Homestyle Education, Part I

Back some twenty years ago, I wrote a piece on the kind of classroom my son Political Sphere was in (and later son Economic Sphere). It says something about the particular teacher, but also the things that worked in that classroom. This was years before I considered homeschooling, but looking back at it, what I find is that, the closer to a family situation, the better the learning. I thought it might be instructive, during the current push to standardize the whole country into limited mediocrity, to look at this case study of what worked in a particular classroom.

The piece wasn’t published, except among teachers in the district; the local paper was only interested in pieces about whatever version of reform was being talked about in education articles—this was a decade before the No Child Left Behind Act, and I'm guessing the phrase du jour was "outcome-based education." It wasn't something I was focused on as a parent.

The piece is long, about 2500 words. So at this point I’m debating how to break it up, or to choose which parts are most useful to look at from our current perspective. But I’m sharing this because so much still applies, and still shows cross purposes with government “experts.”

So today's Part I is an introductory look at the special classroom and teacher in our case study. I’m leaving the piece basically as written, except for changing names of people and places.

 

Case Study of a Multi-Age Classroom

Mrs. Crane’s classroom at Blue Sky Elementary in Tripletown does not look like an ordinary classroom. It isn’t. You won’t see students sitting quietly at assigned desks. In fact, there are no desks, just tables and chairs in small groups around the room, and plenty of open floor space. Walls are covered, ceiling to floor, with finished student work, work in progress, and pictures that may inspire future work. One wall has a life-size drawing of a student, traced around him, covered with positive comments from his classmates.

The room includes computers in one corner. Just inside the door you’ll find a classroom store where children can buy goods with motivational money they earn by doing more than is expected. Several shelves are filed with books for children to choose and read on their own—which they read while lying on a rug, sitting at a table, or wherever is comfortable.

On afternoon visits during reading time, you’ll find the place silent, except for a few quiet voices reading to each other. But the room is anything but quiet during most of the morning. An hour of each morning is activity time. Several parent volunteers come to help out with reading, writing, and math projects. Math sometimes includes cooking during this hour. Students move from station to station, deciding what they want to accomplish, getting personal adult attention while they do it. There’s a lot of talking going on. If you visit now, unprepared, you may see what looks like chaos.

Adding to the apparent chaos is the inherent difference in student ability. This is a multi-age classroom, with first and second graders mixed together. There is no first grade group or second grade group. There is no group of struggling readers or successful readers. There are twenty-seven different students at different developmental stages in math, reading, and social skills. Difference is not only welcome here; difference is expected.

Managing all the difference is a teacher with a plan. Barbara Crane is an energetic and exciting personality. She often responds to student accomplishments with hugs and cheers. At times it’s difficult to identify her in the classroom. Her small size and her place among, rather than in front of, students help her blend in. Several years ago Crane completed her master’s degree in elementary education. Always ready to find a better way, she is now putting the latest in elementary education research to work.

Mrs. Crane’s plan is designed to help students discover how to learn, and to enjoy doing it. Students don’t all learn the same way. That doesn’t matter. Her classroom provides so many different approaches—hands-on experience, pictures, graphs, reading, writing, explaining to one another, experimenting, singing—something has to work for every child.

During the morning Mrs. Crane gathers students for circle time. This is as close as she gets to a class lecture. They talk together as a group about the current theme, which was recently inventions. The purpose is not to learn all there is about inventions; the purpose is to experience many ways of learning about something---such as inventions. The emphasis is on the process, rather than the product, of learning.

Together teacher and students examine unknown inventions brought in for them to examine. They make predictions. They try some experiments. They make charts and graphs about the various inventions they examine. They make up stories about how the inventions could be used.

Themes, such as inventions, are chosen specifically for their ability to supply multi-layered learning experiences. In exploring the theme, students use their growing math, verbal, and social skills. Learning about a theme is not meant to replace basic math and English; it is meant to make them relevant so they can more easily be learned.

This thematic, or holistic, approach to learning is one of several current trends in education. A body of research has become available in the past couple of decades about how children learn, which is slowly making its way into classrooms.

***************

So part I has given us a taste of what this particular classroom looks like. Part II will look at the research behind the approach and how well it addresses education challenges. I expect there will be a part III, looking at the outcomes for the students in our case study. And either mixed in or following, we’ll compare with what we know twenty years down the road.

The Iron Lady

Margaret Thatcher
photo from Wikipedia

On Monday, April 8, we lost a great champion of freedom, former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. She was 87. I thought I’d take a moment to remember her and her heroic contributions.

The Economist starts its piece on her this week with this truth: “Only a handful of peacetime politicians can claim to have changed the world. Margaret Thatcher was one.”

When she was voted into Britain’s most powerful position in 1979, that country’s top tax rate was 98%, which had put the brakes on job creation. She drastically cut income and corporate taxes, while simultaneously cutting government spending—from 44.6 per cent of GDP in 1979 to 39.4 per cent of GDP in 1991. (Our economy works best when government spending is held well below 20%; Obama likes it at 25%. So you can see Britain was in bad straits.) She led Britain from a declining country, with ever lower standard of living compared to the rest of Europe, to an economy growing at 3% per year throughout her decade-plus. In fact, for two decades (good decades for the US), Britain’s standard of living rise exceeded the US, Japan, Germany, France, and Italy.

She came at a time when the country was in the throes of union-induced misery. The unions had a stranglehold on politics, politicians, and private enterprise. It took an iron will to stand up against them. She did it with good grace and humor—very much like her US counterpart of history, Ronald Reagan.

Like Reagan, she was highly quotable. One of the famous ones is, “The problem with socialism is that you eventually run out of other people’s money.”

I love this two-minute clip of her standing up against socialism in parliament:

 

Here are a few more favorite quotes:

To those waiting with bated breath for that favorite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: “You turn if you want to. The lady's not for turning.” [at Conservative Party Conference 1980] 
 

[on whether to have UK join Europe in a common currency]: No, no, no.
 

Ronnie [Ronald Reagan] and I got to know each other at a time when we were both in Opposition, and when a good many people intended to keep us there. They failed, and the conservative 1980s were the result. But in a certain sense, we remained an opposition, we were never the establishment. As Ron once put it: the nine most dangerous words in the English language are “I'm from the government, and I'm here to help.” As usual, he was right.

 

Disciplining yourself to do what you know is right and important, although difficult,

is the highroad to pride, self-esteem, and personal satisfaction.

 

I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left.

 

Any woman who understands the problems of running a home will be

nearer to understanding the problems of running a country.

 

Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy. 

There is no such thing as society: there are individual men and women,

and there are families.

 

I just owe almost everything to my father and it's passionately interesting for me that the things that I learned in a small town, in a very modest home, are just the things that I believe have won the election.  

You may have to fight a battle more than once to win it.

A good source for pages more of her gems is BrainyQuote.

For a larger taste, I suggest a speech she gave here in the US, at Hillsdale College in November 1994, on “The Moral Foundations of Society.” I think I would like to make her an honorary member of the Spherical Model think tank. She

Statue of Margaret Thatcher at Hillsdale College
Photo from Hillsdale email newsletter 4-8-2013

understood the basic truths.

Here’s an observation that concerns me as I reflect this week. Decades of southern hemisphere practices (on the Spherical Model) build up problems, piling them into mountains. A leader who understands freedom, free enterprise, and civilization comes along every once in a generation, and turns things in the right direction. Evidence accumulates to prove that the principles our Constitution writers recognized are true, that they lead to thriving in every sphere. Nevertheless, as soon as the heroic leader no longer holds the world on his/her shoulders, the enemy slides back into their previous positions, as though trying to erase the good times, denying they happened. And problems mount again.

How do we get a critical mass of heroes to overcome the ubiquitous tyrannists? We need more Margaret Thatchers. We need more Ronald Reagans. We need them in leadership positions. But we also need many more smaller heroes, regular people whose voices may not carry as far, but who recognize truth and stand up for it—we need those heroes to prevent us from sinking ever downward.

I have answers about what the necessary principles are; many of us do. I don’t have answers about how to get the word out on what the principles are. I just try to be one of the quieter but needed voices.

We Need Heroes

Yesterday an everyday kind of hero saved lives at a community college near us. The CyFair* campus of Lone Star Community College is the one closest to us (15 minutes in good traffic), and all three of my children took classes there. At last count, 14 people were injured in a mass stabbing. Four of them were life-flighted to a hospital with a trauma center; two of these were in critical condition (at this writing no one has died). Another eight or so were taken by ambulances or cars to nearby hospitals for treatment of lacerations. A couple more were checked at the scene and declined the need for additional medical help. So far I haven’t heard the names of any victims; that info might get around in the next day or so. But I think I would have heard if anyone I knew, or their children, was hurt. It may be that there won’t be many degrees of separation, however. This was too close to home.

Life Flight at Lonestar CyFair College
photo from ABC13 News

One of my favorite people, Elaine, teaches there, and I knew her schedule included Tuesdays. So when I first heard the news of mass stabbings at Lone Star CyFair, I texted her while at stoplights, needing to know that she was safe—and her husband who also teaches and works at the college.

By the time I got home, five minutes later, I still hadn’t heard from her, so I tried Facebook, to see if she’d get the message sooner; I was starting to worry, even though five minutes isn’t a very long wait time for a text message return. Within another minute she had texted that she was safe. We followed up shortly, and I learned from her that the incident happened right outside her classroom. She arrived right after the attacker fled, so she wasn’t in danger, but, as she said, the scene she came upon

was sobering. One of my students was holding paper towels to a girl's throat. It was in the Health Science center, and a lot of people seemed to know how to administer first aid while waiting for the paramedics. In retrospect, I'm rather impressed.

The perpetrator had apparently started slashing people randomly in the building and outside, as students were moving between classes. One of Elaine’s students saw him start to run and figured out what was going on, and immediately took off after the guy and tackled him. Others joined in and helped apprehend him until police arrived, preventing any further injuries.

It takes a special person to act that way on instinct. He could have backed away. He could have gone toward the injured to help them (others did). He could have called 911 (others already were doing that). All of those would be considered natural and positive behaviors. But he ran toward the danger, because he saw that was the most urgent need at the moment. And seeing the need, he had to act. We are fortunate to have heroes like him among us.

This is Elaine’s post Tuesday evening:

I'd just like to take this opportunity to say that I am SO PROUD of my students, especially the ones who aided the victims and helped tackle the assailant. For every act of horror there are countless acts of love. Be part of the love.

Everyone was put on lockdown almost immediately afterward (including nearby public schools), until there was certainty there was only one perpetrator, the one who had been apprehended. And then the campus was evacuated for the day. I’m thinking the next time Elaine’s class meets, they all deserve to be honored with some sort of medal.

I don’t know if we’ll learn a motive. Reports I’m hearing are that the assailant was odd; people knew him as the guy who carried a monkey sock puppet around with him and talked to it. That seems to indicate mental illness was involved. He admitted to police that he’d had fantasies of stabbing people to death for much of his life, and had been planning this assault for some time.

I don’t know how we identify the dangerously mentally ill before they act out, but that does seem to be the common factor among all the recent such incidents.

For now, we are grateful there were no deaths, and we pray for a full and speedy recovery for all the victims. And we pray that a sense of safety and peace can return to those who were traumatized. Special thanks, after the quick action of students, to the campus police, and to paramedics and other emergency personnel who did their job quickly and thoroughly.

*********

I had intended to post about a different hero today. On Monday we lost a great lady in Britain’s former Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. But I’ll save honoring her for another post.
_______________________________
I'm adding this information one week later: April 16, 2013 (the day after the Boston Marathon bombin). I wanted to correct a piece of information that was initially incorrect. The assailant at CyFair was not the person who carries around a monkey sock puppet; apparently such a person does exist (and probably is looked at even more cautiously now), but he was not involved and there is no reason to believe he intends violence. The actual perpetrator, as far as we know so far, did not show outward signs of his mental illness, although he admits to violent fantasies from an early age. So the question of how to identify such potential criminals is still without answers.

One more addendum: My friend Elaine honored her heroic class with a batch of brownies as they debriefed during their next class time.

 

* CyFair is a shortened name for Cypress-Fairbanks, the name of this northwest section of the greater Houston area.

Good Intention Despotism

Back when daughter, Social Sphere, was young, she was in a girls’ organization, and I helped out with it. She was invited to the group by a girl who was her favorite friend from first grade through elementary school years, whose mother was the leader. We met weekly, and did crafts, learning experiences, and learning adventures and camps. Most moms stayed and helped, rather than drop their daughters off. We moms took on assignments to help with part of the program, and help the kids do crafts. We made some good memories and good friends during those first few years.

Then there was a rift, with many (most) of the moms objecting to the leader. There were some valid issues that had been building up. One was that the leader enforced a no sugar policy for her own household and insisted that should be the policy for all troop activities. No cupcakes or cookies at snack time.

The time this became most frustrating was at a campout. The girls were in a cabin, so not hard-core camping. They had made their own menu and shopping list, with the guidance of the moms. This included trail mix for the hike. The leader forbade the girls from putting M&Ms in with the peanuts, sunflower seeds, and raisins. The moms who had overseen the menu planning hadn’t seen a problem with a little sweetness among other healthful foods. It was bad enough that no meals could have desserts, and breakfast disallowed syrup on the pancakes.

The event took an entertaining turn when the regional leaders dropped by the cabin to offer a presentation on some topic—and they used M&Ms as part of their object lesson, a little packet for each of the girls. The leader happened to be in another room napping at this hour; she’d been up late and gotten up early as the main leader, but there was plenty of backup during the afternoon. So, anyway, the girls and grownups all looked at one another, and there was a silent conspiracy (including the leader’s daughter and husband) to allow this and just not say anything to Ms. Leader. What she didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her.

There were other issues. Ms. Leader spent a chunk of money on a piece of equipment that would rarely be used and could have been borrowed—against the approval of the other moms. Also, moms were asked to volunteer for various assignments, and then they were overruled or ignored, amid complaints from Ms. Leader that she was doing all the work and no one could be counted on.

The aggregate of complaints led to the decision to separate. We held a meeting, with a regional leader as a mediator. My purpose there was to try to find a resolution, because I wanted to avoid having the girls separated. Ms. Leader didn’t come; she sent her husband (who was also a registered leader), so there was no way to actually air grievances and come to an agreement about change. The regional leader said any parent is free to start a new troop and recruit girls, and there was no reason to step in and prevent that from happening.

That seemed to be the simple answer for everyone—except us. It was a dilemma. There was loyalty, particularly to the friend who had first befriended my daughter, and the desire to continue to be with her. But there were a dozen other friends we would lose contact with if we didn’t go with them. Under this pressure, I stayed with the original troop for a trial, along with Ms. Leader’s daughter and one other girl recently recruited. We tried to go on as if all was as before. I took on more assignments, since there were fewer moms to divide the work.

The last straw for me was after I’d spent a number of hours on an assignment, a craft with purpose that met some badge requirement. I’d bought the materials, prepared the kits, and showed up prepared at the meeting—which was what could always be expected of me, good old reliable. Ms. Leader went through the program, and then, without notice ahead of time to me, substituted another activity for the one I’d prepared. We didn’t even do mine. She didn’t so much as acknowledge that I had had an assignment and had put time and effort into it. She had what she thought was a better idea and went with it, always her preference because she knew best, and this way she had control of the outcome.

It wasn’t the first time this had happened to me, but I had been ever forgiving. Now the mass of slights and what suddenly felt like oppression—combined with the separation from so many friends—came hitting me in the face. My daughter was sorry about the separation from her friend, but they could still meet for play dates. And she was happy to join the other dozen girls and their moms in a fuller troop that did more fun things. So we adjusted and moved forward. (The new leader was indeed better leader material.)

The friendship between us adults was strained, not because she had offended me (which she had), but because I had broken loyalty. We got back to congeniality eventually, but never to easy conversations or dinners together as couples. And there were fewer play dates as time passed.

I’m guessing this is something very similar to just about everyone’s experience with some leader in some organization. I tell this story as a micro example of some principles that apply at macro levels:

·         Parents want to be in control of decisions about the care and upbringing of their children. No one else has the right to step in and make policy because they know better and just have the child’s best interest in mind.

·         People are willing to do their part, but they expect respect in return. They are not willing to simply follow orders of their “superiors” and have their efforts ignored and unappreciated, or their opinions overruled.

·         People are not willing to put in time, money and effort and then have their expenditures go to things they disapprove of as unnecessary.

·         “When a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations…evinces a Design to reduce [the people] under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security,”[*] or whatever purpose they have for the organization. Despots, whether of little “fiefdoms” or larger “kingdoms,” deserve to be removed from any position of authority.

Here’s one more thing I learned: sometimes a petty despots suffer from the prideful misapprehension that they know better and have the good of their subordinates in mind; they thinking they are serving by controlling.

We can see this in the fascist efforts of Michael Bloomberg controlling the size of sugary drinks in New York. We see it in public education at the national level, where it simply doesn’t belong, and often at state and district levels. A few days ago MSNBC host Melissa Harris-Perry voiced what we’d suspected was the despotic belief, but we were shocked to hear it anyway:

We have never invested as much in public education as we should have because we have this private notion of children. “Your kid is yours, and totally your responsibility.” We haven't had a very collective notion of “these are our children.” So part of it is to break through our kind of private idea that kids belong to their parents, or kids belong to their families, and recognize that kids belong to whole communities.

Once it's everybody's responsibility, and not just the household's, then we start making better investments.

 

Really? How dare I believe I am entitled to make decisions on the care and upbringing of my own children, just because I happened to give birth to them and provide for them? A better question is, how does anyone come to believe a fit parent isn’t the responsible party for decisions about the child? My belief is rational. Hers is outrageous. It fits the pattern of way too many youth novels about post-apocalyptic tyrannical societies: the Matched trilogy, Agenda 21, and Among the Hidden, for example.

This morning I came across a piece by socialist Cass Sunstein, defending paternalistic government—because people make mistakes and need the right choices forced upon them. Seriously. He thinks the discussion should be about which approach to take, not whether to be paternalistic, because:

What seems to unify paternalistic approaches, however diverse, is that government does not believe that people’s choices will promote their welfare, and it is taking steps to influence or alter people’s choices for their own good.

He says it calmly, with an attitude of, “of course reasonable people will agree with me”—and I disagree with every example he offers of government making things better. In his case I do not give him the benefit of the doubt about intent: it is not about caring for the stupid people; it is about controlling all the people. The point of his article is to find a way to control the people without letting them know their freedom of choice is being controlled. But concern about that abstract notion of freedom is only important until tyranny takes sufficient hold.

The “long Train of Abuses and Usurpations” is growing. These are in opposition to the Constitutional law that protects us from them. The question, then, is not how to separate and form a new government less oppressive; it is how to throw off the extra-Constitutional usurpations while we still have a Constitution to return to.

---

[*] The Declaration of Independence

More on CSCOPE

A couple of weeks ago I wrote about curriculum, with some info about CSCOPE, the Texas version of Common Core. I went to a presentation about it Monday evening and learned a few more things. The full presentation is available at King Street Live, with speakers radio commentator Ben Streusand and Peggy Venable of Americans for Prosperity-Texas. Some details I picked up by monopolizing Mr. Streusand’s time afterward with my questions; if I have things wrong, however, please assume I got it wrong while gathering info during conversation without taking notes.

Ben Streusand, Peggy Venable, and Catherine Engelbrecht

I learned that it has been used for nearly a decade in some districts, mostly rural. In fact, it’s more a problem in rural areas than in cities—although my large suburban district has been using it, at least for some subjects. (Fun fact: CSCOPE isn’t an acronym for anything; it just seemed like an appealing name.)

There are Education Service Centers, (ESCs) across the state, where districts can combine, maybe county-wide or bigger, to share information, curriculum, and other resources. In cities, there are so many districts within a county that this simply isn’t an issue. Of those districts using ESCs, 80% use CSCOPE; they pay a hefty chunk of taxpayer education dollars for access to the materials.

To review, CSCOPE is supposedly a collection of lesson plans, 1600 or so, submitted by teachers, former teachers, and curriculum writers across the state. Submitters had to sign away their rights to review their materials and how they were used. No organization previewed the entire set of materials before implementing them, possibly not even the board of CSCOPE. And there are rumors that many of the materials were written by the same curriculum writers as the federal Common Core.

Teachers and others who use CSCOPE are required to sign an oath not to share the materials with the parents of students or anyone else. Supposedly this was for copyright protection of materials that are only digital. But it appears more secretive than that purpose deserves. Curriculum is subject to review by the State Board of Education, but CSCOPE sidestepped that requirement by claiming it is just “lesson plans,” not curriculum.

I looked up an official definition of “lesson plan”:

A detailed description of the individual lessons that a teacher plans to teach on a given day. A lesson plan is developed by a teacher to guide instruction throughout the day. It is a method of planning and preparation. A lesson plan traditionally includes the name of the lesson, the date of the lesson, the objective the lesson focuses on, the materials that will be used, and a summary of all the activities that will be used. Lesson plans are a terrific set of guidelines for substitute teachers.

What’s the difference between that and curriculum? Nothing. A lesson plan is just a small unit of curriculum. It’s like saying, “That’s not bread; it’s a slice.” Pretending it’s something else by using a different word is kind of a creepy way to get around having oversight, especially when you look at it in tandem with the no disclosure policy. Under those circumstances, we’d be remiss not to be suspicious.

Dan Patrick, my state senator and the head of the Senate Education Committee, introduced a bill to create oversight. As of today, the bill looks like it’s making progress. A public hearing was held Tuesday, and SB 1406 was approved in the Education Committee Thursday (voted 7-0 in favor). Next it moves on to the full Senate for a vote. Then it moves on to the House. It looks like it has a good chance. (There’s a similar bill in the House, HB 760, referred to the Education Committee, but not making as much progress yet.)

The legislation is the result of an agreement with the CSCOPE board, to implement oversight. Dan Patrick’s press release on February 8 describes what the legislation is designed to do.  In short, the agreement includes:

·         the State Board of Education (SBOE) to review all the materials;

·         CSCOPE board meetings must be public meetings;

·         teachers who submitted lesson plans will be allowed to review and reveal the plans;

·         parents will be allowed to review the lesson plans online.

Of course eliminating the curriculum entirely would be better than just overseeing it. Senator Patrick would have preferred legislation to eliminate CSCOPE altogether. Unfortunately, he couldn’t get enough votes to make that happen. It’s not really a problem of persuading Democrats to join in; Dems tend to represent larger inner city districts that don’t use ESCs, and therefore aren’t very interested in CSCOPE in the first place. It’s the GOP representatives of rural districts that are the challenge.

If you’re looking for someone to influence, a polite call or email to the following, suggesting they take into account your disapproval of CSCOPE, could be helpful. It’s too late to put forth legislation this session to eliminate CSCOPE (with the unlikely exception that SB 1406 could be amended to the point that it essentially gets substituted with elimination, but I don’t foresee that). But approval of SB 1406 at least improves the situation and gives us a first step.

·         Senator Robert Nichols, District 3

·         Senator Kevin Eltife, District 1

·         Senator Craig Estes, District 30

·         Senator Kel Seliger, District 31

·         Senator Robert Duncan, District 28 

Here’s one more opportunity for you Texans. This bill creates a method of review of the extremely large mass of lesson plans. The SBOE members aren’t going to be doing that alone. You could become one of the reviewers. Contact your representative on the State Board of Education and offer your services. The review is starting with social studies first, and then will move on to science. I don’t yet know all that being a reviewer entails. Pretty certain this would be volunteer work. But it could be extremely valuable.

It’s possible that, as we speak, the CSCOPE powers-that-be are scrubbing the materials of the most blatantly objectionable content. But if problems are found, those portions can be eliminated. Presumably if massive portions are objectionable and overall value is seen as negative, maybe the SBOE can disapprove of CSCOPE as a whole.

You can also find out if CSCOPE is used in your district and go directly to your local school board to insist on it being eliminated. No need to wait for the next legislative session, if we assert the power of parents, where the power belongs.

Americans for Prosperity-Texas provides basic information as well as links to more details. Also review Glenn Beck's March 7 story.

A Few Collected Words

I continue to keep an ever-growing quote file, things that spark a connection, helping to clarify the principles that lead to freedom, prosperity, and civilization. Maybe, after the heavy writing of the last couple of weeks, it’s a good day to share a few words from other minds.

These first few were quoted in a speech by Judge Thomas B. Griffith, US Circuit Court of Appeals. The speech was called , “The Hard Work of Understanding the Constitution,” given at BYU September 18, 2012. 

Patriotism is not short, frenzied outbursts of emotion, but the tranquil and steady dedication of a lifetime.—Adlai Stevenson 

The first requisite of a good citizen in this republic of ours is that he shall be able and willing to pull his own weight.—Teddy Roosevelt 

The work of citizenship is hard work that calls upon us to use our best thinking,

our most careful study, our most rigorous analysis.—Aristotle

 

Following the law places a judge in a role that is in large part clerical, where he labors largely as a functionary, applying and implementing the law. The judge’s primary task is to find and follow the law.—BYU Law Professor Brett Sharp

 

Nothing you learn here at Oxford will be of the slightest possible use to you later, save only this: if you work hard and intelligently, you should be able to detect when a man is talking rot. And that is the main, if not the sole, purpose of education.—Harold MacMillan, Prime Minister of Great Britain, Chancellor of Oxford from 1960-1986, to an Oxford graduating class 

 

This final, longer quote is from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, the beginning of “Men Have Forgotten God,” the Templeton Address, 1983:

More than half a century ago, while I was still a child, I recall hearing a number of older people offer the following explanation for the great disasters that had befallen Russia: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

Since then I have spent well-nigh fifty years working on the history of our Revolution; in the process I have read hundreds of books, collected hundreds of personal testimonies, and have already contributed eight volumes of my own toward the effort of clearing away the rubble left by that upheaval. But if I were asked today to formulate as concisely as possible the main cause of the ruinous Revolution that swallowed up some sixty million of our people, I could not put it more accurately than to repeat: Men have forgotten God; that’s why all this has happened.

What is more, the events of the Russian Revolution can only be understood now, at the end of the century, against the background of what has since occurred in the rest of the world. What emerges here is a process of universal significance. And if I were called upon to identify briefly the principal trait of the entire twentieth century, here too, I would be unable to find anything more precise and pithy than to repeat once again: Men have forgotten God.

Alexander Solzhenitsyn

SCOTUS on Marriage Part III: Outcomes of the Cases

Part I is on Definitions, Part II is on Arguments. Today's Part III is on Possible Outcomes

I have a poor record for predicting what the courts will do; I like to think positively, and believe all will work out. But after last year’s tortured ruling on Obamacare, all bets are off. I can’t predict. The oral arguments are almost certainly after the fact of the justices making their individual decision. They have already begun drafting their opinions. So all I can do is summarize the issues.

The two cases both deal with the definition of marriage, but ask different specific questions of law. The Prop 8 case is about whether the people of a state have a right to decide to keep the definition of marriage it has always had, or will have a redefinition forced on them by judges. The decision might avoid an actual decision by deciding the defenders of Prop 8 have no standing, which is a catch 22 situation. The people used the initiative process to override state-imposed changes against their will. Then the state refused to defend the people’s vote against the judges who overruled the people. To say no one but the state has standing leaves us asking, who can be the advocate of the people against the state?

Photo credit: npr.org

If the case is thrown out, it will only affect the state of California, with all the real issues still up in the air. But it also means the people have no recourse against a tyrannical state. Still, I think it’s unlikely the Supreme Court will use this case to announce a new unwritten “right” to same-sex “marriage.”

The DOMA case is about whether defending the long-standing definition of marriage is constitutional. The main question here is, when/how did the millennia-old definition of marriage become unconstitutional? A “right,” by definition, means God granted it, and it is just a matter of the state being prevented from infringing on that right.

If the court decides there is a right to marry (to be granted all legal and society honors) based on having a sexual relationship of one’s choice, why would it be constitutional to refuse to grant those same marriage honors to people who want to marry more than one at a time, or someone who is a close relative, or someone not alive, or someone nonhuman, or someone not of age? That is the slippery slope argument. The only defense to it is, “There is no slippery slope. We’re not talking about that; we’re only talking about the rights of same-sex couples.” And if you refuse to look at the argument, you submit yourself to being surprised by the slippery slope, which logically follows.

The argument against DOMA in the 90s was that it wasn’t necessary, because no one was even considering threatening the definition of marriage. Today’s arguments are equally disingenuous. Taking fidelity, permanence, and family establishment out of the definition of marriage, and pretending it has always been just a love thing, just honoring two people who have chosen to have an emotional connection for the time being, does not benefit society, and it certainly doesn’t leave marriage and family unharmed.

The DOMA decision hinges on rationality. Is there a rational reason to define marriage as it has always been defined if that prevents some people from enjoying the benefits of marriage? The threshold is actually quite low; if a single rational person can be found to have a single logical reason, then it is not irrational to uphold the law. The other side has to prove that there is no rationale for preventing marriage benefits from being extended to people who don’t currently meet the requirements for marriage.

It should be an easy decision, because family, fidelity, and permanence are all outcomes of the marriage contract that have an extraordinarily long history of benefit. In order to rule against DOMA, a very few states get deemed “rational” while the majority of people in the vast majority of states are deemed unreasonable—and bigoted hatemongers to boot.

But in political bodies (and the Supreme Court is unfortunately political, against design), simple facts get obscured behind other motivations. The opposition to the defense of marriage have enlisted a willing media in framing the argument as a civil right to marry—leaving out a great many details: homosexuals are free to (and frequently do) marry a person of the opposite sex like everyone else; there is no guarantee to anyone of marrying the “person of their choice” if the person they choose is already married or is a close relative, or is someone who doesn’t consent to marry them, or is someone below the age of consent or is mentally incapable of giving consent, and various other limitations.

I don’t think the cases available provide the possibility that the Supreme Court can come out with a declaration that marriage must be defined as it always has been not only by the federal government but also in all the states. I think upholding DOMA would only affect definitions within federal law, which leaves things the way they are now, with the possibility that individual states can define marriage differently in contracts within their states.

This is still problematic, because of the “full faith and credit clause.” Generally, contracts made in one state are upheld within the other US states. If you get married in Idaho, you don’t have to get remarried if you visit or move to Virginia. But, in the case of marriage, if a state grants all the rights and title of marriage to a same-sex couple, and that couple moves to a state that doesn’t recognize that change in the definition of marriage, would that second state be forced to recognize the contract? Thirty-one states have foreseen this scenario and have protected themselves, beyond statute, by declaring the long-standing definition of marriage in their state constitutions. Which makes it a question of sovereignty, so that a single state doesn’t hold power without representation over the people of all the other states.

Can same-sex couples move to these states and sue for recognition of their contract? Yes, and that does seem to be a strategy. Because of the deeply held beliefs—the strong rationale for marriage—it would seem reasonable for such couples to either stay where they have a recognized contract or assume that their contract is not binding. But instead of accepting that limitation for themselves, they press for all of society to change. So far, however, no case has made it through the lower courts to the point where a test case could reach the Supreme Court.

My hope for the Supreme Court is that they are swayed by the awareness that Roe v. Wade was not only bad law, it interfered with the state-by-state working out of a divisive issue. The court, I believe, will try to prevent such intrusion for now. I think they are likely to seek some middle-of-the-road still indecisive decision.

On Prop 8 I hope they will find in favor of the people’s law, but whichever way it goes, they are likely to clarify that the decision is only pertaining to the people of California and their initiative process.

On DOMA, I think they should uphold, because to do otherwise would be very disruptive to contract law and would be the most intrusive decision. Even if I’m wrong, I think they will try to find a way to prevent the decision from being a declaration of a new “civil right” for anyone to marry anyone of their choice.

As with Obamacare, we’re trying to predict the minds of Kennedy and Roberts. Kennedy tends to look consistently at civil rights fairness, so it’s hard to know whether he will succumb to the drumbeat argument of the opposition or consider the full meaning of the marriage contract. He is an unknown.

Rumor over the weekend was that Justice Roberts has a lesbian cousin who was sitting in his section during the hearing. I assume that report is intended to cause us to believe that merely having a cousin with an assumed opinion is enough to change the chief justice’s opinion on what the Constitution says. I hope that isn’t so, but I offer no guarantees. Roberts went way out of his way on Obamacare not to strike down the law. It seemed so out of character that people have speculated conspiracy theories, that the administration holds some piece of evidence (even if it’s something untrue and manufactured) over him as a threat, so he must not cross them. Maybe so, but it could be that he just personally seeks to avoid acting in a declarative way.

At any rate, it is unfortunate that the future of civilization is on a knife edge, at the mercy of nine unelected political appointees, two-thirds of whom are more likely to work toward their desired outcome rather than declare what the Constitution says. (May Thomas, Alito, and Scalia live long and healthy lives!)

On an ironic side note, on Sunday, March 24, about 300,000 protestors marched on the capital of France, in defiance of a bill sponsored by their president that would allow same-sex “marriage,” which has already passed the lower parliament. Even the people of France, where sex outside of marriage has been considered a cultural norm for centuries, are standing up against the imposition of the homosexual agenda.