Who needs a point? I'm mad!

How I long for the days of college... when I had no job, no clue what I was going to be doing with my life, and where every five minutes I got dragged into some stupid but incredibly animated discussion about how some group on campus was "doing it" wrong, whatever the hell "it" was.

Seriously, I think that college should be deferred until freshmen are in their mid-20s rather than fresh out of high school. At least it might temper everyone's self-righteousness a tad.

For instance, this article in the Harvard Crimson by a freshman, Daniel Solomon, who feels Hillel is too frum for him.

I had not been transported to Downton Abbey, but as I arrived at the Harvard Hillel for Shabbos dinner during Visitas, I felt like I had stepped into a time machine. Orthodox and Ultra-Orthodox Jews in severe three-piece suits and sideburns dominated. I cast about for a minute, looking for a place to sit, glancing to find another member of my endangered species: a Reform or Conservative Jew.
My experience speaks to an unsettling truth about contemporary Judaism in the United States: While more and more secular Jews abandon any form of religious observance, the Orthodox population is exploding, leading to the marginalization of the once-robust Reform and Conservative movements and the upending of traditional notions of Jewish identity.

Now, it's true that the two largest and growing Jewish groups today are secular and Orthodox-- but that's not Orthodoxy's fault, it's the liberal movements. America isn't Israel or Britain. There is no official legal status, title or funding that the Orthodox get that is denied to the rest of us. Most of the time, liberal Judaism isn't competing with Orthodoxy, but rather with a general disengaged apathy.

Our faith is about the only thing Reform and Conservative Jews share with the Orthodox, and what the Orthodox stand for is anathema to us. For secular Jews, Jewishness has long been centered on culture, bagels, Yiddishisms, loud arguments, and impassioned liberalism taking precedence over the synagogue. 

Dude, I'm sorry to say it, but that doesn't sound like a particularly deep "culture;" it sounds like a parody. I'm surprised you didn't include watching Seinfeld or saving money on your taxes in that list. If your Jewishness centers around such hallowed cultural traditions as arguing and bagels, you're entitled, but I'm not sure why you're acting as if this is something that merits a high-five. It's also a little deceptive to blur the line so casually between liberal and secular Jews. If some of the old-timey Jewish secularists like Abe Cahan, Simon Dubnow, Chaim Zhitlowsky or Itche Goldberg were around and heard you summing up Jewish culture as "bagels," they'd kick your ass from here to next year.

The Orthodox are obviously more devout. However, the most crucial difference between the three streams of Judaism is that the Orthodox, particularly the ultra-Orthodox, tend to see themselves as American Jews while their Reform and Conservative counterparts view themselves as Jewish Americans. This dissonance can be traced back to Reform’s founding document, The Pittsburgh Platform, which in 1885 famously declared, “We consider ourselves no longer a nation, but a religious community.” Consequently, the Orthodox busy themselves more with medieval concepts like mesirah—a prohibition on ratting out Jews to secular authorities—than with tikkun olam—the Jewish idea of social justice.

Here is where Solomon just seems to start attacking the Orthodox for the hell of it. It's not relevant to Harvard, nor particularly to the issue of liberal or secular Jews. Rather than actually talk about substantive and contemporary issues of identity among different groups of Jews, Solomon jumps all the way back to the Pittsburgh Platform, which your average young Jew probably thinks is a new OS being developed in Pennsylvania in case Windows 8 fails to excite people.

Some have tried to draw sharp distinctions between the East Ramapo and Williamsburg crowd and the “Modern Orthodox.” Those differences are cosmetic, not ideological—the Grover Norquist snarl to the Paul Ryan smile. There’s nothing modern about keeping men and women separated at prayer services, or preventing women from singing Torah. There’s nothing modern about embracing strict interpretations of Jewish law. There’s nothing modern about having an all-Hebrew prayer book; the Vatican, one of progress’ most prominent bogeymen, long ago abandoned the Tridentine Mass.

Neither is there anything modern in failing to do rudimentary research on a topic before you start talking about it. Modern Orthodoxy is called modern not because it's cutting-edge, but because, when located within the Orthodox spectrum, it embraces aspects of modernity, such as education, philosophy and nationalism. And I'm sorry, but suggesting that the siddur should be the dividing line of modernity? Solomon is sounding less like a Reform Jew and more like a random internet troll.

Reform, meanwhile, has drifted away from the Pittsburgh Platform, which, in a Lutheran spirit, de-emphasized ritual and elevated faith. One 90-year-old cousin of mine, when he feels so inclined, relates tales of his synagogue days. He wasn’t bar mitzvahed; he was confirmed. He didn’t wear a yarmulke. His temple’s prayer service had more English in it than mine does, and at congregational luncheons shellfish and pork were on the menu.

But here's the rub: High Reform ultimately didn't work. If it had, then the Reform movement would have stuck with it. Instead, there has been a dramatic shift away from the Protestant-influenced, some might say, "over-enlightened", just-plain-trying-too-hard ethos that was High Reform towards a liberal Judaism that feels comfortable engaging with Hebrew, becoming familiar with Jewish law and history, and whose first instinct when they encounter something they disagree with to think about it rather than toss it out the window. In short, liberal Judaism has grown up, and is trying to take a truly modern approach by combining the best aspects of contemporary culture with the best aspects of traditional Jewish culture. Is Solomon mad that Reform has "sold out?" If so, why, exactly? And what does any of this have to do with Hillel?

Today, the revolutionary spark is gone, and previously junked practices like keeping kosher and observing the Sabbath are coming back into vogue. Undoubtedly, this is due in part to the Holocaust and the establishment of the state of Israel. But embracing anachronisms won’t stanch the bleeding, and it certainly won’t get more secular Jews into Hillel.

Undoubtedly according to whom? What do the Holocaust and Israel have to do with keeping kosher? Are you suggesting that people are doing these things out of guilt? I suppose it's possible, but what's your source, besides you?

The biggest problem with Solomon's essay isn't just that he doesn't seem to really know what he's talking about, it's that he doesn't know who he's mad at. He'd be much better off focusing on his own personal experiences and explaining how Hillel is or isn't reaching him than pretending to have this huge grasp on the social politics of American Judaism. The bottom line is that there's a simple option for people who don't feel connected to the nitty-gritty of Jewish practice: Just don't do it. But what's strange is conflating his irritation with his own "endangered" movement with the Orthodox, and then pushing it even farther and placing the blame at Hillel for somehow contributing to this by... allowing Orthodox Jews at its Shabbos table?

According to Hillel's website, its goal is to "provide opportunities" for Jews to explore and celebrate their heritage and culture. It isn't supposed to make people religious or even to specifically to "attract" more Jews into it. It's simply supposed to be there if you want to use it. That suggests that it has a vested interest in being as open and welcoming to as many Jews as possible, to cast a big tent. I don't understand why that's a bad thing.

There were several decent responses around the web, by secular Jews, Orthodox Jews, and those in between, but I felt like many of them took too much of Solomon's bait. The issue isn't just that his piece was unfair to the Orthodox (two shekels he doesn't know Soloveitchik from Sieradski), but that, despite his comment about his Reform Temple, it seems unclear if he even knows all that much about liberal Judaism, either.

Personally, I think there's a bigger problem here than this kid's tirade against Orthodoxy.  If you read between the lines, it appears that he was trying to show that liberal/secular Jews are feeling marginalized and adrift amid Jewish institutions that are leaning back towards observance and tradition as foundations for Jewish community. In my view, his piece did far more harm to his own cause than it did to the Orthodox. On behalf of young(ish) liberal Jews everywhere, I'd like to say this: we aren't all this dumb, this whiny, or this entitled. Really.

Letting Go

An old friend of mine was blogging about moving and needing to discard or pare down her and her fiance's large book collection. I particularly connected with this part:

I tend to hold on to books far longer than I really should. And this habit is suffused with a persistent feeling of someday. SomedayI’ll get around to reading that one. Someday I’ll need that one for some research.Someday I’ll want to look at something I once scribbled into the margin of that one. I don’t need that one now, and I can’t really foresee ever needing it in the future, but, well, someday I might. 

It can get really overwhelming when you need to get rid of, to downsize, to “rightsize”: you need to make the collection transportable, but you also need to make it reflect what you can realistically do. In some cases, this is easy...not only do I have to be realistic about what is possible in my life, but I must also keep from fooling myself into overestimating my current or future interest in some particular topic, or mis(under)estimating any reason to keep or discard a particular volume.

My family has always been into books, so I know I get it from there, but Abbot and Mama Yid are also particularly into stuff, in some cases, more than is healthy. Mrs. Yid's family moved every few years so they got very good at both not having tons of emotional attachment to objects as well as just being more practiced at getting rid of things. For my parents, especially Mama Yid, one of the main draws of buying a home was finally having enough room for all their crap. (Yes, my parents are a walking George Carlin routine.) So growing up, I never had to cull. I never had to decide what to get rid of and what to keep. I could keep everything. As I got older, there were some things I decided I just plain didn't want and did, eventually, toss, but if something had value for Mama Yid, Lord help you if you junked it or gave it away. "I can't believe you're throwing away this half-broken toy I got you when you were five! Don't you remember how I carried it back rubber-banded to my forearm from Brooklyn?" No, in fact, I do not, as I was not there.

Now I can understand that for her, it's part of wanting to hang on to memories of trips, vacations, special occasions, and Deacon's and my childhoods, but I'll never forget her angrily pulling items from a trashcan while yelling, "If you don't want them, I'll keep them!" and then promptly putting them back in my closet.

So, yes, my challenge has been to mediate between my mother's packrat tendencies and my wife's "clean sweep" philosophy. One elegant solution I came up with happened this past weekend.

Years ago, when I was trying to consolidate all of the things I had left in my parents' house, I decided to finally go through all of my books. This was after I had gone to college, graduated, come back to live with them, and was now moving out again. Since I knew I was going into elementary education, I was a little reluctant to get rid of childrens' books from my childhood. The most obvious ones did get donated-- used coloring books, old football stat books from the 80s, that sort of thing. But, in addition to the 20-odd boxes of Judaica, history and comics stacked up in one spare room, I came up with about 10 boxes of "kid lit", which I stacked as far out of the way as possible in the garage. And they've been sitting there for the last 4 years.

So last weekend, I realized that since next year I'll be working with middle schoolers, who will likely be entirely unimpressed with my epic collection of Garfield, Goosebumps, or Encyclopedia Brown books, that I was going to give them away to my 2nd graders. I spent most of an afternoon shlepping boxes, dividing books into donations for the thrift store, ones I would take to school, and ones I wanted to keep for myself or future mini-Yids. I am pleased to report that of the 10 boxes, I only kept 3. The rest I packed up in the car and took back to the present apartment (Mrs. Yid was just thrilled, given that we are in the middle of moving and what we really need more than anything is more boxes cluttering up the living room). That night I carefully packed the books for my students into our laundry cart, and the next morning I left early to make sure I would have enough time to carefully push the thing to school without it collapsing on me (it really was quite full).

When the kids came in and saw all the books laid out, it was like they thought it was Christmas. Almost all of them took some (I must have brought between 150 and 200 books; by the end of two days, I had four left, which I donated to the school library's "free bin"), and a few took 20 or 30. Though I had worried I would become emotional at giving my books away, I found that I had completely separated my childhood memories and feelings from the actual objects-- and instead, the more I saw how excited the kids were with the books, the more I wanted to encourage them to read them. "I know you like science, how about this?" "Who likes mysteries, check this out?" "There's a whole series for this one, if you like it, take a few more!" (I told one kid, "You like science and comics, right? Well this Gary Larson guy did a whole books series combining the two!" He replied, "I didn't know you could do that!")

Each of them asked me over and over, "Are these mine to keep?" Every time, I answered, "They're yours. Enjoy them."

Afterwards, some parents emailed me thanking me for being so generous. One said it was a beautiful going-away gift for her daughter. Another said it was very touching for me to be giving my kids a piece of my childhood.

I said I was happy the books would be going to good homes. And that's true. But there's a slightly selfish aspect to it, as well. Giving things away to the thrift store or strangers isn't usually very exciting. But knowing exactly which kids were getting my books, that was totally different. Personal, and very sweet. I'm glad they'll enjoy them, and I'm glad I'll be helping them even after I'm no longer their teacher. But deep down, I think part of me is hoping that when they read them, they may think of me.

Give Kids More Credit, Please

Since we no longer have TV, I often forget how mind-numbing news coverage can be. The power of news aggregators and The Daily Show mean that I never have to see or read "mainstream" news unless I seek it out. And when I do, I'm often reminded why I don't do it often.

Case in point: the lesbian den mother who got kicked out of her troop by the Boy Scouts. Nasty situation, have total sympathy for the mother and the family, no issue there. But the sheer smarm in this article from CNN made me want to scream.

The cubs of Pack 109 are upset.
But none more than Cruz, who is being forced to be away from his friends and is too young to fully understand why.
He's only 7.
He wasn't brought up to dislike people because they are different.
He's too young to understand bigotry.

Who are you, LZ Granderson, Ronald Reagan's Bizarro World speechwriter? Oh yes, children know nothing about being mean or cruel to others. Children never encounter situations that aren't fair or in which peers negatively judge each other based on dumb-ass criteria.

Quick question, LZ: Have you met kids? Like, real ones? Because the ones I hang out with spend the day excluding the hell out of each other, often for reasons so inane they forget them within a few hours (unless, of course, they opt for the other extreme and decide to hold a grudge against each other for the next ten years). My job is to make sure they knock that crap out and don't give each other complexes, and when things get serious, we get serious. But when you pretend kids can't understand hatred or bigotry or even basic hostility, what you're really saying is that you think kids are stupid and live in a fantasy-land of magical butterflies that crap jellybeans.

There are so many good reasons to be pissed off about this case and to encourage people to support the family. You even have a germ of an excellent angle by focusing on the ripple-effect that GLBT exclusion can have on the kids involved in the programs that GBLT adults participate in. So it's entirely unnecessary to pad your article by fake-empathizing with the woman's son. I would have much preferred some quotes from him, or even some random description of him poking something with a stick. At least that would be something reflective of things kids actually do, not BS projections of how adults think they should think or feel. Quit it.

No, No, No!

Our [11-year-old] kid is... sheltered...she doesn't know how horrible the world is. She doesn't know about racism, she doesn't know about gender bias, she doesn't know about... religious wars... the biggest problem in her life is, "I've already seen this My Little Pony." And that's a good thing, because one day she's going to realize how horrible the world is... rather than expose her to all that intolerance and stupidity, we just keep her away from it. She doesn't know that anything like that exists. [My wife's] big fear was that she would see this [poster] and be like, "What does this mean?" And we'd have to explain... and you just don't want to have that discussion yet.

That's from director Kevin Smith, explaining why his wife wouldn't let him put a poster from the Westboro Baptist Church on their living room wall. In the end, his solution was not to have an actual mature conversation with his almost-Middle-Schooler, but to hide the poster in the hallway and avoid discussing it until it actually fell over.

And excuse me for being intolerant, but I think that's absolutely ridiculous. First of all, your child is eleven, not stupid. Unless she's been home-schooled, kept in a media vacuum and lives in a giant tupperware made of frosted glass, I think she's probably noticed that not everyone in the world has a famous director father and lives in a mansion in the Hollywood Hills that was previously owned by Ben Affleck. Does she go to the grocery store? Has she ever visited one of your sets? Does she have eyes? Give your kid some credit, please.

Second, kids can handle much more than adults-- particularly their parents-- usually give them credit for. Many topics in this world are actually not very complicated, if your kid is used to discussing mature topics and being treated like a vaguely intelligent human being-- one of the key points, being, of course, that you don't condescend to them by assuming that they still like My Little Pony despite being in fifth or sixth grade. I talked to my second graders about the Holocaust, you dope, and they understood it, they handled it, and rather than being traumatized, it made them curious and engaged. They wanted to know why people let terrible things like that happen in the world. It inspired some of them to start reading more about history and social justice in other contexts. And that wasn't an isolated class. I've taught fourth and fifth graders about racism and prejudice and genocide, so don't you dare act like the reason you can't bear to explain homophobia to your kid is because "she's just not ready." You don't want to deal with it, you're uncomfortable with it, and you're taking the easy-- and lazy-- way out. Which does your kid no favors, incidentally.

In the same way that Bill O'Reilly and all the other professional blowhards are out of line when they carp about how gay folks shouldn't hold hands near their families so they don't have to "explain" it to their kids, it's a total copout for Kevin Smith to act like he's somehow noble for not explaining to his daughter how the world works. I'm still waiting for someone to say they won't let their kid ride in a car because they don't want to have to "explain" how its engine works.

It's one thing to try to protect your child. It's another thing to (supposedly) shelter them to the point of stupidity, especially when it's more for your benefit/comfort level than theirs. Grow up, so your kid can, too.

Letter to a Megalomaniac: Stop Writing Letters

Remember our old friend Ellis Washington? The guy who wrote a letter to his pastor complaining that he was being persecuted by not being allowed to debate him at church? The guy who compared environmentalists to jihadists, Nazis, and communists?

Well he's got more to talk about. And this time, he's preaching to the youth. As a young-ish adult myself, I personally can't wait. I bet this will be wicked rad.

What's the dilly, Ellis?

Letter to Generation X

Um... you know that no one in generation X actually refers to themselves as generation X, right? Off to a lame start, fogey.

Ellis' column is truly bizarre. It's probably the only time I've read a political commentary piece framed as a novelization, complete with prologue, "dialogue" and epilogue headers. In the prologue, Ellis informs us that he's had a "recent correspondence" with "a young protégée." Or, as someone who wasn't pretending they just stepped out of Dead Poet's Society or The Emperor's Club might put it, he sent an email. Way to stay current and hip, Ellis.

Things only get more ridiculous and flowery from there. Apparently Ellis' letter had "an enduring leitmotiv" (that's a theme, for those of us who don't spend our free time rubbing our diplomas in other people's faces) discussing the many stages of slavery that black Americans have suffered through-- including, in Ellis' view, the most recent one of "voluntary slavery."

All of this is just in Ellis' prologue. Bring on the "correspondence," young page!

The email is in response to one from a young black man named Marcus saying he doesn't like the Republican party because it keeps the rich rich and the poor poor, and because he doesn't want to be associated with all the baggage of the GOP so he'd rather be a moderate or independent. Sounds reasonable enough, but the great Ellis will not let things stand:

Thanks for writing me, my friend. … Read my blog and follow up what I write with your own research.

That's right, no correspondence from Ellis would be complete without a gratuitous self-endorsement (still, don't you think mentioning it in your second sentence is a little on the nose?)

To help you, examine this simple syllogism below from the own mouths of the forefathers of communism, a totalitarian, atheistic ideology responsible for the brutal genocide of perhaps 150-200 million people in the twentieth century alone: 

...Marx: Democracy is the road to socialism;
Lenin: Democracy is indispensable to socialism. The goal of socialism is communism;
Marx: The meaning of peace is the absence of opposition to socialism.

Um... I don't get it. Marx and Lenin are saying that in their views, democracy (power by the people) is required to get to an eventual communist state. So? Suggesting that this damns democracy is like saying John Wayne Gacy ruined clowns forever. Besides, as a conservative, isn't it an article of faith for you that Marx and Lenin were full of crap?

Ellis deftly slaps down Marcus' concern about GOP policy regarding poor people, not by referring to any actual facts or policies, but by simply saying that it's a lie. Well played, I guess? And then he brings out the big guns:

Remember the Democratic Party was the party that gave black people 250 years of slavery, followed by the murderous Klu Klux Klan, racial segregation (de jure and de facto), ghettos, endemic poverty, eugenics (selective breeding), forced sterilization and abortion on demand, which kills millions of black babies every year.

This is a silly if culturally interesting argument which is often repeated on the right, particularly among the Fox News bozos. I am personally fascinated by the intellectual position, "Actions then and now don't matter at all; all that matters is the name of the party they're associated with." It's got a certain ridiculous cleverness to it. Never mind that no matter how often people like Ellis repeat the canard about the contemporary Democratic party somehow being responsible for the KKK, there is nothing more profoundly conservative than the slavery, racism and Jim Crow that was endemic in the Old South. It's particularly funny given that the Fox crowd also likes to crow about how it was Republicans who signed the Civil Rights Act into law over opposition from Dixiecrats. Ellis, of course, can't add this to the list of the Democratic party's evils since he considers the Civil Rights Movement part of "voluntary slavery."

This particular letter ends with Ellis wondering (apparently to himself) whether Generation X will be the saviors of our nation:

Can Generation X save America from voluntary slavery, from the madness of Social Darwinism, which is education atheism, from unsustainable debt and deficits, exploding welfare programs and pensions plans that are purposely causing states to shut down and global socialism?

Tune in for our next episode and find out!

Oh wait, there's more! A few weeks later, we had "Letter to Generation Y," and I'm sure this one's even hipper than ever, right? (Not if the format is any indication; we get the same ridiculous prologue, dialogue, epilogue structure as last time. What is this, a play? Let me guess, Greek tragedy?)

This time Ellis is writing to... a middle-aged college professor? Oh, but apparently he's recycling some of the same arguments he used to "rescue" the guy's college freshman son who had fallen in with the wrong crowd. Go for it, Ellis, what's your advice?

The problem with this young generation is that they have no moral code nor intellectual foundation other than hedonism; no knowledge of history or war strategies of the past like those outlined in Sun Tzu's classic treatise "Art of War."

Wow. I can honestly say that of all the things you might blame young people for, this is definitely not how I thought this was going to go.

Perhaps you can have your son do what I ask my college students to do, which is to read my WND articles or my blog and type a 2-3 page summary and opinion essay of each work.

HOLY CRAP, Ellis. Not everything is about you saving everyone's mind from the evils of... everyone else. Please, for the love of God, dial your ego down a bit before it blocks out the sun and all the trees die. Also, you have some balls to complain about schools brainwashing kids when you require your college students to read your blog and write summaries of everything you post. What's next, have them study your grocery lists so they know how a great and disciplined man stays on budget? Maybe they should be examining your Kindergarten finger painting, too? I'm sure there's something useful there.

This intellectual project will achieve several objectives almost instantaneously for your son, namely to:
1-Regularly follow directions from an authority figure;
2-Develop critical thinking and writing skills;
3-Get his intellect, body, soul, spirit ready to re-enter college again and this time to be successful;
4-Improve his writing/typing/computer skills.

You know, it's funny, Ellis, this kid could accomplish any or all of these things without having to read a single thing you've written. If all he needs to do to get back in the college mindset, he could do book reports on the Twilight series or write reviews of Star Trek episodes and it would essentially get him to the exact same place. What is it about your psyche in which you're convinced you're the antidote to a disease no one seems to be suffering from?

Results: By the end of the summer Rashaan will have a folder full of essays on diverse subjects that your son can then take to the dean, university officials and his professors to demonstrate his seriousness to high intellectual pursuits.

Wait, so your plan is to have him write mini-essays based on your random ideas and screeds, and then collate them into a manifesto portfolio, and that's supposed to impress the dean and his professors enough to let him back into class? I mean, I guess there's some merit there, but why on earth would you suggest that he write nothing but responses to your essays? Isn't there some issue of intellectual property involved? What are the professors supposed to make of his response to that time you said your pastor was a jerk because he wouldn't read your books? And again, are you so self-important that you think the only good writing this kid could create would be in response to something you wrote?

My son, Stone Washington, is 14 and will be entering high school this fall. Since he was about 8 I've had him read the great works of literature and book summaries of the classics and write his own summary analyses of those works in addition to reading them to me, correcting his sentence structure, and most importantly making him defend his thesis and arguments.

Three thoughts:

1- You seem like the most overbearing and obnoxious parent in the world.
2- There are "great works" besides your own master oeuvre? Lies, I tell you! I won't believe it!
3- You named your kid Stone? Why, was "Awesome" already taken? What about "Genius?" Then again, given how self-absorbed you are, I'm surprised you didn't name him after your blog.

Ellis says his son just finished writing 100 essays from an anthology of great books (see #1). He says his son needed to know that he needed to have an informed opinion before anyone would take his opinion seriously. True, of course, though again it begs the question of why Ellis only assigns random troubled youth and his college students his stuff to read.

Ellis concludes with a heart-warming anecdote about young Stone:

To demonstrate how knowledge is power and character is destiny, a few months ago when Stone was in the eighth grade he was chosen to be part of a special writing group. When the essays were written and collected, the teacher (Ms. Currier) by chance chose Stone's essay to read to the entire class and was stunned at his level of clarity, sentence structure and intellectual depth. She stated his writing was at the level of a 20-year-old, a college junior. 

Overnight Stone's reputation for writing and intellectualism spread across the school campus, including to the principal's office. I told Stone in addition to the bad letters in his file for being repeatedly tardy and bullying that little boy ("Jimmy") in the seventh grade, now you have a good paper in your permanent file to showcase your literary and philosophical side. Stone was visibly proud of this achievement, which made my fighting with him all that time in writing those 100 essays (772 days) worth every word, every sentence … every effort.

Ellis, I think I speak for everyone under 30 when I say, truly, you are the least cool person I know. I'm sure you consider it a compliment.

What to make of this?

I was filling out a registration form for an upcoming teacher's conference that is focused on social justice and ethnic diversity. Among the questions was, "Ethnic Group/Race". One of the options was, "White/European/Jewish."

Given the classic Jewish penchant for education, it's interesting that there have only been a few teachers in the family tree: my maternal grandfather worked as a bursar at Brooklyn College and occasionally gave lectures in New York history (he was working on his phD when he died of a heart attack); a great-great-uncle taught night school to immigrants until he died in the 1919 flu epidemic, and a distant cousin whose parents left Poland for Cuba put his bilingualism to good use and taught high school Spanish for 30 years.

I know that the liberal Jew going into the trenches of public education to work with minority kids has become a recurring educational trope from the past 100 years, but given that I didn't go to public school and, AFAIK, never had Jewish teachers, it's a little weird for me to run into little nuggets like this that show me that,

1- There really are a lot of Jews in education, and,
2- As much as we may want to claim a minority status, to everyone else, we're still just white.

Bait and Switch

I like to think I'm something of an iconoclast. At least compared to people's stereotypes about what a 20-something liberal Jew from San Francisco might be. For instance, when it comes to "youth culture," I've found that I'm far more prudish and old-fashioned than people might think. If and when Mrs. Yid and I have children, I have no doubt that I will be a supremely uncool Dad when it comes to what my kids are allowed to do, what media they can consume, and, should they be girls, what clothes they can wear (while I am anxious about the prospect of raising daughters, Mrs. Yid tells me that she doubts that our kids will be the junior-Orgy type).

I say this simply because I work with children, and while I'm glad that most of the kids I see regularly have their heads screwed on straight, it's clear to me that the world they inhabit and which is fed to them 24/7 is clearly not their friend, particularly when it comes to sex stuff.

The irony is that I doubt I'm the only liberal who is made uncomfortable by the idea of 10-year-olds dressing like streetwalkers. When it comes to common causes, I'm pretty sure, "Keep children from being slutty" is fairly bipartisan. You'd never know this by reading conservative op-eds, though. Take this column by a radio host (and Messianic Jewish pastor) named Michael Brown.

Brown bemoans an increasingly sexualized popular culture being marketed to young people, an analysis which I largely agree with.

How many children watch MTV and VH1, mimicking the moves and memorizing the lyrics of the latest song by Britney Spears or Lady Gaga, having no clue that the moves they are making and the words they are mouthing are sexually charged. These kids are too young to have any understanding of sexuality, and yet it is no secret to the TV execs that these same children are a major part of the viewing audience.

What's bizarre, however, is that Brown only talks about his supposed topic for a few paragraphs, before launching into a totally separate discussion about teaching LGBT history in school. For Brown, including gay history in social studies curriculum is apparently the same thing as Molly Cyrus pole-dancing on TV-- maybe worse.

I’m talking about teaching gay history to elementary school children, as now mandated by law in California with the recent passing of SB 48, thereby introducing sexual categories to little ones who haven’t the slightest clue what sexual orientation is, let alone have the ability to wrap their minds around “bisexual” or “transgender.”

Give kids and teachers some credit. Bisexual is really not that hard to explain, Michael. Yes, transgender is more complicated, but also something that small children are perfectly capable of understanding if presented in an age-appropriate context-- which, incidentally, is sort of the teacher's job in the first place. Put it this way: I don't think Kindergarteners are going to be studying the life of Herbert Garrison. Incidentally, the law doesn't give any specifics about age groups or subject matter content. All it says is that social studies will include studying the "role and contributions of... LGBT individuals" to California. Those bastards! How dare they want textbooks to talk about gay or trans folks being productive!

To add insult to injury, parents will have no right to opt their kids out of these classes, a hard lesson parents in other states have already learned, where the courts have sided with the schools rather than the parents. Already in Massachusetts, a couple was so upset with this state-sponsored sexualizing of their first grader that they took their battle to court, where Judge Mark Wolff of the US Court of Appeals ruled that the schools have a greater responsibility to teach “diversity” than to honor the requests of the parents. 

Dude, the whole point of public schools is that they have state-mandated curriculum. Personally I find the concept of having your kid opt-out of any part of the curriculum strange already. If your school is teaching something you have that big of a problem with, maybe a private school would be a good idea for everyone involved, including your child. Also, given that part of the point of SB 48 is to combat bullying and promote inclusion, I have to say, yeah, asking for your kid to be excused is kind of a jerk move. And that's coming from someone who is contractually obligated to sit through multiple anti-bullying assemblies a year.

What is unique in California is not that gay-themed lessons will be taught to little children.

Especially since that's not actually happening.

Rather, it is that these lessons will be mandated across the entire state for all schools and all classes, which, of course, will be reflected in the textbooks that will be used. And, as is well known, what happens in California doesn’t stay in California, meaning that the textbooks printed for our most populous state will be used throughout the nation.

Uh, yeah, the bill was about modifying existing curriculum. That's sort of a state-wide thing. That's how school curriculum works. Have you, by any chance, ever been to a school? You sound like you've just discovered some hidden conspiracy. Also, the second-largest textbook market is Texas, not without its share of conservative activists.

In the specific language of SB 48, the bill amended “the Education Code to include social sciences instruction on the contributions of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) people.” And note that previous bills relating to LGBT issues – including AB 537, AB 1785, AB 394, SB 777, SB 572 – were not enough. SB 48 had to go one step further.

Yo, putz! The fact that you managed to find five bills "relating to GLBT issues" has nothing to do with whether SB 48 was needed or not. You didn't, by any chance, bother to read those bills, did you? Two  had to do with updating California anti-discrimination codes for hiring practices, workplace discrimination, etc, and adding GLBT people as a protected category. One was about monitoring school compliance with a previously passed law. Another added Harvey Milk Day to the school calendar. Only one of them, AB 1785, had anything to do with school curriculum (and in fact, most of the bill focused on schools reporting and sharing data on hate-crime incidents). You're throwing any pretense toward intellectual honesty or analysis out the window, Michael. Are you seriously trying to play the "there are too many gay laws" card? Hey, last I checked there were a lot of laws on the books against violent crime, too. Does that mean we shouldn't pass any more laws against that? I mean, since that category is pretty much covered and all, right?

[SB 48] will demand that the categories of “gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender” be introduced to six year-olds.

First of all, the law does not specify age groups, so your false outrage about the poor little ones is based on imaginary information. Since the context is within California history, in fact, there's an excellent chance any detailed discussion of this stuff won't come up until at least Third or Fourth grade. Given that you live in North Carolina, I wouldn't expect you to know little details about when Californians study California history, but trust me, that's when we do it.

Second, as I said, there is a way to talk about these topics in an appropriate way. Incidentally, I've noticed that conservative writers who complain about teaching "adult" ideas too early to kids are often using the "too young" argument as an excuse; very often the reality is that for them it's never appropriate to teach these things. Sex ed and evolution are good examples of this.

I have watched videos of classes taught in different parts of the countries where elementary school children are shown pictures of artists or musicians or politicians or other famous figures and are told, “He (or she) was gay,” as if they had the slightest real concept of what “gay” actually meant.

This would be an example of either bad teachers or bad curriculum. I had bad math teachers when I was a kid. Using this logic, we should abolish math class. Incidentally, when conservatives fight tooth-and-nail against any proposal to have GLBT curriculum in the classroom, guess what the result is? More politicized schools, more politicized curriculum, and less thought and effort put into actually making good lessons or teaching them well. People like Michael Brown are at least partly responsible for the very superficial and ideological teaching he complains about.

And, incidentally, Michael? As someone who sat through crappy lessons like that and indeed, made zero connections at the time, let me assure you, bad GLBT history lessons are really not a threat to anyone's kid.

(As I recall, in the early years of elementary school, boys like boys and girls like girls. Does that make all of them “gay”?)

I'm going to give you a droplet of credit here and say this is you failing to be funny, as anyone actually this stupid shouldn't be allowed to write their name, let alone a syndicated column. (And they also let you on the radio? Man, talk about lowering standards.)

Don't Quit Your Day Job, Dennis-- Whatever that is

As a teacher, there are some things that scare me more than the average person. School shootings, various super-contagious child-borne illnesses, and idiotic meddling from well-meaning boneheads who don't understand how education works come to mind.

But none of these are quite as painful or terrifying as the idea that Dennis Prager could, in an alternate universe, be my principal.

As we know, Dennis is a fan of both thought experiments and imaginary worlds where he actually has power and influence. Typically his "What-If" scenarios have at least some modicum of introduction. Not this time. This time, he just goes for it:

If every school principal gave this speech at the beginning of the next school year, America would be a better place.

What an opening. I give you an F for effort.

To the students and faculty of our high school:

I am your new principal, and honored to be so. There is no greater calling than to teach young people.

So... why do you bitch about things and shill for Goldline for a living?

I would like to apprise you of some important changes coming to our school. I am making these changes because I am convinced that most of the ideas that have dominated public education in America have worked against you, against your teachers and against our country.

First, this school will no longer honor race or ethnicity. I could not care less if your racial makeup is black, brown, red, yellow or white. I could not care less if your origins are African, Latin American, Asian or European, or if your ancestors arrived here on the Mayflower or on slave ships.

Ok, first of all, I'm not sure you're using "honor" the way most people think about it. It's not like race or ethnicity are airline miles you can cancel out or something. Second, I've encountered this argument a lot from conservatives-- the idea that since they personally "don't care" about people's background, that somehow this annuls any issues of society as a whole privileging or discriminating against groups of people. Because that's totally how things work.

The only identity I care about, the only one this school will recognize, is your individual identity -- your character, your scholarship, your humanity. And the only national identity this school will care about is American. This is an American public school, and American public schools were created to make better Americans.

Hang on, can't we all agree, as a general baseline, that the purpose of schools is to educate people? I mean, you can bring the "make better X" argument in, too, but then aren't you justifying the same kind of ideologically-driven education you rant against when it's done on the left? And who decides what's "better?" Now we're just back to subjective definitions again.

If you wish to affirm an ethnic, racial or religious identity through school, you will have to go elsewhere.

How are we defining "affirmations?" What about clothes or speech? What if a student wears a yarmulke to school? Or if some Latino kids call each other "esse?" How could you possibly enforce this, O Clueless Leader?

We will end all ethnicity-, race- and non-American nationality-based celebrations. They undermine the motto of America, one of its three central values -- e pluribus unum, "from many, one." 

So... we can celebrate people coming together to be "one" (however that's defined), but we can't acknowledge or recognize the origins of the different groups that have created the "one" in the first place? You might want to re-seat those two sentences away from each other before they start fighting. Incidentally, what standard are we using to decide when a "non-American-nationality-based celebration" becomes American? Because I'm pretty sure Ron Karenga came up with Kwanzaa in Los Angeles. Just saying.

This includes all after-school clubs. I will not authorize clubs that divide students based on any identities. This includes race, language, religion, sexual orientation or whatever else may become in vogue in a society divided by political correctness.

Wait, isn't the whole point of clubs to encourage group identities, which would necessarily be separate from non-club members? How is this any different from the football team dividing students who play football from those who don't?

Your clubs will be based on interests and passions, not blood, ethnic, racial or other physically defined ties. Those clubs just cultivate narcissism -- an unhealthy preoccupation with the self -- while the purpose of education is to get you to think beyond yourself. 

So, again, the football team is exempt from this definition... why? Also, I didn't realize that you, Dennis Prager, had defined "the purpose of education" while I was out. Good to know.

So we will have clubs that transport you to the wonders and glories of art, music, astronomy, languages you do not already speak, carpentry and more.

Wait, you just said we couldn't have clubs based around languages! Are you even paying attention to your own speech? (Also, carpentry club? Really?)

 If the only extracurricular activities you can imagine being interesting in are those based on ethnic, racial or sexual identity, that means that little outside of yourself really interests you.

This coming from a guy whose job is talking to himself and coming up with bizarre pronouncements and moral codes that everyone should listen to. Such as, for instance, this "speech."

Second, I am uninterested in whether English is your native language. My only interest in terms of language is that you leave this school speaking and writing English as fluently as possible... We will learn other languages here -- it is deplorable that most Americans only speak English -- but if you want classes taught in your native language rather than in English, this is not your school.

So I guess we're just not going to talk about statistics that show that bilingual students who get high-level instruction in both languages do significantly better than students who drop one? Or the fact that not being able to communicate with your family in your home language can lead to alienation, emotional and social problems, and even contribute to dropping out of school? Nope? Well, I guess you were right, looks like schools aren't about educating. Moving on then...

Third, because I regard learning as a sacred endeavor, everything in this school will reflect learning's elevated status. This means, among other things, that you and your teachers will dress accordingly. Many people in our society dress more formally for Hollywood events than for church or school. These people have their priorities backward. Therefore, there will be a formal dress code at this school.

So... the best way to show how much "we" care about learning isn't in making sure we all have the resources and supplies we need, funding clubs and activities, or even trying to motivate students by, say, offering scholarships or class rewards for excellent performance, attendance, etc... Instead, it's to punish, stifle, or otherwise harass students (and faculty!) through a dress code. Wow, I can't believe no one's asked you to be their principal yet.

Fourth, no obscene language will be tolerated anywhere on this school's property -- whether in class, in the hallways or at athletic events... It is my intent that by the time you leave this school, you will be among the few your age to instinctively distinguish between the elevated and the degraded, the holy and the obscene.

Decent intent, but again, the implementation is key. Also, "holy and the obscene" is mighty lofty talk for a SECULAR public school.

Fifth, we will end all self-esteem programs. In this school, self-esteem will be attained in only one way -- the way people attained it until decided otherwise a generation ago -- by earning it. One immediate consequence is that there will be one valedictorian, not eight.

Sigh. Dennis, let's agree to disagree. Self-esteem, like most things, is best in moderation. The ideal is to have students be self-confident without being narcissistic and to find that sweet spot between resiliency and total disconnected douchy-ness. How about this: I'll concede that there should be just one valedictorian, and you'll concede that, as part of the goal to "make better Americans," school should try to encourage, support, and, dare I say it, INTEREST students, as opposed to being like, I don't know, a prison?

Sixth, and last, I am reorienting the school toward academics and away from politics and propaganda. No more time will devoted to scaring you about smoking and caffeine, or terrifying you about sexual harassment or global warming. No more semesters will be devoted to condom wearing and teaching you to regard sexual relations as only or primarily a health issue.

I don't understand, these are things their parents already spend all day being scared crapless over by the 24-hour news media (which includes you). Are you saying kids should be immune from the scare-cycle, or just that the information should be presented in a less partisan manner? I like the thought of trying to reduce partisanship in school, but you're sort of all over the place here. Global warming should be taught within the confines of a science class, if appropriate. Smoking and sex ed should certainly be discussed if you have a health class. Sexual harassment isn't "terrifying," it's an important issue that kids, particularly young women, need to be aware of, and know how to properly respond to. If you think people are teaching something wrong, that's one thing. But saying kids shouldn't learn about a topic because it's "political" is a lazy cop-out. Should we cancel all history and government classes while we're at it? There's plenty of potential for bias there!

There will be no more attempts to convince you that you are a victim because you are not white, or not male, or not heterosexual or not Christian. We will have failed if any one of you graduates this school and does not consider him or herself inordinately lucky -- to be alive and to be an American.

I'm guessing this will be a special elective class, taught by the eminent Dr. Prager? Let's see, it will probably be called  "Get Down On The Ground, Kiss That Sweet American Soil, And Thank God You Weren't Born in Sweden 101". Or something.

Now, please stand and join me in the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag of our country. As many of you do not know the words, your teachers will hand them out to you.

Hey Dr. Dumbass, these are kids in PUBLIC schools. They say the pledge every day. You actually meant to imply that they don't believe in it or understand it. This joke, like your whole essay, gets one big F. I'd give you a do-over, but I don't want to read it again.

The Language of Hyperbole

I went to a bilingual school. I work in a bilingual school. I know, from first-hand experience, that there are pluses and minuses to both bilingual and monolingual education. That's ok. But I can't help getting a little irked when I hear people that clearly know next-to-nothing about bilingualism start blaming it for the breakdown of American society. I know, I'm just weird that way.

Enter Barry Farber, another WND Court Jew and, apparently, Pat Buchannan impersonator. Barry wants to let you know that English is important. But not just important-- really, really important:

...The English language is the only glue holding America together.

Really? You don't think things like a shared economy, values, government, help even a little? Wow, that's a pretty dim view of American unity coming from a supposed patriot.

Strong? Startling? Yes, and also true. People in Alaska care about people in Florida. If there were a terrible hurricane in Key West, that would lead the news in Alaska. Now put that American map on top of Europe. If there were a terrible earthquake in Turkey, the people in Norway, being quite decent people, wouldn't say, "Don't bother me with that!" But there wouldn't be that same sense of "our people." You've got six major languages and 18 minor ones separating Norway from Turkey.

Ah yes. This must be why not a day goes by that good folks in Alabama and Hawaii don't take a minute to check in on our language-neighbors in Belize, Liberia and Micronesia.

Among America's major blessings is one unifying language – a blessing compounded by the happy fact that our particular language is also the universally acknowledged "international" language.

Um, no. It is not THE international language, it is is ONE of several. And right now, yes, it happens to be the most widely-spoken. However given that the economy of the US is stagnant while China, India, and even Russia seem to be on the rise, it seems foolish to discourage people from learning to speak some of those languages on the grounds that English will let you chat with folks in Fiji and Barbados. 100 years ago one of the most widely spoken international languages, particularly in Europe, was French. Now, not so much. Times change.

Those who would destroy America could do no better service to their goal than balkanizing America into a patchwork quilt of different languages.

Oh please. People balkanize themselves according to any criteria and using just about any excuse you give them. You might as well advocate banning baseball teams so Yankees and Red Sox fans will finally stop jabbering at each other.

They've succeeded in convincing too many Americans that you're somehow a hater, at least a little, with all that bluster about English.

It depends how you talk about it. If you rant about bilingualism being the downfall of American civilization, then, yeah, there seems to be a little hate there.

They cheer their success at leading well-meaning Americans to suppose that if so-called "English Only" legislation is passed, women on assembly lines will be dragged away in handcuffs if they're overheard speaking Spanish with one another. Try explaining to the hard-left that the law intends no such thing, that we're talking strictly about conducting public affairs in one consensus language only. Maria can continue to talk to Linda in Spanish, Hans to Fritz in German, Darko to Srechko in Serbian.

Barry, the issue isn't whether people are going to be sent to re-education camps, it's about the scope of such laws as well as the intent behind them. Whether Barry wants to admit it or not, there is a definite nativist streak in American politics these days, and it is coming out on such issues as immigration, "Culture War," and English. Some of the people who are carrying on about how English should be the only language are plainly anti-immigrant, and the language fight is part of that battle to forcibly Americanize people into an imaginary America of the 1950s.

Alabama, by the way, is lucky. They have driver's license exams in only 12 languages. I've heard that in Los Angeles you can choose from among 42 different languages! We've already had major traffic accidents because licensed drivers in America don't know what "Merge" means.

First, I don't believe you. Just because. But even if this were true, it demonstrates that we need stricter driving tests, not that there shouldn't be bilingual education or that America should be an official mono-lingual culture.

The so-called "bilingual education" programs have been pretty much revealed as employment scams for teachers who don't speak English too well; programs that wind up making the kids illiterate in two languages.

Spoken like a true ignorant moron. First of all, there are many different kinds of bilingual programs. While many public schools do have their classes taught by bilingual teachers, at my school, kids are taught by one teacher in one language, then by another in the other. Second, as I have discovered over the past few years, it is actually not very easy to become a teacher. In California, home of myself and the Tower of Babel you just referred to, it happens to be extremely hard. The only states that put more roadblocks in your way are four East Coast states that require you to get master's degrees. Now, in addition to all of that, you also have to have a separate certification, a BCLAD, in order to be allowed to be a bilingual teacher. This is also not easy to get. So believe me when I say this: Barry, you are talking out of your rear.

Second, assuming that there are probably some unqualified teachers in bilingual positions: again, this demonstrates that we need better teachers, better schools and better programs, NOT that bilingual education shouldn't exist. Does the fact that there are bad math teachers suggest that we should stop teaching math?

Also, the children of all immigrants are growing up speaking native, un-accented American English.

What I think Barry means is that if you just put immigrant children (or the children of immigrants) in English-only schools, they wind up speaking perfect English. Which, by the way, isn't true. It may happen, depending on circumstances and motivation. But probably not the norm. (Why would you even bother throwing out a ridiculous statement like "all?")

But what's actually more important in the context of this point is that there are years of long-term studies showing that students who come to school speaking one language who are allowed to keep learning that language IN ADDITION to English do better in school-- because not only can they continue communicating with their family members, stay connected with their home culture, etc... (which, among other things, helps them do better in school because their family is still involved in their education), they also THINK in that language! If you don't let Spanish-speaking kids learn in Spanish or Chinese-speaking kids learn in Chinese you are making them start all over again.

Another important argument for bilingual education is the fact that content transfers between languages. I spent three years of middle school learning geometry and trig in a language other than English. I had never had any English instruction in geometry until high school. However, as soon as I entered the classroom, I immediately understood what was going on. All I needed was vocabulary. Verbal reasoning, critical thinking, math, even reading and writing skills... all these things are helped, not hindered, by a bilingual environment... when the education is actually bilingual. (As opposed to kids speaking one language at home and another at school, which really just means that they are mono-lingual in two different contexts. Unless their parents are teaching them math or literature or science in their home languages at the same level they use at school, it's not actually bilingual education.) This is a point made in the very excellent documentary Speaking In Tongues, which I encourage everyone to see.

Those who say, "Let a hundred languages bloom!" think they're ablaze with brotherhood. They're ablaze with nothing of the kind. A country with one unifying language that lets itself slip away to two or more is ablaze with nothing but poor housekeeping.

Really? Wow, I bet such pretty well-functioning countries as Canada, Bolivia, the Phillipines, Israel and India (among others) would love to learn they've been doing it wrong. Incidentally, I wonder if Barry knows that Hawaii, Samoa, Guam and Puerto Rico are officially bilingual. That must be why they're constantly on the verge of collapse.

By the way, among the almost 30 states where English is the ONLY official language? California and Alabama. Way to do that research, Barry.

Shakespeare may have turned the English language into cultural glory. Churchill turned that language into adrenalin arousing freedom's beleaguered and embattled forces to a civilization-saving victory. It may not seem as impressive. But English is now serving an even more important role. As glue.

Sure, Barry. Do us a favor and go eat some, ok?

Ignorant Irony: The very best kind

Since I've begun my teaching credential program, I've had several professors recommend James Loewen's Lies My Teacher Told Me. After flipping through one of his other books a few months ago and liking his style (Buchanan was gay? Neat.), decided to follow up. Luckily, there are oodles of used bookstores around me so procuring a copy of LMTTM was not too hard (or expensive).

It's been quite a read, with interesting tidbits and much good food for thought in terms of how to present history in a way that's interesting, relevant, and honest. Particularly useful have been Loewen's points regarding POV in textbooks-- and how by whitewashing and simplifying history into "white folks good, others bad," everybody loses, particularly since then white students not only can't relate to European-American personalities, they also find them boring as hell.

This is only relevant because, as it turned out, Tucker Carlson has made a really, really bad education documentary (contains link to Youtube version) that Fox was constantly broadcasting (and promoting) a few weeks ago. Carlson couldn't really decide what he wanted his whiny movie to be about: PC censorship, gay agenda, kowtowing to Muslims, or the textbook industry being generally sucky, but the second segment really stuck with me just for its sheer dishonesty.

The lead-in was a rant about Columbus. Since I had just finished reading Loewen's chapter about Columbus, I was intrigued. First, one woman complains that her kid was "brainwashed" into being so anti-Columbus that his whole class decided that Columbus did not deserve a holiday. She and Tucker complain bitterly about how one-sided the text the class used was. The text? Bartolome de Las Casas, a near-contemporary of Columbus, a Spanish settler of America, who happened to become an anti-slavery activist horrified by his countrymen's atrocities. Granted, one can hardly call Las Casas unbiased, but it's not like he was making his stuff up. His activism is documented, and corroborated by Columbus' own accounts of what he was doing in the Caribbean.

Most people probably don't know about Las Casas. I hadn't until last week, when I read LMTTM's second chapter, which happens to be about Columbus. Loewen calls Las Casas "the first great historian of the Americas, who relied on primary materials and helped preserve them." He praises Las Casas' work as giving Americans a valuable insight to Columbus' real, not mythical, actions, and bemoans that many textbooks refuse to include it. In Loewen's words,

When [history textbooks] leave out Las Casas, they omit an interesting idealist with whom we all might identify. When they glorify Columbus, our textbooks prod us toward identying with the oppressor.

Elsewhere Loewen capably points out that the historical record clearly shows Columbus to be a violent conqueror, a ruthless exploiter or resources, a racist, and a brutal slaver. This does not preclude him from being brave or successful, by the way, but, at best, one can say that Columbus is a problematic person to try to glorify to schoolkids (and were it not for his popular place in American consciousness, we probably wouldn't bother-- no teachers waste their time trying to claim that Louis XVI or Tamerlane were the best people ever, for instance).

These details about Columbus are not propaganda, but actual facts, and relevant ones, to boot. They are particularly relevant because Columbus became a model for later Europeans in their interactions with Natives elsewhere in the Americas, for instance, John Smith in Jamestown.

I thought about all this while watching Tucker Carlson pooh-pooh Las Casas and the anti-Columbus children, who had clearly been brainwashed by reading actual history by an actual contemporary. And I thought, "I wonder what James Loewen would have to say about this?"

Just like that, the next cut, shows a distinguished looking, older white gentleman. I squint. I check the name underneath the talking head. "James Loewen, author, Lies My Teacher Told Me."

Hey! What a coincidence! I was excited. This would be good.

But... it was not to be. Loewen was talking about problems with the textbook industry, in particular, state-wide-adoption of curriculum. There was no question about Columbus, no reference to his book, no context connecting it to the previous "example." Nothing. Your average observer of the piece would have assumed that Loewen's book had been about liberal misinformation, when in fact his classic book, now almost 15 years old, focused on how "classic" American myths, still found in textbooks in 1995, were based on distortions and feel-good pabulum, designed to reinforce class, gender and racial status-quos.

If Carlson had been interested in an actual discussion, it would have been perfect. But he wasn't. I wonder if Loewen has seen the documentary? Does he know the sad irony of the final editing?

Carlson couldn't even be bothered to pick an angle and run with it, so the end effect of his "documentary" is a disjointed and confusing mess: the viewer knows textbooks are bad, but doesn't know why, or how they can be improved. Even more depressing, the bald-faced lie-by-omission in including Loewen but not his book lets one of Carlson's most basic claims go unchallenged: that the problem with textbooks is that they are too PC or left-wing, the implication being that before the world "became PC," history textbooks were "just fine." Loewen spent an entire book exposing this as pure nonsense. It's particularly ironic because the example Carlson used is one where he and his "expert" angry grandmother do not offer any facts to justify their indignation at kids having problems with Columbus; rather, they are outraged by the mere suggestion that he might not have been a saint and automatically accuse the teacher or the text of "bias."

Maybe this is all part of Tucker's big point: who needs a textbook when you don't bother to read in the first place?

Kids are Funny

I've spent several weeks working and volunteering in local schools, many of which have hefty Chinese populations. In the course of doing this, I have had the privilege of interacting with quite a few very cute kids, as well as some who, truth be told, I would like nothing better to do than give a good whack to. (Perhaps teaching really is in my future...)

Anyway, here is a short list of some of the best quotes I've assembled over the past month. Names have been changed, ages have not:

1- "Are you 50?" Cindy, 4th grade.

My response: "No, I'm in my 20s."

Her: (Staring at my beard.) "Really? My parents are older than that!"

Me: *Shrug*

2- "Why don't you shave?" Cindy and Brooke, 4th grade.

Me: "I wouldn't have time to do anything else."

Them: "Hmm." (Petting my hairy knuckles.) "It's so soft!"

Me: "No touching, please."

3- "My Dad has a big nose. It is big like... a Jew's nose!" Thomas, 5th grade, after being instructed to use a metaphor in his written description of someone's face. [This one just sort of confused me. Thomas lives in the middle of a Chinese neighborhood and I highly doubt he even really knows what a Jew is. I didn't want to get mad, so I just asked him some questions.]

Me: "Thomas, can you explain this to me? What does that mean?"

Thomas: "Um... that it's big?"

Me: "So, Jews' noses are big?"

Thomas: "Yeah."

Me: (Staring at him.) "Is my nose that big?"

Thomas' eyes get a little bigger. "UM..."

Me: "Why don't you rethink this sentence. Maybe say, 'big like Pinocchio's nose', ok?"

When he left the class, I waved goodbye and then made a Pinocchio imitation with my finger and nose. In retrospect, that might have been inappropriate.

4- And lastly, a few days ago I gave a short (30 minute) presentation on "someone I admire" (as a model for a report the 4th graders will be writing next month). I chose to talk about one of my immigrant ancestors who came over from Poland after his father got married at 40 and died at 60, leaving a gaggle of orphans in his wake.

Afterwards, one little Chinese boy, Dallas (his real name was another well-known Texas city, and just as incongruous), had some questions:

A: "Do you speak Jewish?" (This led to a series of explanations about Hebrew and Yiddish. Turns out they just wanted to know some funny words. I had to struggle to think of some Yiddish that was rated G and finally came up with shpilkes and zeitsflesch (which apparently I both pronounced and spelled incorrectly).

B: "So, in your homeland, people have to get married early and die early?"

Me: "Well, you didn't have to get married early or die early, that was just what tended to happen."

Dallas: "Your homeland is weird."

Me: "Actually, this is my homeland."

Him: "Me too!"

Frustration and remenisces

Lately I've been very frustrated by a project I've been working on. It's been taking me forever and I've been getting more and more anxious and depressed as its dragged on and on. It's not that I'm not used to working hard; it's that to work so hard and get such minimal results is so demoralizing. It makes me feel downright stupid, which I haven't felt in a long while. It doesn't feel particularly good.

When I was in the eighth grade, we read The Chosen for English class. I loved the book and couldn't put it down; I finished it in two days. I was electrified, and not just because I was into Jews, beards and Brooklyn. I also related to the feeling of cloisteredness and confinement that the Hasidic boy was straining against.

I didn't go to a yeshiva, but the isolation I felt from my school was very similar. I attended a small private school that ran from Kindergarten through High School. The school's big draw was its bilingualism, immersing American kids in a European language that was next to useless for everyday purposes. I'll call it the Swedish School. I had been sent there straight from preschool, and stayed for nine years.

I had been precocious as a child, and had been identified as "gifted" at three. I taught myself to read and liked to learn. If I had been at another school, things might have been different...

My parents were called into school one day, summoned by my Kindergarten teacher. She was angry and confused. "I caught him doing this as we were making our letters!" she shrieked. She pretended to hold a pen in her right hand and cupped it with her left. I had apparently been pushing my writing hand along, as someone might have used a two-handed broadsword to slay a particularly nasty dragon. When she had confronted me and asked me what I was doing, I had apparently nonchalantly replied, "This is how I write."

But that wouldn't do. I had to make my letters in "nice, pretty" cursive, just like everyone else. It made no difference that my letters always came out shaky, or that I could never remember which capital letters were which- I confused Ts and Ss endlessly, and from third grade onward, defiantly wrote my capitals in print, accepting the check marks I would receive as punishment. I was a doomed perfectionist, and would spend hours at the kitchen table, tearfully trying to make my assignments look the way they were supposed to, already knowing what my teachers would say, seeing the mistakes I was making but unable to do anything about them.

No one knew what learning disabilities were. We thought "dislexia" was some horrible disease, since no one who ever found out they had it stayed at the school very long afterward. It wasn't just that the teachers (American and Swedish) didn't know how to deal with "different" kids. Many of them also didn't care, and some were even deliberately cruel. My handwriting never improved, and the faster I had to write notes, the worse it became. I could either write legibly, or quickly. Never both. I had teachers hand me back assignments in class, dropping them to the floor and declaring, "I can't read that chicken scratch. Do it over." I had a math teacher who regularly announced that the class "should be ashamed" for its low test scores. She once commented after handing back a quiz that she was amazed I could tie my shoes.

I became used to feeling bad about myself for long hours every day. Eventually I became numb to it, lost in a cloud of miserableness. Having almost every subject taught in both Swedish and English didn't help (I didn't learn a lick of U.S. history until eighth grade, though I knew a fair amount about European geography and the incestuous family trees of half-a-dozen royal lineages).

It wasn't all bad. There were a few teachers who really understood me, and they meant the world to me. They kept me going for the last three years, they reminded me that there were still things I was good at. Eventually I got a "learning disability" coach, who became another liferaft- she fought for me against the teachers and administration. When it got really bad, she would sit down with me. "I can't believe they keep sending you here," she'd whisper. "You'd be an honor student anywhere else."

I thought she was crazy. I had never gotten above a B-minus in math (in any language), and had been getting straight Ds for a year. English and history were fine, and Swedish and Swedish history were decent (I had stopped being graded exclusively on penmanship). And then there was Chinese. The school demanded that you choose a third language in the sixth grade (not counting Latin, which was mandatory for one semester, taught in Swedish). For reasons still unclear to me, I chose Chinese- which, given my horrible aptitude for short-term memory, auditory processing, and handwriting, was a recipie for disaster. I forgot how to write my name on the final- but the teacher had known I was trying, so I got a B.

Eighth grade was the year I broke away. It started with me telling my parents I wanted to quit Chinese. I was seeing a tutor multiple times a week and my grades in every other class were suffering. They knew I was trying, I just wasn't suceeding.

My mother met with the principal:

"Friar wants to drop Chinese."
"He can't!"
"Why not?"
"Then the other children will want to quit their third languages too, just because they're failing them!"

It was like a bad joke. My mother continued.

"So what should he do?"
"Well, I have a suggestion. He should stick with it for one more year, and then, who knows? He might not even decide to come here for High School?"

My mother stood up and walked out. The next day I quit the class and applied to high schools. At that time the Swedish school automatically accepted graduates from the Middle School to the High School. Out of 40 children, only 15 applied out. To do so was viewed as a betrayal. I was chastized in class by teachers who demanded to know why I had missed tests.

"I was interviewing at another school."

I was scared shitless. I had spent most of my life in that place, and had no idea what I would find outside it. All my friends were there, almost everyone I knew was connected with it. But I also knew I would be miserable if I had stayed. So I left, and never regretted it. It turns out I did become an honor student after all.

But I've never forgotten the humiliation of feeling stupid, the fear that people would figure out I didn't know something. It followed me in college, it followed me to the workplace, and to personal interactions as well. I've become better at recognizing when I'm having trouble and asking people to repeat things or explain something differently, but every once in a while, like an old injury, it flares up.

This is why I'm becoming a teacher, and, among other things, why The Chosen is one of my favorite books. I knew what it was like to feel lost, trapped by the same community that gave you comfort, holding on to the only thing you knew and terrfied of leaving it. I knew Danny Saunders. I was him.