come to Oklahoma by choice. It was completely undesirable land. That’s, um… well… that’s why we put the Indians here. (You thought we’d give them California?)

Either way, the 5CT were left alone for nearly a quarter of a century, which sounds much longer than simply saying “about 25 years”. Oklahoma History textbooks often call this a ‘Golden Age’ for the tribes, although that strikes me as a bit on the look-we-actually-did-you-a-favor side. But it didn’t suck, and many things are quite tolerable if it means not having to deal with white people.

Then came the American Civil War – something about slavery, or tariffs, or states’ rights, or whatnot. Hey, no problem here! We’re completely and totally fine with white people killing each other off. Be our guests . Here, borrow my rifle.

Only staying out of the conflict wasn’t as easy as they’d hoped. When pushed, many sympathized with the South, especially after Confederates promised them a better deal should they prevail. Some remained ‘loyal’ to the North, and a few went to great lengths to resist involvement altogether. Eventually, however, a majority of the 5CT were Confederates, including the colorful Stand Watie – the last Confederate General to officially surrender at the end of the war.

The unfolding of the Civil War in Indian Territory is a tale worth exploring, but for now the important thing is that by the end of the war many homes were destroyed, lives were lost, families torn apart… you see a familiar tale here, yes? The impact of the war in I.T. was as severe as most anywhere else in the South.

The difference postbellum, though, was that whereas Radical Republicans confronted a defiant, vain, feet-dragging South after the war as they pushed their vision of ‘Reconstruction,’ the Tribes were already subjugated and largely at the mercy of the Federal government. Oh, their representatives fought back with words and legalities to prevent it from being far worse than it could have been, but in the end they were condemned as having fought with the wrong side, and were forced to give up huge chunks of their land in Oklahoma as a result.

That made room for the U.S. to begin packing in other tribes, this time mostly from the Great Plains. The Cheyenne, Arapaho, Wichita, Kickapoo, Pawnee, Apache, Comanche… and of course the Lakota Sioux. Remember Dances With Wolves? Yeah, this was THAT time period. Tatanka.

When this second wave of Indian Removal was complete, some of the lands remained ‘unassigned.’ These were cleverly labeled as the ‘Unassigned Lands’ – nearly 2 million acres across what we now know as Norman, Oklahoma City, Guthrie, Stillwater, etc.

When Destiny Closes A Manifest Door…

According to the Homestead Act of 1862, there was a pretty straightforward procedure for homesteaders wishing to settle on available land in the west. Except… this land wasn’t technically “available.” It was still Indian Territory, even if this particular section didn’t end up “allotted” to any Indians.

By 1889, the Great American West Bar & Grill was closing. The more inviting among the soiled women who loitered thereabouts had left with smarter, older, or quicker-thinking men. Time to throw back a couple of shots on top of that last beer and find someone who might not be the prettiest or the smartest, but who was available and not overly picky themselves.

Gentlemen, meet Oklahoma – or, part of her, anyway. That ‘unassigned’ section there in the middle. I like this one allot (see what I did there?) but you don’t wanna end up holding her panhandle, I assure you.

These homesteaders – our “Last Call Land-Lovers” – were the first ‘Boomers’ – folks who’d missed their chance to grab something prettier or smarter. Oklahoma flashed them a knowing grin and a settle-hither stare. “Hey baby, come check out my rich red clay. You want lakes? We can build them together. Bring your honey lamb and watch some bored birds – it will be grand! Aye-yip aye-oh aye-ayy.”

Keeping these acres ‘unassigned’ was like trying to keep your post-teen sister a virgin despite her not being engaged – at least not to anyone nearby. Sure, technically she’s not ‘available’, but she doesn’t look all that ‘taken,’ either. It’s just a matter of time until some boy tries to settle on her and dares you to do something about it.

The land-lusting was just big talk for a spell, until an editorial and a Carpenter set the stage for our protagonist and anti-hero, David L. Payne.

He’s going to become our daddy.

40 Credits & A Mule, Part VII – Sleeping Giants

January 26, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal ~ 1 Comment

I gotta say, this blogging stuff was so much easier when Dr. Barresi was saying crazy stuff to local news stations for me to excerpt and mock. Of course, the #WTF? stuff is always more fun than the #WhatNow? parts – just ask any Middle Eastern country on the long side of revolution in the past decade.

It’s taken me awhile to get to the dramatic conclusion of this epic, so let’s review – “Previously, on Blue Cereal Education Dot Com…”

Part I – I made the case that land ownership was central to citizenship, suffrage, and participation as a ‘full American’. This seemed reasonable, and by the standards of the day was a huge expansion of democracy and the ability of the ‘common man’ to claim a voice in his government. It did not, however, include everyone we would consider appropriate today – it was a white man’s game.

Part II – Land ownership carried mythical benefits alongside the practical. In addition to being a source of opportunity, income, and republican (small ‘r’) participation, it promoted an agricultural lifestyle – hard work, responsibility, patience, and fortitude. I’d include ‘grit’, but I’d need a ‘trigger warning’ – people are touchy about that one for some reason…

Part III – The combination of practical needs, terrestrial benefits, and supernatural calling led an expanding ‘Merica to treat the Native populations and Mexico as obstacles to overcome rather than peoples to be engaged. The grand ‘us’ and ‘them’ of human history continued.

Part IV – Land ownership becomes a condition as much as an accomplishment. Because not everyone can ‘have’, those who do come to see themselves not as the most fortunate but as the most deserving. Those unable to procure land due to race (or gender, or whatever) were already categorized as ‘less than’ (hence their ineligibility), and this lack of opportunity became circular. Chickens and eggs – which came first, the unworthiness to be a full American or the lack of opportunity to fully participate in the republic?

Part V – Education is the new land. We advocate universal access. We extol it as the key to all things – fiscal opportunity, social advancement, moral purity, personal fulfillment. As with land, lack of access becomes lack of worthiness. Inequity leads to inequality leads to rejection leads to judgment – ‘us vs. them’ with a side of ‘what the hell is wrong with you people?’

Part VI – I suggested we’re doing with students and education what we spent a century and a half doing with various demographics and land ownership and a voice in the republic. I argue that we’ve conflated ability, opportunity, and values with personal worth and potential – to the harm of a substantial percentage of our kids.

I closed with a vague promise to resolve that in this final post.

But I can’t.

It’s just too big. Too many cultural, psychological, logistical, fiscal, emotional, and historical factors out of our control – some completely, others merely mostly.

I can shine some light on the nature of the problem. We may even find some consensus about what’s WRONG. The hard part is in the fixin’ – what we do INSTEAD. That’s the problem with revolutions – you may get enough people to agree about what to tear down, you just can’t get enough people to agree what to build in its place.

I have some more great analogies – one in which we demand coaches train their athletes in a wide variety of sporting events but we only measure races with hurdles, and we keep raising the hurdles for the kids who can’t jump them or who refuse to stay on our track. That’s a good one. There’s another in which some stuffy doctors present research showing the richest and healthiest people in the world eat mostly vegetables and pâté, so they push through legislation mandating a vegetable and pâté diet (without providing the funding to properly prepare either). That was fun, too – and it had the cutest clip-art.

The point of the first, of course, was that hurdles are an inadequate measure of all possible athletic ability, and that not everyone has the same athleticism or interest – for a wide variety of reasons. The second was about correlation and causation – the rich and healthy eat pâté; pâté doesn’t make you rich and healthy. Successful students pass stupid tests; stupid tests don’t create successful students. Like I said, I was pretty amused by them.

But I’ve already laid out six posts of historical analogies involving land and culture and race. These not only make it sound like I’m smarter than I actually am, but they correlate in a very real way with actual problems in education today.

It’s time to fix it.

Are the schools going to be a part of that? They’d have to, I’d think. But they’re not enough.

We need to change the way we think about race and poverty and culture and American values. I’m a big fan of our founding documents and ideals – heck, I even still like capitalism. But we’ve managed to maintain an ugly leavening of racism, elitism, and outright social Darwinism through too many eras to believe it’s not deeply entrenched in the problems we face today.

We need to ask ourselves why so many kids from so many backgrounds find so little of value in the curriculums we push, or the values we demand they share. At best, much of what we prioritize seems pointless to them; at worse, it contradicts who they believe they are and the things they value. Ask your best students their honest opinions about what they’re learning in school – some find parts they really like, but I’m horrified how many confess they’re just doing what they’ve been told to do. They endure, and they get the grades, but that’s all.

It’s like being at the dentist for 13 years straight.

If we can look in the mirror and tell ourselves with conviction they’ll thank us someday because we know what’s good for them and they don’t, OK. Maybe so. But what did YOU carry away from High School that changed your life? Improved your world? Gave meaning to some part of your existence? If you CAN think of something, was it in the curriculum, or did it come from somewhere else?

It seems like most of what we do in school serves only to prepare students to do more of it in more school. That’s not just pointless – it’s unethical and abusive.

And stupid.

The title “40 Credits & A Mule” was inspired by several blog posts by P.L. Thomas about our American myth that students from poor families – especially students of color – who do well in school can overcome their background to the extent they’ll end up economically and socially on par with white peers. They don’t. Their circumstances improve, but you’re better off being a white high school dropout than black with a few years of college in terms of lifetime earnings.

The promise is there, you see – but it’s not substantiated by reality.

I don’t know how we fix it, but I think it begins when we refuse to perpetuate the lie. We refuse to give the tests that rank our kids by ZIP Code while claiming to rank them by accomplishments.

We refuse to follow the outdated factory structure mandated by our states and our expectations.

We refuse to continue forcing so many kids into a choice only between rejecting our system and everything it stands for OR accepting themselves as failures – unworthy players in the only game in town.

We refuse to turn our best and brightest into cynical rule-followers forced to seek ways to escape the reality of their daily grinds rather than embrace the many wonderful ways life can be lived productively and meaningfully.

We make them fire us and justify it. We make them cut our funding and explain it. We let them try to find someone to replace one of us, ten of us, a hundred of us, because we won’t do this to our kids anymore.

Let the State tell the papers why our entire graduating class doesn’t get diplomas. Let the universities explain why they won’t admit any of the thousands of young adults whose value we refuse to measure with a single number between 0 and 4 any longer.

I think I’m advocating revolution. Starting with you, and me, and like, one other guy who’s already pretty weird and we may not actually want on our team. If we were to win, I have no idea what we put up in place of what we’re doing now, but I know this has to stop.

That will probably be a non-issue for us, anyway. We’ll be early casualties, not heroes or leaders. And when we go down, I’m not sure anyone else is picking up this flag. Still… could be fun, don’t you think?

Wanna get in trouble with me?

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Related Post: 40 Credits & A Mule, Part I – This Land

Related Post: I See The Difference In Educational Privilege Every Day… (From the Washington Post / Daily Kos)

40 Credits & A Mule, Part VI: Return of the Jedi

January 15, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

This is part 6 of 7 – some recap seems in order:

Who gets to be a ‘full’ American? Who gets suffrage, representation, and due process?

Land-owners were the initial default. Land provided opportunity, American Dream-style. It was a universal measure of personal responsibility and capability. It inculcated virtue, and perhaps won supernatural favor. And, finally, it gave you a vested interest in the success of the young nation.

What began as a checklist for civic participation became the default measure of a man. What was intended to protect representative government from the incompetent or slothful became an anchor on those who didn’t fit certain checklists as of 225 years ago. You are unworthy. Not quite a full American – and thus not quite a full person.

The issue became your state of being rather than whatever rules you had or hadn’t mastered, or whatever goals you hadn’t met. It was self-perpetuating and self-reinforcing. It became circular:

Presumption: You provide for yourself and your family, so you are worthy to help run the country. You own land and do responsible things? Here’s your ballot.

Evolution: You provide and are provided for – because you are worthy. You own land because you’re so responsible – here’s your halo.

I suggest we’re doing something similar with education today – both public and higher.

Consider Alyssa – a wonderful young lady in AP classes from a two-parent Methodist family. She works hard, makes good grades, stays out of any real trouble, and wants to be a neuroscientist. Obviously she deserves some credit for her accomplishments. She’s demonstrated great capability, and made good decisions.

She’s also from the right family, and – more importantly – the right ZIP code. She goes to the right school, has the right social circle, the right economic status, and the right looks. She’s the right amount healthy and she was born at the right time for her particular skill set to shine. None of these things are entirely in her control.

She’s our ‘white homesteader.’ She’s done nothing malicious in making her ‘land’ productive. She does tend to wonder what’s wrong with students who don’t do the same – not out of racism or vanity, but simply because it’s bewildering to her that anyone would not want to do well, or not be able to do well. It’s just not that hard.

Compare her to Dionne – another wonderful young lady, but one from very different circumstances. Her life might be happy enough, or it might be reality-show dysfunctional, but in any case does NOT unfold in the same universe as Alyssa’s. All of the rules are different and their experiences mutually exclusive.

Dionne’s AP Chem grade (or the fact that she’s not even taking AP Chem) reflects many things OTHER THAN her capability or choices. Her ability and agency matter a great deal as well, but they’re not sovereign.

Dionne is a beautiful black girl, descended from freedmen. Plenty of Black Americans ‘bought in’ to Anglo-American values – they sought land, self-sufficiency, education, progress, etc. But they weren’t merely denied the resources to join such a culture – they were actively punished for making progress along those lines.

This didn’t stop the dominant culture from belittling them for not matching their successes, of course. It doesn’t prevent belittling those today who at some point simply changed their priorities and dropped out of that particular value system.

In Dionne’s case the issue is not emulating prior conditions, but overcoming them.

Anders is a kid who doesn’t want to be in your class – or anyone’s class – at ALL, near as you can tell. He’s not particularly defiant, but he’s also rarely tempted to give much. It would take three of him to make one passing student. His test scores put you on lists and you’re constantly asked to send him work he’s already ignored. You go to meetings about him called by his counselor; the parent chair is always empty.

Anders is my Amerindian, although he might be Hispanic, or White, or Black, or whatever – there are racial issues wound up in these, but they’re not exclusive or always definitive. Many Amerindians had no interest in the Anglo-American value system or way of life, but they were forced to partake – and stakes were high if they failed. They lacked buy-in, but they also were denied good tools, seed, land, etc. It’s not much of a stretch to think a comparable state exists between many teenagers and whatever public school system holds them captive in 2015.

Pick something your kids spend time on that you totally don’t understand – video games, soccer, angsty music, whatever. Something you at least partly despise. Master it. Spend the hours it takes to really get decent at Call of Duty. Practice soccer until you’re good enough to compete. Consume YouTube until you want to run hot skewers into your eyes and ears to make the bad things stop!

That’s how Anders feels about Grammar, and Physics. He may be right.

I’ll add a Zack – they’re always named something like ‘Zack’ – who’s surviving AP Chem and otherwise getting by even though he’s NOT particularly bright and doesn’t have a great work ethic. He’s charismatic, knows how to play the game, and while not exactly a charlatan, succeeds more through people skills and an instinct for edu-bureaucracy than anything. He’s probably destined for administration.

Which of these are worthy? Which deserve to be a full American? To get a full ride to an elite university? Which are making the best use of the opportunities presented to them, however flawed they may be?

You’re so thankful for Alyssa – students like her give you the energy to get through the day. But how often is Alyssa essentially rewarded for her upbringing and Dionne marginalized for not ‘working hard enough’? How angry does Anders make you even though he doesn’t really do anything to you other than not be taught? Zack’s an annoying little turd, but he’s passing and no one’s mad at you because of him so… whatever.

Anders has been given very little reason to adopt the same values and goals as the rest. For all our talk of nurturing kids’ individual strengths, his just aren’t on the curriculum map – and there’s nothing you can personally do about that. Dionne may have tuned out, but no wonder – even when she does ‘buy in’, she lacks many of the proper tools and supplies, literally as well as figuratively.

And Zack… well, there’s always that kid who just does OK for reasons you never quite understand, yes?

Changing the nature of American public school won’t be accomplished by ‘higher standards’ or tougher testing. We can argue about this set of standards or that for another ten years if you like, but – and I hate to be the one to break this to you – for the vast majority of kids not currently ‘succeeding’ in our schools, it just doesn’t matter one tiny little damn.

We have a culture fundamentally shaped by our past – that’s how history works, it’s why we study it. We have generations of mostly well-intentioned peeps whose views of one another are shaped by that history. Our psyches are riddled with logical fallacies and vestigial reactions we don’t even recognize. It’s not rational, it’s not fair, and it’s sure as hell not standardized.

We have a rather narrow definition of what sort of learning is valued and tested and college and career ready, and that means a rather narrow idea of just what kind of education we’re willing to begrudgingly and inadequately finance. Our definition ignores more reality than it includes.

Meaningful change might INVOLVE academic standards and teaching strategies, but it won’t be founded on them. It’s going to be people-heavy and cliché-light. It may not even begin in school. That’s what I’ll tackle in the next and final post on this topic.

It’s taken me six parts to try to unwind my version of the problem. That leaves me exactly one last segment in which to resolve it. I’m not optimistic.

Related Post: 40 Credits & A Mule, Part I – This Land

40 Credits & A Mule, Part V: Maybe Radio

January 13, 2015June 4, 2023 ~ Blue Cereal

The original element of despotism is a MONOPOLY OF TALENT, which consigns the multitude to comparative ignorance, and secures the balance of knowledge on the side of the rich and the rulers.
If then the healthy existence of a free government be, as the committee believe, rooted in the WILL of the American people, it follows as a necessary consequence, of a government based upon that will, that this monopoly should be broken up, and that the means of equal knowledge, (the only security for equal liberty) should be rendered, by legal provision, the common property of all classes.
In a republic, the people constitute the government, and… frame the laws and create the institutions, that promote their happiness or produce their destruction… It appears, therefore, to the committee that there can be no real liberty without a wide diffusion of real intelligence; that the members of a republic, should all be alike instructed in the nature and character of their equal rights and duties, as human beings, and as citizens…
(Report of the Workingman’s Committee of Philadelphia On the State of Public Instruction in Pennsylvania, 1830)

These were white working men in the semi-industrialized north. They lived in an age of reform – the time of Lucretia Mott, William Lloyd Garrison, Dorothea Dix, and Horace Mann. It is unlikely that most owned land. Their ‘report’ echoes that of other labor organizations of the era – we need universal public education for our kids.

This was not a majority sentiment.

It’s dangerous to project backwards regarding motivations and intentions, but it seems that even when public education was barely a thing, they realized it would soon become essential if their sons were to flourish in the next generation. I don’t know if they were worried about ‘personal fulfillment’ stuff as well, but I’m an idealist, so… let’s assume maybe they did.

Their report demonstrates impressive cognizance regarding their target audiences. Rather than plead on behalf their offspring, they argue founding values, and the well-being of the republic to those in positions to change the system – to pass the laws, devote the resources, reshape the society. They don’t ask for opportunities, even democratic ones; rather, they promise better citizens. They reference aristocracy and oligarchy, anathema to ‘real Americans’ a generation after the Revolution, and lay out a simply path towards better functioning. It’s a great argument.

It’s also about a century ahead of its time. Education was starting to matter in 1830, at least in the North, but land was still the universal key.

And then a century passed.

In the 1930’s, everything changed. The Great Depression, of course, and the Dust Bowl – game changers for the nation and for the world. Something else was going on as well, though – an abrupt shift in land ownership and what it meant.

Once California belonged to Mexico and its land to Mexicans; and a horde of tattered feverish Americans poured in. And such was their hunger for land that they took the land… and they guarded with guns the land they had stolen. They put up houses and barns, they turned the earth and planted crops. And these things were possession, and possession was ownership.
The Mexicans… could not resist, because they wanted nothing in the world as frantically as the Americans wanted land.

Steinbeck was entirely capable of being racist by the standards of today, but I don’t think this was one of those times. His venom here is towards what we’d today call “the man,” and he’s mildly sympathetic towards Mexico’s loss. Keep in mind he was essentially a Socialist, which tends to happen to people who spend enough time among the disenfranchised.

Then, with time, the squatters were no longer squatters, but owners; and their children grew up and had children on the land. And the hunger was gone from them, the… tearing hunger for land, for water and earth and the good sky over it… They had these things so completely that they did not know about them any more… and crops were reckoned in dollars, and land was valued by principal plus interest, and crops were bought and sold before they were planted.

Jefferson would have peed himself. T.J. liked a good income, but he had a healthy sense of delusion regarding the holiness of agriculture as well. Remember Jesus turning over the tables of the money-changers in the temple?

Then crop failure, drought, and flood were no longer little deaths within life, but simple losses of money. And all their love was thinned with money, and all their fierceness dribbled away in interest until they were no longer farmers at all, but little shopkeepers of crops… Then those farmers who were not good shopkeepers lost their land to good shopkeepers. No matter how clever, how loving a man might be with earth and growing things, he could not survive if he were not a good shopkeeper. And as time went on, the business men had the farms, and the farms grew larger, but there were fewer of them…
And there were pitifully few farmers on the land any more…
(John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath – 1939)

Land didn’t work anymore.

It would still grow stuff – more effectively than ever, actually. But it wasn’t LAND (*cue majestic music*) in the way it had been land before. Jefferson’s agricultural ideal was all but extinguished, and the most sacred of pursuits – the one previously regarded as the best possible indication of a man’s capability, responsibility, moral potential, and stake in the prosperity of the nation – became just another business. It mattered, sure – but so did the weaving and the manufacturing and the shipping and the lawyering. It was no longer special.

This is not my anti-capitalism rant. I’ll leave that to Tom Joad and his spirit moving among the hungry children and such. I’m more or less a Libertarian, but the Libertarian Ideal in MY interpretation requires a capable citizenry with actual options and real opportunity. It’s fine to support free will and full consequences for our actions, but to believe this and sleep at night we need something akin to a ‘equitable starting position’ or the proverbial ‘level playing field’.

That’s not the same as waiting until you’re way, way ahead, and then suddenly cutting the ropes to the bridge. That’s not libertarianism, that’s just being a bastard. Not always a clear distinction, I realize, but an important one nonetheless.

But I digress.

Land was a big deal. It was readily available by some standards, and not at all available by others. It came to define more than your right to vote or otherwise participate – it blurred into individual worth and identity. It was taken from the Amerindians, who didn’t even buy into the system, and denied to Black Americans, who did. Eventually, it ceased to be what it had been – the key to opportunity, responsibility, capability… all the -ilities.

“Ma,” she said. Ma’s eyes lighted up and she drew her attention toward Rose of Sharon. Her eyes went over the tight, tired, plump face, and she smiled. “Ma,” the girl said, “when we get there, all you gonna pick fruit an’ kinda live in the country, ain’t you?”
Ma smiled a little satirically. “We ain’t there yet,” she said. “We don’t know what it’s like. We got to see.”
“Me an’ Connie don’t want to live in the country no more,” the girl said. “We got it all planned up what we gonna do… Connie gonna get a job in a store or maybe a fact’ry. An’ he’s gonna study at home, maybe radio, so he can git to be a expert an’ maybe later have his own store. An’ we’ll go to pitchers whenever… An’ after he studies at night, why – it’ll be nice, an’ he tore a page outa Western Love Stories, an’ he’s gonna send off for a course…”

Ma was right – no one knew what it was gonna be like. Rose was pregnant, so that’s literary, and Connie – ironically – wasn’t far off track in terms of how the future was going to work for those able to claim it. As in, NOT the Joads.

Right at the end of that conversation, the truck carrying them all to California breaks down. That Steinbeck and his symbolism – what a nut.

Education became the new land. There were hints in the early 19th century, and Connie Rivers had a glimpse of it, but it takes awhile to remake the core of a faith. Enlightenment ideals certainly should have anticipated this, but the New World had far more available soil than acres of free pedagogy, so…

Sometimes the beliefs shape the facts, sometimes the facts shape the beliefs. Land it was, then.

By the time of the Cold War, starting with the G.I. Bill, the rules had somehow changed. From there forward it’s all going to be about who shapes the learning. As Schoolhouse Rock so wisely intoned, “It’s great to learn, because Knowledge is Power.”

Exactly.

Related Post: 40 Credits & A Mule, Part I – This Land