culture

On What is Missing in Education

/ gouverneurmorris / 1 Comment

In all the discussion over the years concerning the deficiencies of modern education, from the improvement of testing standards, the adoption of new curricula, or even the construction of expansive facilities, the most fundamental component is missing. The purpose of education, for most of America’s existence, has been encouraging the student’s grasp of morality and sense of service to others. So it was for the last classically educated President in our history, Calvin Coolidge.

For all the concern over school shootings, sexual misconduct, drugs, violent outbursts, and other self-destructive behavior, the basics continue to be neglected as incapable of addressing the “complexity” of the issues. This is a refusal to live in reality. It is a decided effort to run from the hard decisions of maturity, allowing immature and unhealthy impulses to dictate both the lives of individuals and the governance of schools.

No one is born with perfect behavior, impeccable manners, or maturity. These qualities must be taught, for students absorb both the good and the bad. Cut out the moral core and there is no compass to help the individual discern good from evil values. Moreover, the young are no longer taught the most basic virtues of character:  self-control, temperance, kindness, forbearance, patience, charity, and diligence. Instead, moral instruction is ridiculed as an attempt to impose extreme codes of behavior or to establish a state religion. Animalistic behavior is regarded as normal, and any attempt to reaffirm essential standards of conduct is met with organized ostracism from accepted society by politically correct elites. In truth, character has nothing to do with a “separation of church and state” and everything to do with a good and healthy civilization.

We are failing our children egregiously.  The individual is treated as mere biological matter or, at best, mind without conscience, free to respond to any and every stimuli while simultaneously being devoid of a spiritual nature or the needs of the soul. Mere relay of information is not education. Transmitting data, shorn of any idea that truth exists and can be known objectively, does not fulfill a teacher’s obligation.

Coolidge said it best,

“Man is far more than intelligence. It is not only what men know but what they are disposed to do with that which they know that will determine the rise and fall of civilization…The realization of progress that has marked the history of the race, the overwhelming and irresistible power which human nature possesses to resist that which is evil and respond to that which is good, are a sufficient warrant for optimism. If this were not so, teaching would be a vain and useless thing, an ornament to be secured by a few, but useless to the multitude.”

Coolidge thought such a narrow base of informed and truly educated people was not right. Proper education reached as many as it could. Proper education did not abandon certain communities, specific demographics, or particular economic strata. It seems some today have surrendered the standards because too few live up to them. Hence, literacy continues to fall, historical awareness evaporates, and nothing is required of the inmates running the asylum.

Coolidge appealed to higher standards proven by decades of historical experience. People were not richer, wiser, better, or purer than they are now, but they knew the effort to aspire to standards was worth it. Aspiring to the ideal — a character formed and maintained through constant effort — was worthy not because perfection could be realized, but because good character is found in its pursuit.

Coolidge continues,

“Our country…has founded its institutions not on the weakness but on the strength of mankind. It undertakes to educate the individual because it knows his worth. It relies on him for support because it realizes his power…[T]he chief end of it all, the teaching of how to think and how to live, must never be forgotten.

     All this points to the same conclusion, the necessity of a foundation of liberal culture, and the requirement for broadening and increasing the amount of moral intellectual training to meet the increasing needs of a complicated civilization. Free schools and compulsory attendance are a new experience. No power of government can bring them to success. If they succeed, it will be through the genuine effort and support that can come only from the heart of the people themselves. It is this condition that makes the position of the teacher rise to such high importance.”

Without the moral and the spiritual to support and sustain the individual, all the “facts” and material stimuli of modernity will leave the student empty, ill-equipped for the potential life holds. It will squander the great inheritance due the next generation: the wisdom of those who thought great thoughts and did great deeds before us.

Image

On Being Worthy of Freedom

/ gouverneurmorris / Leave a comment

Apprehensions over the future have always remained an ever-present concern for a wise and circumspect people. When Americans stop being concerned for the next generation, it will be because we are no longer free individuals. The prospects for freedom stand in greater doubt than perhaps they have for many years, but a lack of confidence in our system is only new to us, not to generations of Americans who came before us.

Any one of the hardships overcome by prior generations could have halted the experiment of self-government in its tracks. It has certainly had no shortage of critics who proclaimed “failure” and “defeat” only to be proven flatly wrong time and time again. Inequity and unfairness have been present in human history from the outset, but neither has had the power to prevent individuals of determination from accomplishing truly great things despite it. Our time is hardly the first to ask, “who is worthy of freedom?”

The Progressive Era produced an almost overwhelming array of reasons to change the way this country was established. It would answer our question with pessimism: the people were ultimately not to be trusted with freedom. It was an intelligent few who merited such power. Coolidge knew, on the other hand, freedom was safest in the hands of the people.

The charge that our system was both too wild and too unequal, compared to the “enlightened” societies of Europe, led to calls for regulation of human behavior on a scale never before known. The pursuit began to implement an efficient and intelligent approach to government that would mitigate risk, remove inequities and shepherd the people to progress.

These activists, predisposed to intense skepticism about capitalist systems, trusted government implicitly with greater and greater control. Enamored with a lopsided admiration for methods foreign to American ideals of law and liberty, these generally middle class intellectuals failed to appreciate the remarkable nature of our constitutional system. They overlooked the careful balance worked out by the Framers, infusing a disastrous measure of good intentions with a reckless accumulation of new laws.

They entrusted government with the power to supply the shortfalls of human nature with legislation. Each effort undervalued, even ignored, the unquantifiable worth of freedom. Government, endeavoring to be “smart” and “humane,” hurt those it proclaimed to help by robbing them of the dignity of free will, the moral judgment of those given sovereignty in our system.

Ours is a history of accomplishment and success because people were recognized not as subjects in service to the State but individuals whose value comes from a Divine Creator. Made in the image of God, it logically follows that the dreams, aspirations and abilities to create, construct and succeed are within every person’s power. It is that power now being denied our young people as unrealistic and unattainable. This is nothing more than the latest incarnation of those who denied Edison could harness light, the Wrights could fly and Ford could mobilize America.

The avoidable tragedy of all this is that it literally destroys the wholesome yearnings of millions for something better than marginal existence. Instead, the young are told to be content with mediocrity, cease the pursuit of success, and consign all future faith and hopes to Washington’s management. No less self-deluded than the Progressives of Coolidge’s day, this operation dehumanizes humanity. History proclaims it will ultimately fail but the cost to countless lives in the process can never be known.

Coolidge, grappling with these problems, said in 1923,

[T}he motive power of progress and reform has not come from the high and mighty but from the mass of the people…It is not the quantity of knowledge that is the chief glory of man…It is in the moral power to know the truth and respond to it, to resist evil and hold to that which is good, that is to be found the real dignity and worth, the chief strength, the chief greatness. This power, even in the humblest and the most unlettered, rises to a height which cannot be measured, which cannot be analyzed. It is this strength of the people which can never be ignored. Of course it would be folly to argue that the people cannot make political mistakes. They can and do make grave mistakes. They know it; they pay the penalty. But compared with the mistakes which have been made by every kind of autocracy they are unimportant…

…Unless the people struggle to help themselves, no one else will or can help them. It is out of such struggle that there comes the strongest evidence of their true independence and nobility, and there is struck off a rough and incomplete economic justice, and there develops a strong and rugged national character. It represents a spirit for which there could be no substitute. It justifies the claim that they are worthy to be free…

     …Civilization and freedom have come because they are an achievement, and it is human nature to achieve. Nothing else gives any permanent satisfaction. But most of all there is need of religion. From that source alone came freedom. Nothing else touches the soul of man. Nothing else justifies faith in the people.

Like the generation who saw beyond the narrow confines of subsistence imposed upon it by king and Parliament, it is time to refuse to participate in a supervised decline. Being taught to doubt our own judgment is merely a prelude to forfeiting the ability to make our own choices, to strive, to fail, to triumph — in short, to live free. If we are to be worthy of that freedom, we cannot surrender to this latest effort — however organized it is — to train out the moral ideals and intangible dreams of people.

Image

On Political Satire

/ gouverneurmorris / 1 Comment

Image

On January 4, 1928, Will Rogers, the era’s renowned cowboy comedian-columnist, led a radio hookup that featured participants all across the country, including the famous Al Jolson and the influential Paul Whiteman and his orchestra. It is interesting that both Jolson and Whiteman profoundly inspired many Americans (from Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday to Dick Clark and Bing Crosby) to launch their talents on the public stage. Whiteman was known as the “King of Jazz” while Jolson provided a sense of common identity and respect between minorities, immigrants and “Anglo-Saxons” through his black-face performances. Derided now, Jolson was loved across the demographics then. Will Rogers led this colorful gathering of talent to advertise Dodge automobiles.

As he continued the broadcast, in his characteristic drawl, he said, “Radio fans, I have a friend in Washington who on account of what the Automobiles have done for his Economy wants to speak to you, Mr. Coolidge, all right Mr. Coolidge go ahead…”

Rogers then employed a clever impersonation of the President’s “Vermont twang” and style of expression, ribbing Coolidge with this nonsensical series of comments:

     Ladies and Gentlemen, I am supposed to deliver a message every year on the condition of the country, I find the County as a WHOLE prosperous. I don’t mean by that, that the WHOLE country is prosperous, But as a WHOLE, its prosperous, That is its prosperous as a WHOLE. A WHOLE is not supposed to be prosperous, There is not a WHOLE lot of doubt about that…

Rogers, continuing to replicate Coolidge’s voice went on to political events in succinct and casual snippets, mentioning Mellon at Treasury, the Congress, “Smart Boy” Dwight Morrow and “Lindberg.” Rogers wrapped it up with a reference to Coolidge’s “I do not choose to run” statement from the previous year and how Prohibition was going.

All seemed fine until a few days later when Rogers dined at the home of Speaker Nicholas and his wife, Alice Roosevelt Longworth. To Rogers’ shock he learned of a New York Times piece chastising the comedian for “going too far” when it came to Presidential satire. He had even confused and angered some listeners who took issue with a President endorsing Dodge vehicles. Immediately, he sent a profuse letter of apology to both Mr. and Mrs. Coolidge, ending with the line with characteristic lack of punctuation, “If there ever was a sad Comedian, I am one, and I do ask all the forgiveness that its in your and Mrs. Coolidges power to give, Yours most respectfully, Will Rogers.”

The President, who responded to criticism directed at him the previous year for wearing that silly cowboy outfit including customized chaps with, “It is good for people to laugh,” wrote this kind and sensible reply to the ashamed comedian:

     THE WHITE HOUSE

     Washington

                                                                                                      January 11, 1928

     My dear Mr. Rogers:-

     Your letter has just come to me. I hope it will cheer you up to know that I thought the matter of rather small consequence myself though the office was informed from several sources that I had been on the air. I wish to assure you that your note makes it all plain that you had no intention save harmless amusement.

     I hope you will not give the affair another troubled thought. I am well aware how nicely you have referred to me so many times.

                                                                                                      Cordially yours,

                                                                                                      Calvin Coolidge

As Lawrence E. Wikander, former Curator of the Coolidge Room at Forbes Library, has noted in his article, “Will Rogers and Calvin Coolidge” in The Real Calvin Coolidge, volume 13, “Even a slight acquaintance with the President would convince one that would not send such a warm letter if he were offended” (p.14). Yet that is exactly what biographers have done since 1939! Each seems oblivious to this letter and Coolidge’s explicit dismissal of any offense taken. Such is one of the many persistent Coolidge myths to continue in spite of the facts.

As Mr. Wikander points out, Rogers not only considered the matter closed…he would impersonate Coolidge again and in the coming years after the White House regularly chided Coolidge with public satire. They would meet in March of 1930 at the dedication of Coolidge Dam in Arizona and remain clearly on the warmest of terms.

This obscure incident of political satire from eighty-five years ago illustrates how far the culture has gone. Instead of continuing the progress evident in Coolidge’s day, the culture has become more restrictive, seemingly incapable of laughing at itself, “choosing” to take offense rather than embracing the healthy sense of proportion that events warrant.

It is forgotten what a long road of passionate political expression has been traversed in our country. When President Washington received Chief Justice Jay back from Great Britain following the negotiation of an unpopular treaty with the recently vanquished “Mother Country,” Jay observed he could travel back to the capital by the lights of likenesses of him burned in effigy. Everything from death threats to obscene acts were directed against President Bush, an experience shared by numerous Presidents before him.

Infinitely less has been done by the rodeo clown at the Missouri State Fair. Yet, in spite of the enthusiastic reaction from those who were in the audience…it is “racist,” “hateful” and “intolerant” to lampoon the President. Apparently he is to be held above criticism, however comedic. It is a grave loss to our liberty when political correctness is awarded the power to silence the most harmless of satirical performances while destroying the individual who utters anything not approved by government authorities. What is left of our freedom to express political opinion when satire is no longer allowed?

Image