Barry Manilow is coming to the Houston Compaq Center on November 4th for his “One Night One Last Time Concert” sponsored by American Airlines. At the risk of losing my entire readership, I must admit that when I heard about this concert on the radio today, I thought that it sounded like fun. I haven’t thought about Barry Manilow in years, but “Copacabana” and “I Write the Songs” and “Can’t Smile Without You” and “Mandy,” well, again, it just sounds like fun. I probably won’t go, however. I’m sure I’d swallow my eyeteeth if I knew how much the tickets cost.

Jacques Ellul is the most compelling analyst of this awful phenomenon, in his canonical essay Propaganda. He fingers schooling as an unparalleled propaganda instrument; if a schoolbook prints it and a teacher affirms it, who is so bold as to demur?

If a teacher says it is so, it must be so. If it is actually in print, it must be true. If the print or media journalists say so, it must be true. If I read it on the internet, it must be true. Actually, it’s a matter of convenience. I can’t possibly verify personally every bit of information that comes into my possession. However, I must consider carefully my sources. And I must consider the fact that my children are depending on me to provide them with truth and the ability to discern truth from falsehood. What a responsibility!

The Prussian mind, which carried the day, held a clear idea of what centralized schooling should deliver: 1) Obedient soldiers to the army;

2) Obedient workers for mines, factories, and farms;

3) Well-subordinated civil servants, trained in their function;

4) Well-subordinated clerks for industry;

5) Citizens who thought alike on most issues;

6) National uniformity in thought, word, and deed.

It is Gatto’s thesis in this chapter that these are the ultimate goals of government schooling. Could this be any American parent’s dream for his or her child? I think not.

I do like some twentieth century authors–just not the ones they assign in school. Leon Uris was born on this date in 1924. I read Exodus a long time ago as a teenager, and I’ve revisited it more than once. I probably get my attitude about Israel and the Palestinian problem more from this book than from Biblical prophecy. Uris paints a detailed, pro-Israeli panaorama of the beginnings of modern Israel. Then, there are the other two “Jewish books” by Uris that I’ve read–Mila 18, about the Warsaw ghetto during World War II, and QB VII, another memorable novel about the Holocaust. Researching Uris on the internet, I see that he’s written several books that I haven’t read. I’ll have to add some of them to the legendary “books to read list.” Also, I’ve never seen the movie Exodus which stars Paul Newman as Ari Ben Canaan and Eva Marie Saint as Kitty Fremont. Uris publicly declared that the director (Otto Preminger) had ruined his book. Leon Uris died in June, 2003.
P.D. James also celebrates a birthday today. She was born in 1920 and created a British peer in 1991. Her title is “Baroness James of Holland Park.” James is a writer of detective novels, and her detective/protagonist Adam Dalgliesh is an intriguing character. He’s a Scotland Yard detective and also a poet. The moral component of James’ novels is central to their interest and literary quality. All James’ characters must deal with sin and its effects, and in reading about them I am forced to confront the results of sin and evil in my own life. Sounds rather unpleasant, but instead it’s thought-provoking and satisfying.

From chapter 4 of Underground History of American Education:

Bringing children up properly is a helix sport forcing you to realize that no boy or girl on earth is just like another. If you do understand this you also understand there can exist no reliable map to tell you all you need to do. Process kids like sardines and don’t be surprised when they come out oily and dead. In the words of the Albany Free School, if you aren’t making it up as you go along, you aren’t doing it right.

How true. As the parent of eight very different children, I often wish there were a plan, a set of rules, some kind of guidebook. It’s scary to realize that I’m making it up as I go along. However, I really believe that’s what we have to do. Yes, the Bible has principles and examples to help us figure it out. But when Karate Kid tells me he wants to be a spy when he grows up, and spies have to trick people to do their job, I’m the one who has to decide to (a)laugh, (b)affirm his ambition, or (c) encourage him to become a doctor instead. When Computer Guru Son wants to spend all day every day playing video games, the Bible doesn’t tell me specifically what to do. I have to pray and then decide, making it up as I go along with the guidance of the Holy Spirit. However, I did realize something this morning: I am not responsible for how these children “turn out.” God is at work, and they make choices. They are responsible before Him. All I have do is trust and obey the Lord to the best of my ability.

John Taylor Gatto’s book The Underground History of American Education is available for reading in its entirety online! I’ve been wanting to read this book ever since I saw it recommended by Mary Pride several years ago.  From the Prologue which I just read:

The cost in New York State for building a well-schooled child in the year 2000 is $200,000 per body when lost interest is calculated. That capital sum invested in the child’s name over the past twelve years would have delivered a million dollars to each kid as a nest egg to compensate for having no school. The original $200,000 is more than the average home in New York costs. You wouldn’t build a home without some idea what it would look like when finished, but you are compelled to let a corps of perfect strangers tinker with your child’s mind and personality without the foggiest idea what they want to do with it.

I wish I coud have one fourth of the amount that the state would spend to educate each of my children in public school. I could invest it and give each child a start in his chosen career that would be the envy of anyone else watching.

Three important births took place on this date in history: Hopkins in 1844, Beatrix Potter in 1866, and me in 19??. (A woman shouldn’t have to reveal her age on her own blog.)

At the Wedding March
By Gerard Manley Hopkins
GOD with honour hang your head,
Groom, and grace you, bride, your bed
With lissome scions, sweet scions,
Out of hallowed bodies bred.

Each be other’s comfort kind:
Deep, deeper than divined,
Divine charity, dear charity,
Fast you ever, fast bind.

Then let the March tread our ears:
I to him turn with tears
Who to wedlock, his wonder wedlock,
Deals triumph and immortal years.

Joseph Hilaire Pierre Rene Belloc was born July 24, 1870. (I love these long names I sometimes find for familiar authors. Why do most people nowadays only have three, or even just two, names?) Interestingly enough in light of my previous post and its comments, Belloc was a devout Catholic and for a while, a Fabian, friend to both G.B. Shaw and G.K. Chesterton. As the three men debated Fabianism and socialism and Distributism in the press, GBS wrote a famous essay in which he called his two friends “the Chesterbelloc,” implying that Belloc did the thinking for the pair and led Chesterton astray. Later in their lives, Belloc and Shaw had little to do with each other, but Shaw and Chesterton remained “friendly enemies” all their lives.
Belloc funquote:
When I am dead, I hope it is said, ‘His sins were scarlet, but his books were read’.

Belloc on education:
As between the Family and the State, Catholic doctrine is fixed. The family is the unit. The parent is the natural authority (auctoritas auctoris). The State is secondary to the family, and especially in the matter of forming a child’s character by education. Now here the State of today flatly contradicts Catholic doctrine. It says to the parent, “What you will for your child must yield to what I will. If our wills are coincident, well and good. If not, yours must suffer. I am master.” At least, so the State speaks to the poorer parent; to the richer it is more polite.

July 23:
Coventry Kersey Dighton Patmore (b. 1823, d.1896) was a Catholic poet and essayist associated with the Pre-Raphaelites. He wrote The Angel in the House, a poem about the significance of love in marriage. He looks a little bit like Mark Twain to me, and he definitely has a great name. He was also homeschooled, a librarian at the British Musuem, and father to seven children. I smell a kindred spirit; I tend to like Victorians anyway.
Raymond Chandler (b.1888, d.1959) was the author of The Big Sleep and The Long Good-bye and other “hard-boiled” detective novels and stories. Here’s a sample quote: “From thirty feet away she looked like a lot of class. From ten feet away she looked like something made up to be seen from thirty feet away.”–The High Window (Chapter 5) Now that’s hard-boiled!
Elspeth Huxley (b. 1907, d. 1997) began writing at the age of fourteen and authored some thirty book, but her most famous book was Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood. It sounds interesting, about her childhood in Kenya. Has anyone read it, and can you comment on it?

July 24:
Robert Graves (b.1895, d. 1985) considered himself first and foremost to be a poet, but he became famous and supported himself by writing novels, the most notable being I, Claudius. I read this historical novel a long time ago, and I’m left with an impression of Emperor Claudius as a doddering old man with a streak of Machiavellian genius. I haven’t seen the BBC series based on the book. Shoudl I? Graves, according to the biographies I read on the web, had his own eccentric theology, something he ccalled the worship of the White Goddess, inspired by studies of matriarchal societies and goddess cults. And that just goes to show that none of this pagan stuff is new (or ever dies completely), just recycled endlessly.

July 26:
Aldous Huxley (b.1894, d. 1963) was the author of Brave New World, a science fiction classic in which Huxley envisioned a world where babies were cloned in baby factories and the populace was kept calm and happy with a drug called soma. I read this one in high school, and I remember it being rather scary. Nowadays it’s coming true–and it’s still scary.
George Bernard Shaw (b.1856, d.1950) was, of course, the famous playwright and socialist. Epigrams galore:

England and America are two countries separated by a common language.

Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

All professions are conspiracies against the laity.
I think GBS made it his hobby to be quotable. I also think homeschoolers can at least appreciate the last quotation in my list. Down with the NEA!