Homeschooling

What the heck is Twitter, and why are you using it?

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A friend (and colleague from the world of homeschooling) sent me a message (on facebook, of course!) this morning:

Rob, I should have guessed you’d be lead geek in any party… how do you use Twitter?

My answer turned into an essay:

First a joke: “Twitter is the internet service for people who wish they had a stalker.”

My thesis is that the internet & homeschooling are an important mix. Parents are NOT (for the most part) using the internet an a means to teach their children. Parents (mostly moms) ARE however, voracious users of the internet as a way to find homeschool products and to network with other homeschooling families (mostly moms) for advice, encouragement and fellowship. And this has been, by and large, a good thing. Twitter fits into all of this in an organic way.

Twitter is in some ways, micro-blogging. Think of it as a series of blog entries, limited to 140 characters each. But it is also more than that – more interactive, and closer to realtime.

When websites started (back when dinosaurs roamed the earth in the prehistoric 1980s!), they were conceived of as static repositories of information. But the ease of updating rapidly produced a new variant, the blog (A contraction of “website log”–>”web log”–>”blog”).

Initially, users bookmarked sites they liked and made periodic visits to see if there was anything new. I remember the days of opening up my favorites (organized by topic) and running through, clicking on each URL to see what was new. Fun, but inefficient. Then came RSS (Really Simple Syndication). I prefer the google reader, but I’ve not made an exhaustive study. I’m currently subscribed to 146 websites. Any new content is excerpted/copied and placed in the “inbox” of my RSS reader where I can browse through it. I read and scan through them quickly (a necessity). I can flag anything significant with a star, and with a click or two, forward things to friends & family. You can view items from my RSS feed that I have “starred” in a widget on the left side of my blog (http://redhatrob.com).

Twitter is the next step in all of this. In one sense, it’s an aggregation of all the facebook status updates from all of your friends. But that’s only one way in which it is being used. Imagined another way, it is a giant real-time chat room with several million users all sending in sentences all at the same time. You can get a visual on this (slowed down and excerpted) by going here: http://beta.twittervision.com/

All of the individual messages (140 characters each) go into the public stream. But, of what use is this firehose of messages? Twitter gives you a few simple tools to extract the posts you are interested in. You “follow” a select group of twitter users whose messages you want to read. This stream of messages  is visible on your twitter homepage, and you can scroll back through messages to read up on what you might have missed. you can also search the public stream for keywords you might be interested in.

The twitter stream is also public via some open software routines which has led to a variety of interesting tools that expand on the basic searches that twitter allows you to do.

Key Word Alerts
There is a service (tweetlater) that will scan the entire twitter public stream and aggregate messages which contain key words you are interested in. As an example, I get an aggregated email message every four hours which shows me any messages with the words “Greenleaf Press” in them. I search on other keywords as well (wink!). Tweetlater started as a service to let you schedule your messages to be posted at times you select, but i find the keyword alerts to be the most valuable feature.

There is also a wonderful tool called tweetdeck which takes the concept of a live “search” on the twitter stream and executes it with great power. Tweetdeck allows you to configure multiple columns, each filled with a stream of twitter messages which match a search criteria you have established.

Hashtags
Twitter users have adopted the convention of using “hashtags” to efficiently identify the topic of certain messages they are sending, or the community they wish to address. One of the most popular hashtags is #tcot. (stands for Top Conservatives On Twitter). A number of twitter users add the hashtag #tcot to the messages they send with comments on current politics & social issues. In tweetdeck, you can configure a column to retrieve all of the messages that contain the hashtag #tcot. in that column you will see an ongoing, realtime conversation between individuals around the country (and sometimes the world) on political topics. Sometimes the senders interact with each other, sometimes they are simply posting a link to a story / blog post that they have found or one they have authored. Links in twitter messages are “live.” You can click on them and your browser will immediately open a tab showing that site.

During real-time, breaking events, folks with mobile phones and twitter accounts have quickly adopted a hashtag (by convention and tacit, un-coordinated agreement), and then posted real-time updates from the field to the twitter stream. When the terrorist attack occurred in Mumbai (November, 2008), the best real-time info from around the city came from the hundreds of people posting messages using the hashtag #mumbai. People all over the world were literally reading short text messages posted by people trapped in hotels trying to figure out how many terrorists were out there and where they were.

Weird URLs
To conserve message space (remember, messages are limited to 140 characters), most users “shorten” the URL of a link using any number of public services. Think of it as a link shorthand, or link encryption.

Mobile phones
This is one of the most interesting and intriguing facets of twitter. You can have messages from certain selected users forwarded to your cell phone as text messages, AND you can send twitter messages from your cell phone. You register your cell phone with your twitter account and adjust the settings there. I “follow” over 1,000 twitter users, but I have only 3-4 forwarded to my cell phone. We’ve effectively used this feature during legislative lobbying, to keep track of the real-time location of key people we needed to speak to and to co-ordinate our activities.

It’s also a fun way to impress your friends. I’m one of 52,375 people following the twitter account of Karl Rove. I have his messages forwarded to my mobile phone (usually only 2-3 a day). It’s fun to hear the phone beep in a meeting and then turn to someone and say, “Excuse me, I have a text message from Karl Rove.”

Public and Permanent
The real caveat on twitter is that the entire message stream is public, and permanent – occasionally folks forget this, with embarrassing results.

Twitter & Google
At first thought, these seem to be very different animals, but in another way they are not. Google works by ranking relevant websites based on how other users on the internet link to and evaluate them. Twitter is likewise a real-time source of information. You can go to the twitter stream at any time and search for what thousands of people are saying about a particular topic. Or you can post a message yourself and invite responses. If you pay attention to the twitter stream for a few minutes, it is often (though not always) self-correcting. Think The Wisdom of Crowds, and/or Adam Smith’s invisible hand. If you ask a question of a random man on the street, you may get an erroneous, inaccurate answer – but if you get the attention of a crowd and ask them, and let them interact and refine the answer, they do a surprisingly good job.

All of this is still evolving. It may prove a fad and collapse. On the other hand, it is such a decentralized and democratic community that the potential for “networking” is tremendous. Like all tools, it can be used for good or ill.

I find that I need to discipline myself and schedule/ration the attention I give to this. 15 minutes, twice a day is my current limit. But it is a new part of my communication strategy – and I find I have been connecting with other like-minded folks in new and interesting ways.

Incidentally, there is a #homeschool hashtag being used. Probably will be others…

Sorry to be so long-winded, but it helps me to organize my own thoughts when I write all of this out.

– Rob

book reviews, Homeschooling

Weapons of Mass Instruction

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John Taylor Gatto has a new book out. That is cause for celebration. For those who are not familiar with him, a bit of his biography is in order. Gatto taught for 30 years in the public schools of New York City, specifically Community School District 3, Manhattan. He was named New York City Teacher of the year in 1989, 1990, and 1991, and New York State Teacher of the Year in 1991. In 1991 he quit his teaching job rather publicly, with an editorial in the Wall Street Journal which began thus:

Government schooling is the most radical adventure in history. It kills the family by monopolizing the best times of childhood and by teaching disrespect for home and parents.

You can read the rest of his provocative essay / editorial / resignation letter at his website: http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/prologue2.htm

In 1992, Gatto published a revolutionary book, Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling. Seventeen years later, that book is still in print. Since 1992, he has been writing and speaking nationwide. Among other things he has been outspoken in his admiration for the modern homeschooling movement – though he didn’t homeschool his own children.

In 2001 he published The Underground History of American Education. Extensively researched, the book is, in some ways, Gatto’s magnum opus. In it, he documents in detail the movement begun in the late 19th century to adopt the Prussian model of compulsory schooling in order to train docile factory workers and obedient soldiers. It is an eye-opening study. It can be ordered from Amazon, or read online at Gatto’s website.

And now we have his newest composition. In some important ways, I think it may be his best work. Many of the themes of his writing are repeated here, but they are more polished, more concise, more persuasively presented. And there are some provocative and startling new ideas here as well. Ideas that will (or should) make anyone involved in the education of children think.

The dedication opens poignantly:

I dedicate this book to the great and difficult art of family-building, and to its artists, the homeschoolers in particular . . .

From Gatto’s Prologue: Against School:

Do we really need school? I don’t mean education, just forced schooling: six classes a day, five days a week, nine months a year, for twelve years. Is this deadly routine really necessary? And if so, for what? Don’t hide behind reading, writing, and arithmetic as a rationale, because 2 million happy homeschoolers have surly put that banal justification to rest.

A little later, Gatto quotes H.L. Mencken with approval:

The aim of public education is not to fill the young of the species with knowledge and awaken their intelligence. . . Nothing could be further from the truth. The aim. . . is simply to reduce as many individuals as possible to the same safe level, to breed and train a standardized citizenry, to put down dissent and originality. That is its aim in the United States. . . and that is its aim everywhere else.

In chapter one (Everything You Know about Schools is Wrong) Gatto summarizes the startling and alarming statistics on literacy, gathered from a large and impeccable source, US Army induction records. In the early 1930s, the literacy rate for young men was 98%. By 1944, it was 96%. But by 1951 it had fallen to 81% – a startling decline. By 1973, the tests on young men inducted into the military revealed that male literacy had fallen to 73%. All of this in spite of the increased attention in the 1950s and 1960s on education. Spending on education had skyrocketed. New teachers had been trained and hired. New methods had been developed and adopted. What went wrong? Gatto suggests that education was never the stated purpose of compulsory schooling – control and conditioning was. He has quotes from the founding documents of public schooling to back up his assertions.

In chapter two (Walkabout: London), Gatto celebrates the lives of successful men and women who have achieved remarkable things without formal “schooling” (which doesn’t mean they weren’t educated!). Sir Richard Branson, David Sarnoff, & Bill Gates are 3 of his more important examples but there are others with life-stories every bit as compelling.

In chapters three & four (Fat Stanley and the Lancaster Amish & David Sarnoff’s Classroom), Gatto continues his examples and contrasts those who have learned how to think with the stunting effects of twelve years of classroom confinement.

Chapter five (Hector Isn’t the Problem) tells the tragic story of a student with behavior problems who is labeled and kept in school’s version of “protective custody. In Chapter six (The Camino de Santiago) Gatto begins to lay out one of the guerilla techniques he developed to help his students really learn – by helping them to escape the artificial setting of the classroom and observe the real world. Chapter seven (Weapons of Mass Instruction) expands on this theme and gives more examples of what Gatto discovered really helps students and how schooling systematically stifles them.

Chapter eight, (What is Education?) is a thought experiment in which Gatto imagines what the goals and methods of a new school, a humane school would look like. No testing, flexible time commitments, no walled compound:

I know how odd this all sounds: first I tell you reading, writing, and arithmetic are easy to learn as long as they aren’t taught systematically, and now I tell you that the very “comprehensive” school institution which Harvard called for in the 1950s is ruining our children, not helping them. I know you’ve been told by experts that the complicated world of today requires more school time, longer school days, longer years, more testing, more labeling.

Well. . . you’ve been bamboozled, and I hope your own experience will confirm that by little reflection. How do you think millions of Americans learned to be literate on desktop computers, and all the rest of the paraphernalia of the information society? Not at school, that’s for sure.

Chapter 9 is a personal plea from Gatto entitled, “A Letter to My Granddaughter About Dartmouth.” In it, he advises her to take a few years off and work until she understands herself better. And then he gives her a frank appraisal of what she will, and won’t, learn at Dartmouth.

Chapter 10 (Incident at Highland High) was my favorite chapter in the book! Gatto relates two incidents. The first was the 2008 incident in Germany in which a sixteen-year-old girl was forcibly removed from her home by a group of fifteen policemen and city officials. Her crime – she was being homeschooled and did not want to attend the local public schools. Gatto reprints the letter he wrote to the German ambassador in the US. He also relates his own experience in dealing with official repression and over-reaction. In 2004, while giving a talk to the students at Highland High School in Rockland County, NY he was interrupted by three police officers who burst into the auditorium and announced (via bull-horn) that the assembly was over and all students were to return to their classrooms. The superintendent of schools had found Gatto’s talk to be so inflammatory that he called the police to stop it.

In his Afterword, Gatto announces, An Invitation to an Open Conspiracy: The Bartleby Project. Inspired by Herman Melville’s Bartleby the Scrivener, a boycott of standardized testing:

Mass abstract testing, anonymously scored, is the torture centrifuge whirling away precious resources of time and money from productive use and routing it into the hands of testing magicians. It happens only because the tormented allow it. Here is the divide-and-conquer mechanism par excellence, the wizard-wand which establishes a bogus rank order among the schooled, inflicts prodigies of stress upon the unwary, causes suicides, family breakups, and grossly perverts the learning process – while producing no information of any genuine worth. Testing can’t predict who will become the best surgeon, college professor, or taxicab driver; it predicts nothing which would impel any sane human being to enquire after these scores. Standardized testing is very good evidence our national leadership is bankrupt and has been so for a very long time.

His solution? When the tests are handed out on test day, Gatto urges young people to write across the front of the test, “I would prefer not to take your test.” And don’t. “An old man’s prayers will be with you.”

Weapons of Mass Instruction is a hardback, 215 pages. It can be purchased directly from Greenleaf Press for $24.95 by clicking on any of the links in this review.

– Rob Shearer

book reviews, Modern History

Scrapbooks and Original Sources

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There have been a number of innovative books for children and young adults in recent years which have used innovative artwork to transport readers back in time by presenting to them reproductions of original source material. There are excellent books on the year 1776 (1776: The Illustrated Edition) and the Titanic. There was an excellent book this year on Abraham Lincoln (The Lincolns: A Scrapbook Look at Abraham and Mary).

Two new examples of this intriguing category of books arrived recently and I can’t recommend them too highly.

The first is The French Revolution by Alistair Horne, published by Andre Deutsch/Carlton of the UK. The book is an elegant hardback which comes in its own hardboard slipcase. The text is a very readable recounting of the course of the French Revolution beginning with a summary of the reign of Louis XIV and then proceeding with profusely illustrated 2-page spreads on the summoning of the Estates-General in 1787, the Tennis Court Oath, the Storming of the Bastille, The Attack on the Clergy, the attempted Flight of the King, the Rule of Danton, Marat, & Robespierre, the executions of King Louis XVI & Queen Marie Antoinette, the Terror of 1793-1794; the overthrow of the Committee of Safety in the month of Thermidor (July), 1794; the arrival of Napoleon in Paris in 1795. The book concludes with a brief summary of the four years of rule by the Directory (1795-1799) and its eventual overthrow by Napoleon now a military hero for his victories over Austria in northern Italy, and in Egypt against the British.

What really distinguishes this book are its extensive use of contemporary images: paintings, engravings, newspaper cartoons, and eyewitness accounts. Not only are these images reproduced in full color on every page, but the book also includes 30 facsimile reproductions of important documents and artifacts. There is a hand-written extract from the Tennis Court Oath, the original text of the Declaration of the Rights of Man (which American ambassador Thomas Jefferson helped to draft), Marie-Antoinette’s last letter, and Napoleon’s notes from the Siege of Toulon. There is no better way to introduce students to the historical reality of the French revolution. The book is a feast for the eyes and a stunning visual evocation of the past.

I find the events of the French Revolution tragic in most respects, but its significance is immense. One cannot understand the modern world without coming to grips with it. The textbooks almost always compress it into an incomprehensible short set of paragraphs and suggest connections and continuity with the American Revolution. They tend to gloss over the excesses of the riots and mobs and the tragedy of the Terror and the Guillotine. Most of them completely miss the overt hostility to Christianity which marked the French Revolution. This book is an effective way to help students understand what those who lived through the times experienced. The text is written for high school students and up.

The French Revolution is a 64 page slip-cased hardback, with 30 facsimile documents enclosed. It can be ordered directly from Greenleaf Press for $45.00 by clicking on the links in this review.

The second book is a One Small Step: A Scrapbook. 2009 is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 landing on the moon. Each of the kids books I’ve reviewed has its own strengths. This one takes the original tack of being a scrap-book assembled by a contemporary 12-year-old, named Mike – after astronaut Michael Collins, one of the crew-members of Apollo 11. Mike’s mom works for NASA so he’s been able to collect a lot of unique items. This is not a 3-dimensional pop-up book, but the publisher has cleverly used different paper stocks and printing techniques so that photographs are on separate small glued-in backings. There are lots of flaps to lift for additional information. There’s a press pass taped in on the launch-day pages, and a metallic etched plate which reproduces the plaque placed on the lunar lander. The front page of the New York Times from July 21, 1969 is folder over and pasted in a few pages later. Each graphic or picture has its own extended caption. Each one explains a particular facet or event in the moon landing. The result is very much a you-were-there feel. The book seemed to me to effectively convey a much more real sense of what the events were really about and how they were experienced by those who lived through them.

One Small Step is an oversize hardback, 24 pages and available directly from Greenleaf Press for $24.95 by clicking on any of the links in this review.

Ancient history, book reviews, children's books

Pharaoh’s Boat

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The importance of understanding Egyptian history and culture can hardly be over-estimated. Egypt is the country mentioned most often in the Old Testament. Israel’s prophets foretell the future not just for Israel, but for Egypt as well.

Abraham had dealings with Pharaoh, as did Jacob and Joseph. The founding of Israel as a nation is rooted in Moses’ struggle with Pharaoh. The kings of Israel & Judah wrestled with Egypt as a regional power and puzzled over whether to treat her as an ally or an enemy. Jeremiah goes into exile in Egypt rather than Babylon, where he loses his life. Joseph took Mary and Jesus to Egypt to escape the wrath of Herod.

In Roman history, it was Egypt which played a crucial role in the lives and fortunes of Julius Caesar and his nephew Octavian, better known as Caesar Augustus.

For all of these reasons, we have always made the study of Ancient Egypt a key part of our children’s introduction to history. It is a tremendous aid in understanding the Old Testament – and a study of the Ancient World which only touched the classical civilizations of Greece and Rome leaves much of ancient culture incomprehensible.

Among other things, Egypt is the archetypal example of the determining influence of geography on history. Ancient Egypt is really the civilization developed by a string of towns and villages up and down the Nile River – like pearls on a rope. The entire civilization is a narrow corridor, only a few miles wide on either side of the Nile. There is a sharp delineation between the green fertile fields, irrigated by the annual Nile flood and the desolate sands of the uninhabited desert, which begins within sight of the Nile.

So Pharaoh’s Boat (just published by Houghton Mifflin in May, 2009) is not a plaything or a diverting bit of aquatic recreation. The Nile is central to the existence of Egypt. Egyptians worship the Nile as the giver of life. One of Pharaoh’s most sacred duties was to intercede with the gods on behalf of Egypt to insure the annual flood which irrigates the fields on either side of the long valley. Cheops and the Great Pyramid of Giza which formed his tomb belong to the earliest period in Egyptian history. Perhaps as early as 2600 BC, in the Old Kingdom of Egypt 100,000 workers labored for 20 years to build a stone pyramid over 400 feet tall.

The first part of this delightful book tells the ancient story of how and why a boat was built for Cheops and buried in a pit on the river side of the Great Pyramid. The author and illustrator, David Weitzman, uses the flat 2-dimensional style of ancient Egyptian wall paintings to show/explain why boats were so important to the ancient Egyptians and to show the steps which were taken to build and bury two boats for Pharaoh Cheops. The twist is that the boats, after being designed and built by an ancient shipwright, were disassembled and the pieces placed in an orderly layered arrangement in the pits.

To tell the story of their discovery and re-assembly, Weitzman switches to a more modern 3-dimensional representational style. The story of the painstaking research that went into re-assembling the boat is as fascinating as the story of their original construction. It was a 3-dimensional jigsaw puzzle with 1,200+ pieces, and no pictures or instructions. Before the Egyptian archeologist, Ahmed Youssef Moustafa, chief of the Restoration Department of the Egyptian Antiquities Service was satisfied, the boat had been put together and taken apart five times. Each time, the team of archeologists learned something new. To solve several particularly difficult problems, Ahmed went to modern Egyptian boat-makers on the banks of the Nile and served as an apprentice, asking questions about the details of the techniques they used. It turns out that many things have stayed the same for over 4,000 years.

This book is a masterpiece. Although the publisher says that the target audience is children ages 9-12, my estimate is that students up through middle school will find the book quite interesting.

The book carries an endorsement by David Macaulay (and makes a great companion to his book, Pyramid):

“Pharaoh’s Boat is an immensely gratifying book as skillfully crafted and assembled as its subject. In this beautifully written and illustrated account, David Weitzman weaves past and present into a truly satisfying story of technology and discovery, scholarship and craft. While much of the art is done in the familiarly flat Egyptian style, the journey on which it take us is absolutely four dimensional.”

Pharaoh’s Boat is a hardback, 32 pages. It is available directly from Greenleaf Press for $18.00 by clicking on any of the links in this review.

– Rob Shearer, Publisher

Homeschooling, Tennessee politics

Tennessee’s jihad against homeschoolers

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The State of Tennessee’s jihad against homeschoolers continues.

It began in late 2007 and continued into 2008. An employee of the Department of Education, nominally in charge of the office of non-public schooling was criss-crossing the state making a presentation in which she declared that the diplomas issued by Tennessee’s church-related, category IV schools “were not worth the paper they were printed on.”

As a result of her presentations, other agencies and departments of the state began to reject diplomas issued to homeschoolers when a high school diploma was required by law for certain regulated categories of employment. At first it was the Tennessee Police Officer’s Standards and Training Board (POST) which refused to allow a homeschooled high school graduate to continue serving as a sheriff’s deputy, even though he had completed the police academy taught by Walter State Community College and already been hired by the sheriff’s department.

Then the Department of Children’s Services refused to allow a homeschooled high school graduate to continue to work in a daycare as a caregiver, because the law stipulated that a caregiver must hold a high school diploma recognized by the state of Tennessee.

Now comes word that just this past week the Tennessee Board of Cosmetology has refused to permit the licensing of a young women because her high school diploma is from a church-related category IV school.

Once again, it bears repeating: The State of Tennessee recognizes these diplomas for the awarding of HOPE lottery scholarships. The University of Tennessee and all of its campuses recognize these diplomas for purposes of admission to college. The state community college system recognizes these diplomas for the purpose of admission to a community college. Vanderbilt, Sewanee, Rhodes, King, Belmont, David Lipscomb, & Lee University all recognize these diplomas for admission to their college degree programs.

It is only the few state boards where the Department of Education has some influence that have rejected them. Homeschooled kids are smart enough to enlist in any branch of the armed services, attend any public or private university – but according to the state of Tennessee they are not qualified to work in a daycare, serve as a police officer, or dye someone’s hair.

Folks, this is outrageous. This is the petty tyranny of a unionized bureaucracy. The educrats cannot stand the fact that a few courageous families have said “no thank you” to the government-monopoly factory-model one-size-fits-all public school system. Perhaps they have been emboldened by the Obama administrations shut-down of the Washington DC voucher system. Who knows?

The Tennessee Legislature has the opportunity to correct this bureacratic jihad against homeschoolers. They can over-rule the Department of Education and restore some sanity to the state’s policy on education.

The Tennessee State Senate is scheduled to hear SB0433 this coming Monday, May 4th. Here’s the official summary of what that bill does:

Tennesseans, call your senators and urge them to vote for SB0433.

Modern History, National Politics

News Flash: 36,000 people will die from the flu THIS YEAR!

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As they did last year.

And the year before that.

And the year before that.

Here’s how that number is derived and reported by the Centers for Disease Control:

“Using new and improved statistical models, CDC scientists estimate that an average of 36,000 people (up from 20,000 in previous estimates) die from influenza-related complications each year in the United States.”

– CDC Press Release from January 7, 2003

So, while we should definitely be alert to what is happening in Mexico, we need to balance the news reports against the fact that in a normal year, 100 people die from the flu EVERY DAY!

Isn’t it great that the main stream media have those legions of editors and fact checkers to provide us with perspective? It’s really terrible how one-sided and distorted bloggers are. Isn’t it great that we have such a careful and balanced main stream media? What would we do without the calm, balanced reporting of the television news shows?

Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Not quite time to panic yet…

Modern History

What happens to you when you’re 10 makes a big impression

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Steve Eves was 10 years old in 1969. That summer, the Apollo 11 astronauts landed on the moon.

Last Saturday, Eves set a new amateur rocketry record when he launched his 1/10th scale replica of the Saturn V rocket from a farm in Maryland.

The model Saturn V was 36 feet tall, weighed 1,600 pounds, and flew to a height of almost a mile (4400 feet).

A man’s got to have a hobby . . .

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bj4lj6YSwzg

book reviews, children's books, Colonial Period, Middle Ages

Revels and Shenanigans

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Come to the Castle, by Linda Ashman, illuminated by S.D. Schindler

Tricking the Tallyman, by Jacqueline Davies, illustrated by S.D. Schindler

These two books have at least two things in common. They were both published in 2009, and they were both illustrated (illuminated) by S.D. Schindler. They’re also both entertaining and educational, each with its own wry, quirky sense of humor.

Come to the Castle is subtitled, “A Visit to a Castle in Thirteenth-Century England.” Too often, the authors of children’s books succumb to the temptation to romanticize the middle ages. This book is decidedly realistic (if not downright un-romantic). This is not a dry reference book, but rather begins as a rhymed tale of the Earl of Daftwood and his plan to relieve his tedium with a bit of merriment – a tournament!

Steward, plan a tournament!
Herald, find your horse!

This is the opportunity to introduce the many different servants who serve the Earl of Daftwood. Here is the Steward’s response:

Steward, plan a tournament?!
The Earl is surely daft!
Though he has countless servants,
I am vastly understaffed,
Overworked, and truly weary
Of his constant recreation
(Oh, how I’d love a nice massage
And several weeks’ vacation!).

As plans for the party progress, we are introduced to the Herald, the Lady, the Cook, the Cleaning Servant, the Gong Farmer, the Knight, the Squire, the Suitor, the Earl’s Daughter, the Jester, and the Doctor. Each of these has his or her own unique perspective on the role they play in the life of the castle and what a great feast will mean for them. The details are well researched – the author consulted several medieval historians to get all the details right. Schindler’s illustrations are delightfully detailed and entertaining. In addition to illuminated letters on each page, there are numerous small touches tucked away into nooks and corners that provide a rich visual picture of medieval life.

The publisher indicates that the text is pitched for ages 4-8, but older students up through 10 or so will also enjoy the story. This would definitely make a great read-aloud for a child sitting in a lap and gazing at the pictures.

Come to the Castle is a hardback, 40 pages and available directly from Greenleaf Press for $17.95

Tricking the Tallyman is subtitled, The Great Census Shenanigans of 1790. It is 1790, the year of the very first U.S. Census. Phineas Bump, Assistant Marshal of the United States rides into the Vermont town of Tunbridge in order to get an accurate count for the census. But a rumor has preceded him that the purpose of the census is to assess taxes and that the more people he counts, the more money the town will have to pay in taxes. The town resolves to trick the Tallyman. Phineas is told that most of the buildings in town are abandoned. He suspects he’s being tricked, but posts his results in the town square.

The townspeople now learn that the purpose of the census is to determine how many votes Vermont should have in the new Congress. More votes would mean a better chance for a road and a post office. The townspeople ask for a recount – and attempt to trick the Tallyman yet again. Everyone gets counted twice, at least!

Phineas posts the new results, grumbles “Tis a tally not worth the paper it is written on.”

Finally the townspeople figure out the truth: the census is for taxes AND for representation in the new Congress. Phineas is persuaded to count one more time.

“We’re the town that tricked the Tallyman – twice! But then, we decided ’twas better to be fair and true. And so we were. Entirely.”

The author’s note at the end includes the six questions asked at each household during the first US Census. 650 assistant marshals were employed by Thomas Jefferson, Secretary of State to President George Washington to determine the official population of each of the states.

Once again, Schindler’s illustrations are delightful. They show us what life in a small town in the Vermont woods looked like in the 1790s. The family scenes and facial expressions are delightful. One learns a lot about colonial life just by looking at the clothes, the houses, the furniture, the toys, and especially the town scenes.

Tricking the Tallyman is also targeted to children, ages 5-8, but like Come to the Castle, the story will be interesting for students up through age 10-12. Since next year (2010) is a census year, this book is very timely, and could be used as part of a study on US History and the US Congress. Should the number of congressman from your state change? How will we know? How will the government find out?

Tricking the Tallyman is a hardback, 40 pages and available from Greenleaf Press for $17.99

2010 Election, Ancient history, National Politics

Marius, Sulla, & Obama

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Marius

The end of the Roman Republic was signaled by the transformation of political disputes into criminal prosecutions.

The Romans had always dabbled with a dangerous brew of political trials and private prosecutors. There were no public prosecutors, so even criminal charges had to be brought by a citizen. From time to time, Senators and prominent Roman figures would launch an attack via a criminal charge – but though the motives might have been political, the substance of the charges usually rested on a ciminal act which violated the Roman legal standards.

Ominous things began happening in the 2nd century BC. The great wealth acquired by the Republic during its expansion around the Mediterranean aroused great passions, rivalries, and jealousy. Triumphant generals became wealthy men. Wealthy men became generals commanding great armies. The armies of the Senate and People of Rome became the army of Marius or the army of Sulla. And, in the next generation, the army of Pompey or the army of Julius Caesar.

At the same time, political rivals sought not just to achieve political victory over their rivals, they began to seek their rivals destruction. When they began to seek the criminal conviction of their political rivals over policy differences the end of the Republic was at hand.

Julius Caesar

Case in point. Julius Caesar had immunity from criminal prosecution so long as he was the commander of the army of the Roman Republic in Gaul. But once he surrendered that command, he could be charged and tried as a criminal in the Roman courts. This is what his political rivals threatened to do.

Facing the threat of criminal prosecution, there was little to deter Caesar from leading his army south from Gaul and using it to seize power in Rome. His rivals demanded that he surrender his command. He knew that if he did, he would likely be destroyed. He justified his march on Rome as an act of self-defense.

If the leaders of one political party threaten to prosecute the leaders of a rival political party as criminals, once they acquire control of the government, they create a powerful incentive for the other party to fight, by fair means or foul, to retain power.

This is not a happy development in our political life.

book reviews, National Politics

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal

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If deficit spending were truly stimulative, then why didn’t the Bush deficits stimulate the economy?

If World War II brought us out of the Great Depression, then shouldn’t the War in Iraq have stimulated the US economy?

These are just two of the provocative questions raised in the new Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal, by Robert P. Murphy, scheduled for release next month, but already shipping and available now from Greenleaf.

Murphy is eminently well-qualified for the topic. A Ph.D. economist, he was a professor at Hillsdale College and is now an adjunct scholar with the Ludwig von Mises Institute.

Here’s the most striking sentence in the book (in my humble opinion):

“Economies recover from recessions or depressions by reallocating labor and capital to their most efficient uses. Propping up ailing industries only delays that necessary process and thereby deepens the weaknesses of an economy and delays recovery.” page 66

The book is divided into eight sections:

Ch. 1 The Crisis
The Roaring Twenties; The Onset of the Great Depression; FDR and the New Deal; The 1937-38 “Depression Within the Depression;” Rosie the Riveter: Happy Times are Here Again; Just the Facts Ma’am? The Need for Interpretation; The Reason Why; If a Policy Failed in the 1930s, Why Would it Work Today?

Ch. 2 Big-Government Herbert Hoover Makes the Depression Great
Herbert Hoover: Consistent Critic of Capitalism; Hoover’s “New Economics;” Making the Depression Great, Step 1: Prop up Wages; Making the Depression Great, Step 2: Cripple International Trade; Making the Depression Great, Step 3: Tax-and-Spend Like a Democrat; Making the Depression Great, Step 4: Install a New Deal-Lite; Herbert Hoover: A Big Government Man

Ch. 3 Did the Tightwad Fed’s Deflation Cause the Great Depression?
Friedman: The Timid Fed and the Deflation in the 1930s; Who’s Afraid of Falling Prices?; Deflation: Historical Evidence; But Why Would the Fed Destroy Money?; Propping up Losers;

Ch. 4 Did Conservative Economic Policies Cause the Depression?
The Roaring ’20s; Andrew Mellon’s Incredible Tax Cuts; Was the Depression payback for the 1920s Boom?; How Did the Classical Gold Standard Work?; Did the Gold Standard Cause the Depression?; The Final Verdict on Gold

Ch. 5 The Failures of the New Deal
Continuing the Work of Hoover: Restricting Production and Raising Wages; The Only Thing We Have to Fear Is Roosevelt Himself

Ch. 6 The Outrages of the New Deal
Roosevelt’s “Bank Holiday;” Going Off Gold; The National Recovery Administration: Big Government and Big Business Join Forces; How the New Deal Helped Poor People Go Hungry; Old Age insurance: Not Really Insurance, and Neither Social nor Secure

Ch. 7 The Myth of Wartime Prosperity
The Immortal Error: The Broken Window Fallacy; A Billion Wrongs Don’t Make a Right; Wartime Prosperity? Damned Lies and Statistics; Central Planning: Bad in Peacetime, Deadly in War; Postscript: Ways in which World War II Did Boost American Production

Ch. 8 The Great Depression: Lessons for Today
The Fed Caused the Housing Boom – and Bust; The Myth of Laissez-Faire George Bush; Is Barack Obama the New FDR?

Here are some other thought-provoking observations:

The creation of the FDIC may have created a moral hazard of banks. The existence of the FDIC actually induces banks to make risky loans, by insulating them from the risks, and thus preventing them from learning the consequences of making bad loans.

The “bank holidays” begun by various state governors and eventually instituted nationally by FDR actually introduced additional uncertainty into the banking system and may have contributed to the climate which caused “runs” on various banks.

The National Recovery Administration price codes resulted in such absurd tyrannies as the jailing and fining of a New Jersey tailor who insisted on charging 35 cents to press a suit of clothes when the NRA price code set the amount at 40 cents.

This is a VERY timely book. Highly recommended for high school students and up who want to understand the economic history of the US and how it is being mis-used in the current crisis.

The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Great Depression and the New Deal
is a paperback, 198 pages and is available from Greenleaf Press for $19.95.

The Director's Blog – Rob Shearer, Francis Schaeffer Study Center, Mt. Juliet, TN